(Epic Confrontation | Art by Lucas Graciano)

War of the Picks

In the wake of a little sibling rivalry, let's see how our predictions shaped up.

For The Over/Under, we predict how popular new commanders will become one year after release. November 18, 2023 marked a year for Brothers' War, so I took some screenshots of the results. Now it's time we reviewed our selections. Remember, an "Over" means I predicted the commander would lead more than 600 decks, while the latter means under that mark. Also, as the name suggests, my Can't-Miss Pick was my surest bet.

If you'd like a refresher, you can find last year's article here. Otherwise, keep reading—I'll be pulling excerpts from there throughout this one.

Also, one last note before we begin. You may notice a distinct lack of Transformers in this article, and that's for a simple reason; I didn't realize they were connected to this set in any way. After the fact, I learned these cards appeared in Brothers' War Collector Boosters or something. And here I thought they were Secret Lair nonsense. At any rate, I apologize—it'll just be the canon MTG cards from here on out!

Without further ado, let's see what these brothers are up to.

Overall Impressions

Super Mario Bros. might've been a hit at the box office in 2023, but our brothers fared less well. Just check out these stats for Brothers' War:

• Total number of commanders: 30
• Total number of commander decks: 48,013
• Average commander deck count: 1,600
• Most decks: Urza, Chief Artificer (7,972 decks)
• Fewest decks: Loran, Disciple of History (59 decks)

Compared to our last set, Warhammer 40k, that's six more commanders but only about 400 more decks. Granted, Warhammer was built specifically for EDH, yet I still think BRO's comparatively poor performance is telling. Aside from a handful of bangers, this set didn't perform nearly as well as its contemporaries.

One explanation might be redundancy. Being an artifact set, much of its design space is centered on this supertype. Though artifacts are indeed versatile, it's difficult to design a set's worth of commanders that care about them in novel ways.

Take Urza, Prince of Kroog and Urza, Chief Artificer as examples. Both touch two of the same colors, care about artifact creatures, and produce tokens. This makes flavorful sense, but from a mechanical perspective, the set might've performed better if more design space was applied toward unique commanders.

That said, Brothers' War certainly wasn't a dud (for an example of one, see Unfinity). It heralded the return of several of Magic's most storied characters, such as Tawnos, the Toymaker and Ashnod the Uncaring, plus three fun new Meld commanders in Urza, Lord Protector, Mishra, Claimed by Gix, and Titania, Voice of Gaea. In addition, the set provided two excellent commanders for Soldier typal decks: Myrel, Shield of Argive and Harbin, Vanguard Aviator.

So overall, I'd say this set was about average. Not a whole lot of standout commanders, but not many duds, either.

Enough with the generalities. Let's look at some specifics.

My Solid Selections

We'll begin with the set's most popular commander, which was, fittingly, one of the squabbling brothers:

Last year's prediction: Over

Final deck count: 7,972

It always helps to get on the box of a commander product, but even considering that, this is an excellent finish. In fact, Urza currently ranks as the 57th most popular commander of all time, which is only 13 spots behind the classic Urza, Lord High Artificer. Here were my thoughts from last year:

"Despite wearing a coat that makes him resemble Willy Wonka, I'm in on Urza."

Prophetic in more ways than one, considering Willy Wonka's return to the big screen in December. Gotta celebrate wins when we have 'em.

Last year's prediction: Over

Final deck count: 4,934

Mishra became the set's second most popular commander, which makes sense considering he's the other brother on the other commander product. Last year's analysis went like so:

"This version of Mishra essentially Crews Vehicles for free, earns great value on enters- and leaves-the-battlefield abilities and gives you something to do with all those Treasures appearing on every card these days. I especially like him with Marionette Master and Spine of Ish Sah."

Other players had the same idea, since both those cards appear in most Mishra decks, along with newer additions like Tithing Blade and Chimil, the Inner Sun. With Artificers, Vehicles, and even Polymorph working as viable themes, it's no wonder Mishra performed so well.

...Unlike our next commander, who was a little less obvious.

Last year's prediction: Over

Final deck count: 960

A one-mana 1/1 doesn't seem like Commander material, but when it does what Ashnod does, it's worth it. Just sacrifice expendable dorks like Greedy Freebooter to accumulate Powerstone tokens, which are surprisingly useful with activated abilities and big-mana artifacts like Cityscape Leveler.

