The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth Spoilers — May 30 | Gandalf the White, Aragorn, the Uniter, Captain N’gathrod is a very exciting commander to say the least. 3/6 for five mana is acceptable, but as usual, the most interesting part is in the text box. Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate Spoilers — May 19 | A Myriad of Myriad and Treasures! , If you take out these cards or too many other Party members, you have to be sure to replace them with other Party members. However, you want to be sure that the cards you replace them with are better than these ones.

The second one rewards you for having a full party. At the beginning of your combat, all your creatures get a +1/+1 counter and deathtouch until end of turn. You will probably want to look into the important parts of the Party section of this article to make sure you have enough Party members to reliably be able to trigger Nalia’s ability. Then, once you do, consider adding some of these +1/+1 counters payoffs to supplement that strategy:Powerful and varied synergies between the cards. A decent number of good tutors. Good mana curve. Has an efficient and consistent way to win on turns 10-12 (level 7) or 7-9 (level 8). Some social rules — like no mass land destruction, no consistent combo wins — still exist. None of these cards are necessarily bad; they’re all on theme, they all do a thing. It’s just that the thing they do can be a little underwhelming ( Malakir Blood-Priest, Mage’s Attendant), or hard to fully control ( High Priest of Penance), or are just pure removal magnets who will almost never get to really do their thing ( Magus of the Balance, Pontiff of Blight). The Changelings are the pieces I’m actually most hesitant to cut, as they fill any gaps in your party no matter what, but I still think we can do a little better. However, N’ghathrod isn’t just a straightforward commander, as it also cares about milling. Thankfully, there are already some cards that fit perfectly in that shell, such as Umbris, Fear Manifest. One problem with recurring themes in Commander precons is that they might feel the same, as the ones that came before. Wizards could easily go with classic Dragon tribal themes, or even with something spell based, as this is the Izzet color combination (but we already saw that with Niv-Mizzet Parun). Instead, they decided to go for something fresh, by focusing on both Dragon tribal and the goad mechanic.

Last thing before we get to the upgrade recommendations, I found five themes to focus my upgrades on. They all have their own appeal, but I probably didn’t discover every possible upgrade strategy. If you come up with something that I missed, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. If all of that isn’t enough, you also get another payoff for milling. At the beginning of the end step you can choose an opponent’s artifact or creature that was milled this turn, and get it in play yourself – for free! That’s certainly a powerful effect.

More in this Series

The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth Spoilers — May 31 | Doors of Durin, Fall of Gil-galad,

You have to make sure you have an appropriate balance of Wizards, Warriors, Clerics, and Rogues, which is difficult. However, Changelings help fill in some of the missing Party member gaps. Keeping this all in mind, the Party payoffs are pretty strong. Here are the specific ones that don’t come in the precon: Lost Caverns of Ixalan Spoilers — November 2 | Remaining Rares, Full Jurassic World and Commander Reprints, Cuts: High Priest of Penance; Malakir Blood-Priest; Mage’s Attendant; Corpse Augur; Irregular Cohort; Pontiff of Blight; Valiant Changeling; Firja’s Retribution; Magus of the Balance; 1 (one) Plains. Lastly, the deathtouch is okay. It'll be a good incentive for our creatures to get through, and I look forward to pairing them with Archetype of Courage to ensure they survive combat. Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Spoilers — February 4 | Exile Boardwipe, Indestructible Samurai, Legendary Equipment,The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth Spoilers — June 6 | Legendary Kraken, Orzhov Spirit Commander, There are a bunch of cards that give +1/+1 counters to your team in this set. Feel free to include whichever ones you feel you have room for, but these are the ones that I felt like were most useful:

Lost Caverns of Ixalan Spoilers — October 26 | Colorless Artifacts, and Legendary Explore Pridemate, Adds: Nullpriest of Oblivion; Shaile, Dean of Radiance; Liliana, Heretical Healer; Taborax, Hope’s Demise; Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose; Dogged Detective; Hidden Dragonslayer; Lae’zel, Vlaakith’s Champion; Resplendent Marshal; Emeria’s Call. Lost Caverns of Ixalan Spoilers — October 24 | Quintorius Planeswalker, New Cascade and Token Tripling!,

Other than that, each individual section will go over a couple of cards that you will want to remove because they are not specifically relevant to that exact strategy. Hopefully there will be a couple more cards you can take out in those sections to help make room for all of the new recommendations you’ll want to add. 5 Ways to Upgrade Party Time On top of that, she gives us the ability to look at the top card of our library and the chance to cast creatures off the top if they happen to be one of the party types. I'll be honest, Nalia doesn't seem that impressive. We could work with a counters theme since that's what she gives out, but she only does so when we have the four party members. Keep in mind that she's also a Rogue, so it'll be interesting to see if we'll even need too many additional Rogues to begin with. Its time to party (without smiling =