Commander Masters is Magic: the Gathering‘s first Masters series set designed with the Commander format in mind. It’s the second Commander product that can be used in booster draft Limited. MtG players will have a lot to juggle when drafting Commander Masters, such as finding the right legendary creatures to lead their decks and following the built-in draft archetypes. Two-color legends can ledae these decks, but so can a pair of mono-colored creatures.
It can be awkward to align the color identity requirements of Commander with the chaotic unpredictability of booster draft, and a player may end up stuck without a multicolor legendary creature card to lead their draft deck. Fortunately, Commander Masters bends the rules about deck commanders, and included a revised version of the Partner effect for that reason. All mono-colored legends in Commander Masters effectively have the Partner ability, and it’s an improvement on the original Partner effect from Commander 2016 in many ways.
How Partner Works In Commander
The original Partner effect in Commander 2016‘s precon decks allowed MtG players to have two legendary creatures share the role as a deck’s overall commander. In those decks, only creatures with the Partner effect in their text box could be part of a pair, which limited players’ options on combinations of partners. In Commander 2016, for example, there was a five-card cycle of enemy-color legendary creatures with Partner, and the 2022 product Commander Legends introduced many more creatures with Partner, primarily on mono-colored ones. In total, MtG has 62 creatures with the Partner effect, and 40 with “Partner with” effects.
The two partners combine their color identities to form the deck’s overall color identity, such as combining Tymna the Weaver and Kraum, Ludevic’s Opus to form a Commander deck with all colors but green. These two partnered legends both begin the game in the command zone and are cast individually from that zone. The commander tax applies to the two partners separately, and commander damage is also tracked separately. A player must deal the full 21 damage with just one partner or the other to knock out an opposing player; they cannot combine their damage. If a spell or ability references the player’s commander, they can choose either of the partnered legendary creatures to be affected.
This adds a fun new dimension to the Commander format, but it’s also limiting because under normal circumstances, only creatures with Partner can form these duos, and some Partner commanders feel weak or incomplete without the other. All that makes Partnered creatures less popular and less convenient than standalone legendary creatures in constructed games of Commander. However, the Commander Masters set will bend these rules for the sake of draft, and make Partner more powerful and relevant than ever, even if these special rules never spill over to constructed Commander.
How Commander Masters Reinvents the Partner Effect
In the Commander Masters draft set, only the legendary creature The Prismatic Piper actually has the Partner effect printed on it, while all mono-colored legendary creatures are treated as though they also have the Partner effect in addition to their printed effects. This allows for a massive variety of Partner combinations in Commander Masters draft, but players should note that this only applies to creatures, and not to legendary mono-colored Planeswalkers that can be a deck’s commander. One reason for this rules update for Partner is to provide more options for draft players and let them pair up any combination of legendary creatures to lead their deck, without needing to draft a relevant multicolor creature to lead a multicolor deck. This can be immensely rewarding for experienced players, creatively picking two mono-colored legends in unexpected combinations to lead any kind of deck the player can imagine.
The other reason is to provide insurance in case a draft player cannot find a suitable multicolor legend, or if they cannot build the right deck for a multicolor legend they picked early. Some draft archetypes or legendary creatures may be in high demand, and a player may miss out on key cards to make their decks around those multicolor legends. As a substitute, two mono-colored creatures can be paired up to lead those decks, and with the Prismatic Piper being a commonplace card that can be any desired color, it should be easy to make a two-color deck with the right commanders.
WotC clearly understands that blending the strict color requirements and legendary creature requirements of Commander with the unpredictability of draft can make things tough for players, so the revised Partner effect is a suitable backup. Commander Masters has enough mono-colored legends of all colors, and enough copies of The Prismatic Piper, to make it easy to build a two-color deck with the right commanders in charge. Sometimes, a player might draft a three-color deck for a three-color legend but fail to get enough cards of one color, so they can ditch that weak color and use two Partnered legends to lead a deck built from those other two colors, for example.
Recommended Partner Combinations In Commander Masters
Draft players in Commander Masters can pick any combination of mono-colored legends and The Prismatic Piper to lead their draft decks, but some combinations may prove stronger than others. Many of the best combinations will reflect the set’s built-in draft achetypes, which will lead to far more synergy between the two partnered commander and the deck they lead together.
The red-white draft archetype, for example, is based on equipment artifact cards and aggression, so Odric, Master Tactician and Godo, Bandit Warlord may team up to find equipment and give the equipped creature a better chance of surviving combat with Odric controlling the defending player’s blocks. Balan, Wandering Knight, Danitha Capashen, Paragon and Valduk, Keeper of the Flame are all strong contenders too, since they care about equipment, combat, or both.
The black-green draft archetype focuses on creature tokens, creating and sacrificing them to dominate combat or generate value with “aristocrats” effects. In black, Cabal Patriarch, Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder, and Ghoulcaller Gisa are all strong options to make and/or sacrifice tokens, while green contributes Nemata, Grove Guardian, and Oviya Pashiri, Sage Lifecrafter to this archetype. Ideally, at least one of these partnered legends will reliably make creature tokens, and one or both of them can also sacrifice those tokens, allowing them to embody the deck’s entire strategy in just two cards — cards that the player will have convenient access to from the command zone.