Trade Guide for MTG Foundations Commander Decks

Foundations Commander Decks | Image Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Foundations Commander

Friendly greetings and welcome back to Foundations. The Cardsphere Team is pleased to announce Foundations Commander preconstructed decks are available to trade.

Even though the core set released in 2024, five new preconstructed decks fall under the Foundations umbrella as a starting point for new players. Although these mono-color decks are designed as an entry point, they are great products for veteran players too.

I'm John Sherwood, Cardsphere's unofficial new set correspondent, and today I'm a kid in a candy store with all the goodies in these precons. We get new art and fantastic reprints at a safe-for-wallet price point.

I'm not a financial advisor, but the reprint value is pretty good for an introductory product. The decks themselves are perfect loaners, shells to upgrade, or bundled together for a self-contained game night. Read on, fellow Cardsphere user, as I unwrap some simple pleasures and scrumptious trade stock.

Creatures and combat are the common flavors through all of these decks; each with a distinct approach.

• White is a devoted nontoken typal list
• Blue builds a force of increasingly large artifact attackers
• Black leverages its own graveyard to field a horde of Zombies
• Red rains fire from above with Dragons.
• Green's stompy menagerie overruns the opposition

We're playing fair and balanced Magic, ideal for kitchen tables and casual meetups at the local game store.

Calling All Angels

Stave off defeat by gaining life, and smite your enemies with righteous fury.

Borderless Foil Face Commander

The new illustration of Giada, Font of Hope feels like a natural progression of her character arc from exploited girl in Streets of New Capenna, to ascendant hero in March of the Machine.

All-star artist Johannes Voss perfectly portrays Giada as a fully realized figure of divinity, while remaining true to her home plane's urban motifs.

Since first printing, Giada quickly ascended to EDHREC's most popular Angel commander. Currently clearing over 35k decks on EDHREC, Giada is a best-in-class commander with no close second for her type.

She's an obvious choice to lead a typal list for new players. With a low casting cost, two keywords, a snowballing triggered ability, and mana production, Giada does everything a commander deck needs except for drawing cards.

Deck Spotlight

More than any other color, white needs to control the tempo of a commander game. Calling All Angels does this in two ways. First, it's positioned to develop a threatening board state with three and four drop Angels.

Second, it's curving out with a mix of traditional bombs, board wipes, and graveyard recursion. Combined with the deck's life gain, this deck will win through inevitable attrition if it can control the pace.

Inspiring Overseer and Firemane Commando make an ideal pair to transition from early to mid-game. A turn five play like Lyra Dawnbringer or Norn's Choirmaster should gradually build toward victory.

If the game takes a turn for the worse, unleash the a wrath like Day of Judgment, then rebuild with Reya Dawnbringer and other graveyard recursion.

Reprint Highlights

Speaking of Reya, she's part of the deck's reprint value. The current lowest index for any version of Reya Dawnbringer is $3.30. Any reprint tends to cause prices to dip, but hold on to her.

Good Angels have a strong tendency to accrue value. Calling All Angels also has Archangel of Tithes, Emeria Shepherd, and Starnheim Aspirant, all of which tend to fetch prices above $3.

For more generic staples, the deck includes Herald's Horn, Patchwork Banner and Vanquisher's Banner. The market for each of these cards is under constant demand from the Commander community's insatiable appetite for typal decks.

Keen Engineering

No need for a whet stone, this deck is already sharp. Keen Engineering is my personal favorite from the bunch, and the only one I'm adding to my personal collection.

Borderless Face Commander

Every Magic illustration by Bryan Sola fascinates me with his emphasis on lighting. Sola dazzles my eyes yet again with this new portrait of Sai, Master Thopterist. The soft glow from the thopter in Sai's hand, and the luminescent aether overhead suggest continuity between nature's latent potential and the harnessed power of artifice.

Keen Engineering derives a lot of its potency from Sai's triggered ability, creating a Thopter for every artifact you cast. With 43 nonland artifacts in the 99, the commander will produce plenty of tokens. Those Thopter tokens are a catalyst for mechanized mayhem. As a sacrifice outlet, Sai can also dabble in artifact-graveyard debauchery.

Deck Spotlight

WotC loaded this deck with artifact heaters like affinity and Juggernauts. There's classics like Myr Battlesphere and newer toys like Blastoise Kappa Cannoneer

The main gameplan is to cast increasingly large artifact creatures, simultaneously going wide with 1/1 fliers. Broodstar, Darksteel Juggernaut and Master of Etherium are all artifact warlords, that will get huge and pressure opponents' life totals.

Master of Etherium also serves as an anthem along with Chief of the Foundry and Forsaken Monument, all force multipliers for Thopters.

