The MimeoplasmThe Mimeoplasm | Art by Svetlin Velinov

Let me take you back to a simpler time.

The year was 2011. The month was June. The Magic landscape was far different than what it is today: No Universes Beyond, no Secret Lair, no product overload.

And no Commander. At least not as we know it today.

Commander 2011 changed all that. As the original line of Commander preconstructed decks, these not only defined what 100-card decks should look like—they helped us fall in love with the format to begin with. So today, I'd like to answer a simple question: Were these the best Commander precons Wizards ever produced?

Setting the Stage

In 2011, Standard Magic was the standard.

Sure, there were other formats: Modern was the new kid on the block, having just been released as a non-sanctioned online format in May of 2011, with a Pro Tour following swiftly in August. Draft was in a decent place, coming off the heels of Rise of the Eldrazi, which remains a favorite among many longtime players. Legacy and Vintage were fairly similar to what they are now, which is kind of the point of Legacy and Vintage.

But Standard? Standard was the purest form of Magic for many players (dare I say most players?). There'd been some issues the prior year with a little old guy named Jace, the Mind SculptorJace, the Mind Sculptor, but by June, Standard was fairly healthy. In fact, even I, a gleeful Standard hater, was playing it. My deck was a homebrew white-blue control deck that cast Squadron HawkSquadron Hawk to clear its deck of the other three copies of Hawk, then Mass PolymorphMass Polymorphed it to cheat out the lone creature remaining in the deck: Blightsteel ColossusBlightsteel Colossus. Even then, I was all about the gimmicks.

Anywho, you'll notice a commonality amongst those formats: They were all single player. In fact, I'd argue multiplayer Magic was viewed as the less pure version of the game at the time. People were building their decks to defeat one opponent—not several.

Of course, it's not like Wizards wasn't trying to launch multiplayer. In 2009, they tried Planechase. In 2010, they tried Archenemy. Both had their fans, but neither hit the mark, as evidenced by their third new attempt. It wasn't until 2011's Commander product that they truly scored a hit. A massive hit.

The Decks

They gave us five—count 'em—five decks to choose from. And they were...

1. Heavenly Inferno: Mardu (White, Black, and Red)
2. Mirror Mastery: Temur (Blue, red, and Green)
3. Counterpunch: Abzan (White, Black, and Green)
4. Political Puppets: Jeskai (White, Blue, and Red)
5. Devour for Power: Sultai (Blue, Black, and Green)

This was so long ago that those three-color combination names didn't even exist. People were still calling Sultai "BUG" and Temur "RUG." Such innocent times. Yet still, these triple-colored wedges remained as sweet then as they are now, mostly because we'd barely seen them. A Standard set built around them wouldn't appear for another three years with Khans of Tarkir. Until this product, they'd gotten pretty much no shine.

And what shine they got! In fact, I'd argue that since these decks were Magic's first foray into wedge colors since a cycle of one-off rares in Apocalypse, these decks were the most formative contributions to these color identities.

Why does that matter? Because they're super popular. To illustrate, I totaled the decks for all our three-color combos below. (Granted, this is an imperfect measure since these numbers will be old as soon as this article publishes. Yet still, I think it's an informative exercise.)

The Clans (Or Wedges)

• Abzan (White, Black, and Green): 224,158
• Jeskai (White, Blue, and Red): 303,577
• Sultai (Blue, Black, and Green): 313,918
• Mardu (White, Black, and Red): 359,384
• Temur (Blue, Red, and Green): 298,800
  • Total: 1,499,837

Now that's a lot of decks! Compare those figures to their ally-based counterparts...

The Shards (Not to be Confused with Sharts)

• Esper (White, Blue, and Black): 390,305
• Grixis (Blue, Black, and Red): 410,628
• Jund (Black, Red, and Green): 257,819
• Naya (White, Red, and Green): 374,852
• Bant (White, Blue, and Green): 289,358
  • Total: 1,722,962

As you can see, 1.7 million is more than 1.5. And honestly, I was surprised to see this written out; I'd always assumed the Clans were more popular than the Shards. But we've got two confounding factors:

1. The Shards have some outliers that skew the numbers. Grixis has five commanders in the Top 100, with a steep drop-off from there. Similarly, Esper claims the massively popular Y'shtola, Night's BlessedY'shtola, Night's Blessed, which might be the site's #1 commander before the year's out. Yet there's an almost 20,000 deck decline between Y'shtola and the color identity's next biggest commander, Hashaton, Scarab's FistHashaton, Scarab's Fist. This makes me think the Shards' gaudy performance is more related to some overachievers than consistent quality.
2. The Shards have been doing it for longer. The first Shard-aligned legends appeared in literal Legends in 1994. The first Wedge-aligned legends didn't appear until these decks 17 years later. In other words, the Shards had a significant head start.

Although I'll grant that the raw numbers don't back it up, I'd argue that the Clans are more beloved in our format than the Shards—and that's in large part due to their establishment in Commander 2011.

The Commanders

Not only did these decks set the foundation for what preconstructed decks would look like—they gave us some sweet creatures to lead them.

In addition to reprints of the full cycle of Planar Chaos wedge dragons, each deck gave us two brand-new commanders to choose from. That's the standard for decks now, but back then, it had never been done before. See, up to that point, most preconstructed decks (such as Duel Decks: Knights vs. Dragons, released two months prior to these) were composed of reprints. Granted, Commander 2011 still has many of those, but it's headlined by its original printings—many of which are still wildly popular today.

