The colorless spells and lands are always where I end up looking when I want to try and guess what the next staple of the Commander format. Will we find a diamond in the rough or is it all chaff? (Hint: there are some really sweet cards coming in for Commander players.) Let's find out!

There are only two new artifacts in this set, and one will see a lot more play than the other. However, they are both interesting design spaces that I hope we see more of down the line.

Sentinel Tower

Did you ever wonder why you bother gaining the life with Aetherflux Reservoir if you're just going to burn people out with damage from it? Well, Wizards of the Coast has your back with this tower, now you can just burn people out with your triggers, or even double up on your burn with burn spells. I guess what I'm saying is, let's just burn everything down and see what happens.

Victory Chimes

A new three converted mana cost artifact that taps for colorless. Not special in its own right, but with these chimes, we can now add colorless mana to anybody's mana pool! If only mana burn were around, and then I could see this card getting played. As is, EDH already has enough mana rocks at this price point that are just better than it. There are a few corner case decks that this might be good in, like actual group hug decks, but outside of those, this isn't going to be in many decks.

The rest of the artifacts are reprints. However, there are two that I'm excited about if only because they were in desperate need of printing.

Mind's Eye

Finally, Mind's Eye sees a reprint and Boros players on a budget rejoice at the prospect of getting card draw for the cheap! There is something really special about just drawing a card each upkeep, even if you have to pay for it yourself, that can't quite be described outside of “really nice.”

Mycosynth Lattice

If you're a combo player or play with one often enough, chances are you've heard about this card. It works in some very specific decks and got really expensive because of those very specific decks. Now with this reprint, people might actually want to build really janky brews that require everything to be artifacts! As a note, this pairs really well with Darksteel Forge and Padeem, Consul of Innovation.

Up next are probably the best thing to happen to us multiplayer only gamers out there, the crowd lands as Gavin Verhey calls them. It's a better name than I had come up with, so I'm going to use them until a better consensus comes around.

Since they are a full cycle of allied colored lands, there isn't much of a reason to review them each individually.

Pretty fantastic, aren't they? They are certainly better than the check lands that we've come to see as a staple. In our format, they will either enter the battlefield untapped, or they come down so late in the game that you don't care that they do come into play tapped. My only complaint? The allied colors have been getting so much love lately with the duals, from the battle lands to the bicycle lands, and now the enemy colors are being left out yet again!

There you have it, colorless and lands reviewed, and I for one am excited to crack a few packs of Battlebond myself and see what kind of shenanigans I can get into.