Graaz, Unstoppable Juggernaut is one of my favorite finishers for this list. Graaz hits the field like one of green's overrun effects, easily pumping a small team in to a lethal assault force. Since the Thopters have flying, giving them five power will often establish aerial superiority.

As a backup plan, Nettlecyst and Adaptive Omnitool can turn Sai into a commander damage threat.

Reprint Highlights

Those last two cards also get a nod for being good reprints. Adaptive Omnitool was new last year in Aetherdrift Commander, and this is the first reprint.

It boasts a high inclusion rate in the top Equipment commanders on EDHREC, so it's likely to appreciate. Meanwhile, Nettlecyst is more versatile, supporting both artifact and enchantment strategies.

Three other reprints stand out from Keen Engineering: Forsaken Monument, Misleading Signpost, and Scrawling Crawler.

Forsaken in name only, this monument is a powerhouse in any deck that intentionally spends a lot of colorless mana, or incidentally fields a lot of colorless creatures.

Five mana is a great rate for a card with three relevant abilities, and the index price for Forsaken Monument currently starts at $5.

Misleading Signpost is one of the most valuable reprints in the Foundations precons. It debuted in Wilds of Eldraine Commander and steadily climbed in price ever since. I bought mine for $5.11 in February of last year, and right now it's $13.28.

One of those cards no one plays with good intentions, Scrawling Crawler is a hug that can turn into a choke hold. It's also a card worth listing on Cardsphere if you're not playing with it.

There's eleven other versions of this card, all in Foundations proper, and currently none of them index for less than $7.

Wretched Ranks

Zombies shamble across the battlefield at the behest of their necromantic musical maven. Mono-black is digging up its graveyard roots with one of Magic's first mechanically synergistic creature types.

Borderless Face Commander

Miguel Mercado shows off his graphic novel panache with an interpretation of Ghoulcaller Gisa that stares you down like the leading ladies from his comic books.

While the character is anything but normal, the card is a very normal black creature. Her ability reads like a template for black draft filler: pay cost, sacrifice something, get more things.

With such a middling design, ranking middle-of-the-road is to be expected. EDHREC lists Gisa at #617, at the head(stone) of 4,600 decks.

Deck Spotlight

Your _____ [fill in the blank] is a resource. Black can fill in that blank with more words than any other color. No other color uses non-mana resources the way black does, and this deck leverages a lot of them to make Zombie tokens, draw cards, and return creatures from the graveyard.

Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet sacrifices a creature to get bigger. Cemetery Reaper exiles a creature card from your graveyard to make a Zombie. Cryptbreaker discards a card to make a Zombie, and it can tap Zombies to draw a card.

If a card is on the battlefield, in your library, hand, or graveyard, this deck can find a way to use it. As long as your life total is more than 1, this deck can leverage life for other benefits.

Of all the Foundations precons, this one is the most flexible and resilient. It's also one Phyrexian Altar short of winning with graveyard loops.

Reprint Highlights

Wretched Ranks contains some of the sought-after bones for the Aristocrats theme. From the command zone to the 99, its popular sacrifice outlets, death triggers, and reanimator effects boost the total reprint value.

In terms of index price, Ghoulcaller Gisa is the most valuable reprint between the five face commanders in this release. Her other printings range from $3 and up, whereas the other commanders have printings below $2.

The Magic community bent the knee to Ayara, First of Locthwain like one of her chivalrous suitors. Her popularity and secondary market prices continue to hold strong seven years after Throne of Eldraine.

Somehow that grotesque image by Svetlin Velinov hasn't stopped the community from rallying to buy copies for their sinister machinations. Even in-game, Carrion Feeder is still nightmare food because an unrestricted free sacrifice is ripe for exploitation. If you're not going to abuse Carrion Feeder yourself, then list it on Cardsphere, where the going rate starts above $3.

Gravecrawler is a cornerstone card of Zombie decks and fodder for combo kills. I love a card that can be mutually enjoyed by filthy casuals and degenerate spikes. Gravecrawler is democratic that way.

Unfortunately I have to throw a little shade on Wretched Ranks for a reprint omission. All of the other Foundations precons include War Room, which goes for $4 0r more on Cardsphere at the moment.

I have no idea why this inconsistency exists, but it's something to consider if you're buying these decks for parts or resale value.

Reign of Dragons

Rain of Dragons is more like it. If your opponents let you keep Lathliss, Dragon Queen,  on the battlefied, then they'll be in for devastating downpour.

In Brackets 2 & 3, board presence and keywords win Commander games. This precon leans hard into maximizing power on board, and dominating combat with flyers.

Borderless Face Commander

Zoltan Boros explores a side of Lathliss we've never seen before, rising into the sky with her brood. She appears with her offspring, completely in her element; unchallenged and unconcerned with the ground far below.

