I’m going to keep the introduction short this week because I want to dive right in, but today we’re going to talk about commanders that are underplayed. These are all commanders that I’ve never seen or don’t see in the various Commander circles I’m in online. I’ve restricted the list to commanders that I feel have potential, but just aren’t used.

Dralnu, Lich Lord

Dralnu has such a cool and amazing ability, it’s only fair that it’s balanced the way it is. I understand why it’s not played; if it even gets poked once, it’s going to hurt. Fortunately, some newer cards have been able to help it if even just a little. Metallurgic Summonings doesn’t fix Dralnu, but token generation helps a lot. Paired with Paradox Engine, things can get out of hand if you play your cards right. Even if you just have Paradox Engine and Dralnu out, snagging your counterspells from the graveyard can obviously come in handy. It all comes down to playing Dralnu at the right time: exactly when it means you can take control of the game.

Wrexial, the Risen Deep

Our second Dimir card on the list Wrexial is a tank if I’ve ever seen one. Even ignoring its spell stealing ability, Having two landwalk abilities on a commander can be scary. With a nice 5 power, I imagine it’s a real threat especially since blue and black are fairly popular colors. Unlike Dralnu, I don’t really have a good reason for why this card isn’t played. It’s all around fairly good, and doesn’t have a drawback to it. Theros block gave some love to Krakens, making it even better. At the time of writing, I’m thinking about building this myself!

Thromok the Insatiable

Moving away from Dimir, Thromok takes less of a spell-slinger approach and goes for straight aggressive. The downfall to this is that there’s creatures that just do the job better. There are better Gruul commanders, better tri-colored decks that play more aggressively; Thromok just gets the short end of the stick. What he does will is being a fun gimmick. The power level Thromok can bring on its own is impressive, but it just doesn’t do anything else. Samut, Voice of Dissent came out recently, and doubles as a toolkit and a swinger. Samut can come in for damage like Thromok, but has three keywords on top, access to another color, and lock down. It’s hard to pick Thromok when there’s better cards out there, but that doesn’t stop Thromok from at least being worth a shot.

Nin, the Pain Artist

A two drop in UR that draws you X cards is pretty good at face value, but somewhere along the line Nin got lost and forgotten. I usually don’t like to speak about topics I’m unsure of because I don’t want to give false information, but I’d like to take a stab at it from what I’d think my opponent is thinking if I was sitting across from Nin. Any poke can take out Nin, so it needs to be protected. Wizard tribal has received an upgrade, so cards that would normally be in Kess or Inalla are more predictable, meaning it’ll be harder to keep combos out. Finally, the damage from the ability means one of two things: either a weak creature is going to die, meaning you can’t use it until another is out, or something big already has to be on the field. I understand that this ability can be used as removal, but I don’t feel that that is the biggest threat that Nin can bring; digging with it is more likely to be beneficial.

Varolz

When someone decides to build a commander deck, one of the things they do is try and find a commander to work around. I’ve heard people call these Legendary Creatures ‘build-around-me’s, and I feel like that’s a fair title for some. If you want to build Sen Triplets, you put in cards to help you choose hands and cast cards from them. Varolz is not a build-around-me commander. I want to place this as the number one reason why Varolz isn’t played. Golgari has some flavorful commanders like Gitrog for land destruction, Meren for reanimation, and Skullbriar for aggro. To play these commanders, you build around them, it’s part of the fun and the challenge. On the flip side of the coin, Varolz is the kind of commander who just acts as a cool card. It adds an ability to use on your aggressive creatures, or to recycle the ones in the graveyard. If you want to build an aggressively built deck, Varolz can just act as a commander to tack onto the deck. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just what makes him picked less.

This has been part one of two, the next one will come out next week and will feature one more 2-colored commander before shifting into 3-colored. Hopefully I get a chance to see some of these commanders played, or maybe hear about someone else’s experience using them (or playing against them!).