Three of the set's 15 new commanders have five figures' worth of decks, and all but two have four figures. Furthermore, the highs are super high: Animar, Soul of ElementsAnimar, Soul of Elements remains a mainstay of our format with 22,337 decks; that makes him the third most popular Temur commander and #39 overall. And then there's Kaalia of the VastKaalia of the Vast, who leads a whopping 37,180 decks. That's good for the second-most-popular Mardu commander and #6 overall.

Reminder: This set is old. Like, the year is in the title. There are players playing the game now who are probably younger than these cards, yet still, these commanders are hanging with all the new precon Commander decks we've gotten since then, pretty much all of which have been power-crept. It's a testament to their designs, and a reminder that some commanders never go out of style.

Speaking of which, I'd like to draw your attention to a particular pet commander of mine:

Being college freshmen, my friends and I only had the budget for one of these preconstructed decks apiece. My selection was Devour for Power, headlined by The MimeoplasmThe Mimeoplasm. I don't recall exactly why I opted for this deck—I confess to being tempted by the aforementioned Kaalia, yet we all tried to select something different, and I think my pal Jeremy had already taken that one. Since these color identities were so underutilized at the time, I didn't even know how much I loved Sultai yet. In fact, now that I think on it, this deck must've been a formative contributor to my love of blue, black, and green.

At any rate, I still have this deck today. I liquidated it and reformed it a couple times since then, but 'Plasm remains as powerful as it was back in 2011, if not more so. That was the genius of these commanders—the best of them are open-ended enough that they can grow with the game, no matter where it goes. For instance, my Mimeoplasm deck has access to cards it never saw back in 2011, such as Archon of CrueltyArchon of Cruelty from 2021's Modern Horizons 2 and Yargle and MultaniYargle and Multani from 2023's March of the Machine. Imagine casting 'Plasm as a copy of Archon with 18 +1/+1 counters. You get the idea.

And the hits keep coming! Because Hit-MonkeyHit-Monkey from the upcoming Marvel Super Heroes set is another fantastic addition. This is what makes Mimeoplasm, and most of the Commander 2011 commanders, have such longevity in our format.

The aforementioned Kaalia of the VastKaalia of the Vast is another great example. She's remained as popular as ever because each set brings excellent new Angels, Demons, and Dragons to play with. If she'd focused on rarer creature types, such as, I don't know, Kithkin, Rats, and Minotaurs, she wouldn't have that longtime appeal. But those iconic, open-ended kindred synergies have kept her in business: The business of beating up one's opponents.

The Themes

We've already covered the formative influence on these three-color pairs, but it's worth another look. These decks established that Mardu is aggression, Sultai is graveyard value, Abzan is counters and tokens, and Temur is creature-centric. Those themes remain true to this day.

The lone outlier was Jeskai. These days, the default theme is prowess or spellslinger. But back then, it was...re-gift lousy gifts to your opponents?

Yes, this was the theme of the Political Puppets pre-constructed deck, headlined by one of the weirder commanders ever printed: Zedruu the GreatheartedZedruu the Greathearted. While the precon itself didn't come with bad cards to give away (not exactly a tantalizing sales pitch for a product), that has become a go-to theme for Zedruu.

Aside from Devour for Power, this was the only other Commander 2011 deck I purchased (wish I'd gotten them all, but I digress). I got it while visiting the official Over/Under Consiglieres, a.k.a. Jason and Shane, a.k.a. my college chums who were, like me, off on summer break.

We went on a shopping spree in Jason's native state of Delaware, since they don't believe in things like sales tax, and I stumbled upon a Political Puppets deck...in Japanese! For $60!

This was around July, so even just a month after release, these decks were hot items, and getting price-gouged as a result. According to my research, the original MSRP was $29.95.

I know. Can you believe that? Insert the usual caveats about inflation, but if you can find a Commander precon for 30 bucks these days, it's only because the store can't get rid of it (I'm looking at you, Living Energy).

So I purchased my double-the-market-value, Japanese Political Puppets deck. And though I needed to look up every single card except the basic lands, it was a purchase worth all 6,000 pennies. This deck, along with its four companions, were just that fun.

A Lasting Legacy

There's one final point I'd like to make, and it's about the set code, of all things. Each set has an official three-letter abbreviation, and for Commander 2011, it was CMD.

"Why do you care about that, Kyle?" you must be asking yourself. "Are you about to go off on a tangent?"

Why yes, I am. But I promise it has a point. See, when they released the late-and-not-so-great Through the Omenpaths set, the set code was OM1. And the original Modern Horizons set? MH1.

With those sets, they knew, even prior to release, that there'd be more. Yet for Commander 2011, it's not like they called it CM1. In other words, Wizards had no idea how popular these decks—let alone the Commander format itself—would become. It's now not only Magic's most popular format, but also its most influential. And I'd argue that influence began with these decks.

Back to my earlier point: In 2011, Standard Magic was the standard. Most cards were designed for one-on-one competitive play. Compare that to today, when most cards, no matter the format or style of release, are designed for multiplayer casual settings. Even the sheer number of legendary creatures in each set (although partially a byproduct of Universes Beyond) is another telltale giveaway.

Take the aforementioned Modern Horizons as another example. The first two Horizons sets, released in 2019 and 2021, respectively, were distributed only through booster packs. The third installment, released in 2024, added four 100-card Commander decks.

That's right. A product designed for one of the most competitive 1v1 formats out there still had a nod to multiplayer casuals. And it came in the form of those 100-card preconstructed decks—which brings our article full circle.

So are the 2011 Commander precons the best ever? Absolutely. Set after set, they'll keep trying to design precon decks as long-lasting, influential, and sheer fun as these ones. They'll try. But they'll never quite get there again.