If you're building a mono-red Dragon deck, then there's a deep bench of potential commanders. Lathliss is the natural choice for players who just want to see as many winged terrors on the battlefield as possible.

Unlike the maximum easy mode of Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm, Lathliss demands respect through sheer force. She has no time for the trappings of a multicolor banquet; she's hatching more dragons and feasting on fresh meat.

Deck Spotlight

The rest of the list features a lineup of creatures that serve their queen's direct methods. Reduce the cost of your dragons with Dragonlord's Servant and Dragonspeaker Shaman.

Set up for more Dragon token production, with Dragonmaster Outcast and Minion of the Mighty.

A couple of the deck's removal pieces are on theme too. Breath Weapon is useful for clearing clutter off the board, and Dragon Tempest and Spit Flame are reusable as dragon's natural powers should be.

Support and removal are nutritious for a deck, but Dragons don't like to eat vegetables. The eighteen dragons in the 99 are a ravenous bunch of apex predators from planes across the multiverse.

Shivan Devastator from Dominaria, Scourge of Valkas from Shandalar, Terror of Mount Velus from Theros. All of them ready to answer a matriarch's call to feed.

Reprint Highlights

Most of the red deck's reprint value is in the Dragons themselves. Utvara Hellkite, Goldlust Triad, and Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest are the best examples.

Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest offers card advantage and burn damage on flying 5/5. It's popular in Dragon decks, because Dragons, but it's also good in play-from-exile decks, and a potent commander. At the intersection of those interests, demand pulls the price up.

Originally from Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander, Goldlust Triad is due for its first reprint. In 1-vs-1 formats, this card is just a flyer with Sticky Fingers. Myriad pushes does a lot of heavy lifting in commander.

Timmies and Tammies have been living the Utvara Hellkite dream since 2012. No matter how many times WotC reprints this card, it's price won't stay down. "Whenever a Dragon you control attacks..." Which Dragon? Any and all of your Dragons. That trigger spells doom if this thing doesn't eat a Doom Blade.

Tramplesaurus Rex

Big is a keyword, don't let its absence from actual the rules text convince you otherwise. This deck serves the true believers in keyword big.

Borderless Face Commander

Broken trees and scattering pterosaurs hint at the stature of Ixalan's mono-green monstrosity. Somehow Raph Lomotan incorporates the perspective necessary to convey Ghalta is more than a dinosaur. She is a titan.

Few creatures rival Ghalta, Primal Hunger for power, toughness and mana cost. However, Ghalta has built in cost reduction. Paying the full twelve mana to cast her is highly unlikely. Simply by playing the deck, casting this huge threat becomes a matter of, "at your convenience."

Deck Spotlight

Developing and midgame stages for this deck are really simple: ramp, cast big creatures, attack.

The ramp package is mostly mana dorks, like Elvish Mystic and Paradise Druid. Creature-based mana acceleration dies to removal, but the power of those creatures counts toward Ghalta's cost reduction. I think the risk is worth the extra banefit.

The big creatures range from vanilla beaters like Gigantosaurus to value engines like Elder Gargaroth. With very little effort, deck should field enough mana production and power to cast Ghalta multiple turns ahead of curve.

At that point, the rest of the game is threat evaluation. Who do you attack first? Which blockers do you need to remove, and which ones can you smash into? Save your bite spells like Ram Through for anything with deathtouch, and let keyword big do the rest.

Reprint Highlights

The total reprint value for Tramplesaurus Rex spread over several cards. There's a bunch in the $2 - $4 range, and a few are even higher.

If I was going to cut any cards from this deck, BoP would be first. Birds of Paradise is one of the best one drops ever, but its zero power makes it less effective for Ghalta specifically. Use its index value to fill some of the deck's other gaps.

I'm not sure why Witch's Clinic is in this specific deck. Considering its three previous editions run $13 or more at time of writing, I'm grateful WotC gave it another run. I just don't know why it should be this deck in particular.

A haste and trample enabler that also spits out +1/+1 counters is a welcome addition to any stompy deck. The cheapest printing of Surrak and Goreclaw is $20, making it the most expensive single in the whole product release.

Happy Trading!

Five new decks, hundreds of reprints, loads of fun and a fair amount of reprint value. Foundations Commander is a worthy successor to the old Starter Commander.

It builds on the best aspects of that product, and delivers a new collection of precons for huge segments of the Magic community.

Tell us in the comments if you're planning on picking up one of these decks. Are you going to part it out? Upgrade it? Keep it sealed in a time capsule?

Join the conversation with our amazing community of traders on Discord. I already went to my local game store and bought my copy of Keen Engineering. If you'll excuse me, I need to goldfish it to get ready for my next game. Until next time, happy trading!