Summary
Every majorMagic: The Gatheringset comes with a whole slew of Commander decks, preconstructed 100-card decks filled with a bunch of cool new cards and popular reprints to jazz up your collections and inspire you to experiment and build new decks.
That said, some of these preconstructed decks are better than others. In a set like Murders at Karlov Manor, where four new decks have entered the crime scene and each one is under intense scrutiny. We’re gonna shake them down and get to the bottom of this investigation, with the best deck on top.
4Blame Game
Nelly Borca, Impulsive Accuser and Feather, Radiant Arbiter
First on the case is the Blame Game deck,chock filled with all sorts of goad mechanics, plenty of enchantments, and all sorts of combat tricks to slip into your sleeves. The goal of this deck is to keep your opponents fighting each other so you have all the space you need to develop your board the way you need.
Nelly Borca, Impulsive Accuser is the main commander in this deck. She highlights both the goad mechanic and the new suspect one, which gives the suspected creature menace and makes it so it can no longer block. Anytime one or more creatures an opponent controls deals damage to another one of your opponents, both you and the attacking player draw a card.
The card advantage is nice, especially since red and white are traditionally not great at landing the long game in Commander matches. There are some fantastic cards in this deck despite being a bit lower than others on the power scale. The red sorcery Prisoner’s Dilemma is just a fun time with your opponents. Watching them devolve into chaos over one card is a blast. The other breakout card from the deck has been Trouble in Pairs, which is sort of like white’s Rhystic Study, letting you draw cards when your opponents do things.
3Revenant Recon
Mirko, Obsessive Theorist and Marvo, Deep Operative
A deck devoted to graveyard shenanigans and surveiling to ensure you get the best draws, the Revenant Recon deck doesn’t care if your opponents blow up your creatures, there’s always another way to get them back. Filling out the deck is a healthy amount of control and draw spells, giving you tons of access to your deck so you always have just what you need.
The legendary creature in charge of this deck is Mirko, Obsessive Theorist. They’re a Vampire Detective, an interesting combination of types, and encourage you to surveil as much as possible. Every time you do, Mirko gets a +1/+1 counter, constantly letting you increase their power turn after turn. Then, at the start of your end step, you get to bring back a creature from your graveyard back to the battlefield, so long as its power is less than Mirko’s. Sure, it comes back with a finality counter, but it is still a very strong effect.
Rounding out the rest of the deck are a ton of great Dimir cards, like Rise of the Dark Realms and Sphinx of the Second Sun, both of which are cards that have drifted up in price over the years, desperately needing a reprint.
2Deadly Disguise
Kaust, Eyes of the Glade and Duskana, the Rage Mother
There have been a few Commander decks over the years that have messed with how you play the game, but it is pretty rare to find one quite like Deadly Disguise. This deck is built around the new disguise mechanic, which has you paying three mana to place a creature face down on the battlefield as a 2/2 creature with ward 2. you’re able to then turn it face up, usually with an effect, for its disguise cost.There’s also plenty of morph and manifest effects in this deck, since they function very similarly to disguise.
Kaust, Eyes of the Glade is the head legendary creature for this deck, and they put all those face down creatures to good use. Anytime a creature of yours deals combat damage this turn, if it was turned face up this turn, you get to draw a card. You can then tap them to take a face-down attacking creature and turn it face-up, completely skipping any cost that they might require.
The Deadly Disguise gives you a completely different way to play Magic, something that few decks can claim to be able to do. You also get a bunch of pretty darn good cards to experiment with, including the incredibly powerful Jeska’s Will, which is a great way to ramp up in mana for a turn. There’s also a Seedborn Muse floating around in this deck, which helps you be prepared for practically anything on your opponent’s turn by untapping all your permanent each turn.
1Deep Clue Sea
Morska, Undersea Sleuth and Sophia, Dogged Detective
Easily the best deck among the four to be released in Murders at Karlov Manor is the Deep Clue Sea Commander deck. This green, white, and blue deck is just loaded with all the best cards you may find. There’s a hard token strategy with this preconstructed deck, with an emphasis on Clue tokens,but also just lots of ways to draw cardsand accrue incremental value throughout the game.
The main commander in this deck is Morska, Undersea Sleuth, great legendary creature that comes with all sorts of abilities. First up, just having them out gives you no maximum hand size, giving you free rein to draw as many cards as you like. To help make use of this effect, Morska makes you a Clue token at the start of your turn. Then, anytime you draw a second card in a turn, Morska gets two +1/+1 counters, constantly making her larger and more of a threat to your opponents.
Since you’re drawing tons of cards, you might as well get some added bonuses from them. Alandra, Sky Dreamer is a very strong and hard to find creature that makes a 2/2 Drake token when you draw your second card each turn, flooding the board quickly. The deck also comes loaded with a Farewell, one of the most efficient mass removal spells in the game, letting you pick and choose what type of card you want to keep in play and what you want to exile forever.
