Summary
Universes Beyond: Assassin’s Creed brings your favorite characters, items, and more from the Assassin’s Creed universe toMagic: The Gatheringformats, including Modern, Legacy, Vintage, and, most importantly, Commander. It ought to come as no surprise that the large majority of these cards will be useful for Assassin typal decks in particular.
Assassins are a creature type that has needed additional love for quite some time now, and this set might just finally allow Assassin decks to take it to the next level. Featuring Assassins in every color as well as quite a few new legendary Assassins, Universes Beyond: Assassin’s Creed allows you to play Assassins in almost any color pairing you desire.
10The Animus
Become Your Bloodline
This cheap new artifact makes yourlegendary creaturesuseful even from beyond the grave, assuming you have another legendary creature in play. The Animus lets your legendary creatures return from the grave for one last dance.
Seeing as you need another legendary creature in play to take advantage of The Animus, this card will go best in decks that are stacked with a ton of legendary creatures that have powerful activated abilities or triggers. Creatures that work well with this artifact include Griselbrand / Emrakul, the Aeons Torn / and Jodah, the Unifier.
9Sigurd, Jarl Of Ravensthorpe
For Storytellers
Yet another creature type that needs additional love, Warriors will be happy to add Sigurd to their toolkit and might even find him a useful commander in his own right. However, Sigurd is truly at home in a deck stacked with Sagas thanks to his boast ability which allows him to either add or remove a lore counter from a Saga in play.
This ability allows you to retrigger an effect of a Saga, delay a Saga trigger for a more fortuitous turn, or accelerate a Saga’s progression to get value out of it on demand. Notably, you do need to attack with Sigurd to use this ability. Sagas in Sigurd’s colors that work especially well with this effect include Elspeth Conquers Death, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, and There And Back Again.
8Shay Cormac
Knight Rogue Is Basically An Assassin
While he’s not an Assassin, Shay Cormac does sport three other useful creature types for players interested in Humans, Knights, or Rogues. However, he’s probably most useful as a voltron commander counter thanks to his activated ability, which can remove important keywords from opposing permanents.
Cards with hexproof, shroud, indestructible, protection, and ward are notoriously difficult to remove from the battlefield. Shay removes any and all of these annoying keywords for the low cost of one generic mana while also growing into a sizeable threat himself in a deck with a handful of targeted removal.
7Edward Kenway
Assassins On A Boat
Here’s another great addition to any aspiringPirate Commander deckpilots, as well as a potential new Pirate commander in his own right. Creating treasure tokens for every tapped Assassin, Pirate, and Vehicle in your control is a great way to ramp mana for a future turn.
On top of that, additional card advantage through a Vehicle dealing combat damage is just the cherry on top. It’s an especially good feeling when you can defeat your opponents with cards from their own deck, and the flavor of doing so in a Pirate based deck is difficult to pass up. Vehicles with trample will be best for accomplishing this task since you need to deal combat damage to a player.
6Sokrates, Athenian Teacher
Commander Is A Game Of Politics
Here’s a creature that works as a political commander or is a fine addition to any deck playing Azorius colors and needs some extra protection against opposing creatures. Sokrates is a good early blocker that can’t be removed, thanks to hexproof.
Even if your opponent has an evasive or big enough creature that Sokrates can’t block, you can tap him to prevent the creature’s damage and refill you and the attacking opponent’s hand. This is a great way to forge an alliance with another player during a Commander game, as everyone is interested in drawing extra cards. Just be sure the alliance forged is in your favor.
5Achilles Davenport
Hardcore Parkour
Finally, there’s an Assassin lord that can serve as the commander for your Assassin typal deck. Better yet, it comes with a reduced-cost option that you’ll very likely be able to pay every time you cast him, thanks to the inherent evasiveness of Assassin creatures.
Menace, flying, and “can’t be blocked” effects are all incredibly common in Assassin creatures. In other words, Achilles will come down for its reduced cost often, provide a decent threat, and buff your entire board as long as he remains on the battlefield. Whether he serves as your Commander or another card in your Assassin deck, this is a slam-dunk inclusion for Assassin players.
4Caduceus, Staff Of Hermes
Nice Life Total
Despite being a fairly expensive artifact to equip, Caduceus offers a massive buff to a creature on your board while also making it immune tomost types of removal. Seeing as each player starts with 40 life in Commander, this artifact will equip at maximum strength, assuming you aren’t facing a hyper-aggressive deck that happened to target you.
Better yet, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy as once the equipped creature starts blocking and attacking your life total will balloon well over 40 due to lifelink. A deck focused on equipment synergies will be the best home for this artifact as cards like Sigarda’s Aid and Puresteel Paladin can bypass the inhibiting cost of playing and equipping this card.
3Crystal Skull, Isu Spyglass
Mana And Card Advantage
Ramp that also serves as card advantage is extremely impressive, even if this card requires the deckbuilding cost of filling your mainboard with historic cards. Furthermore, there are many Commander decks around that already fulfill this deckbuilding cost, essentially making the cost moot.
Playing cards from the top of your library both preserves the cards in your hand for later use and serves as pseudo card draw that digs deeper into your deck so that you can find your bombs. To put it simply, historic decks might be the biggest specific winners of this set reveal. Crystal Skull really is just that good.
2Desynchronization
Restart And Go Again
Speaking of historic decks, here’s another card that serves their strategy particularly well. Bouncing cards isn’t quite as good as sending them to the graveyard, but for a cost as low as this at instant speed we really can’t complain.
Asymmetrical board wipes are some of the most powerful cards in the game, as they set your opponent’s way back while keeping your own battlefield intact. Of course, Desynchronization won’t answer all of those pesky artifacts your opponents might have in play, but you’ll come out way ahead if your own battlefield consists of solely historic permanents.
1Chain Assassination
Leave No Witnesses
Not only is this a removal spell that replaces itself, but one that comes with an impressive cost reduction in some scenarios. One of the biggest issues with playing removal in Commander is that it often costs you more than what the opponent got from the creature you play it on.
Between enter the battlefield effects, triggered abilities, and other synergies, it’s often the case that playing a creature provides an opponent with much more value than just the creature’s board presence. Chain Assassination somewhat addresses this issue by drawing you a card. As we all know, there’s almost no worse feeling than playing Commander without any cards in hand.