Our other treatment of Ashnod fared even better:

Last year's prediction: Over

Final deck count: 2,117

With two additional colors and a sweet static ability, it's no wonder this version of Ashnod more than doubled the other. I think my best prediction was this one:

"The thing I love about evergreen cards like this is they're only going to get better. Sacrifice has been and will be part of the game forever, so each new set should bring new toys to play with."

Indeed, the end of the year brought nice additions like Tarrian's Journal and Brass's Tunnel-Grinder. I expect many future additions to come soon.

Speaking of the future, here's a prediction that didn't turn out so well:

Last year's prediction: Over

Final deck count: 1,418

It's not my pick that aged poorly. It's this line from my review:

"I take it Mak Fawa is the hulking dragon engine thing in the background? If so, it comes in a long line of famous Maks, including Mac Jones, MacBeth, and Mac computers."

A year later, and Mac Jones is probably going to get cut. Sorry, Pats fans. And while I'm apologizing, let me apologize for this next commander, too.

Last year's prediction: Over

Final deck count: 4,081

I should clarify: I'm not apologizing for the pick. The pick was correct. I'm apologizing for my analysis, which was, in hindsight, not quite complimentary enough.

"I like a Grand Abolisher in the command zone, and I like legit token engines even more. The Soldier typeline on those tokens will matter, but the artifact subtype should matter even more, especially in this set."

Turns out the Solider type still matters more. Just look at five of the first six High Synergy Cards...all Solider lords! Oh yeah, and the subsequent printing of Moonshaker Cavalry helped some, too.

It also helped to have some obvious Unders in this set—specifically these two:

Last year's prediction: Unders for both

Final deck counts: 59 and 169, respectively

I don't know what Loran did to Wizards R&D, but they disliked her enough to create not one, but two lousy treatments. Oddly, Loran, Disciple of History looks like the cooler build of the pair, since you can get some crazy loops going via the likes of Jhoira's Familiar, Hope of Ghirapur, and Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle. There's something there, and it seems like it could've been more popular than just 59 decks.

Our next commander fared only slightly better:

Last year's prediction: Under

Final deck count: 135

I came in hot with last year's analysis:

"I haven't been this appalled since I heard Chris Pratt do the voice of Mario."

A poor joke, since that movie ended up making tons of money. Plus, Adam Driver played an Italian in Ferrari, so I guess it's acceptable. Now for the rest of the analysis...

"Seriously, you have to jump through so many hoops to make Feldon work! You're probably pinging him with stuff like Prodigal Pyromancer, yet you'll need to augment his body to see multiple cards."

Oddly, Prodigal Pyromancer in just 13% of Feldon decks. Players seem far more interested in general mono-red stuff, such as Laelia, the Blade Reforged, who would probably make a better commander in Feldon decks than Feldon. I'm out on this commander—again.

But it wasn't all sunshine and spot-on picks. I had a few stinkers, which we'll cover now.

My Big Mistakes

I only had a single Over prediction go Under in this set, and that happened to be...

My prediction: Over

Final deck count: 513

It was close, I'll grant, yet not close enough. Here was my rationale:

"With Treasures, Clues, Food, and Powerstones all touching these colors, you should have no problem generating fodder to copy and sacrifice. From there, he's basically a reanimator commander that even mills cards to fuel himself."

To be fair, that analysis held up. We see all those tokens appearing in most builds, plus big time reanimator targets like Triplicate Titan.

So what was Tawnos's problem? Appearing in the same set as Urza, Chief Artificer didn't help. Furthermore, I wonder if I overlooked the influence of Sharuum the Hegemon. Though it's not one of Esper's more popular commanders (just 1,717 decks), it has been around for over a decade now, meaning many players already have the deck built. When a new Esper artifact reanimator commander came along, maybe they decided to stick with their old faithful rather than build something new.

Our last three incorrect picks were Unders that went Over, so let's look at each in turn.

My prediction: Unders for all three

Final deck counts: 642, 827, and 2,267, respectively

Drafna had the narrowest margin of success, though I see where I went wrong. My analysis actually started out promising.

"Returning artifacts to hand can be beneficial, but you'd much prefer that ability at U, not 1U."

Well, 33% of Drafna deckbuilders agreed with me, because they packed Heartstone into their decks. As for the other half of my analysis...

"Though copying artifacts is good, we'll be seeing another commander that does it better, and offers three colors (spoiler: it's Tawnos, Solemn Survivor)."

And now we see the error of my ways. Turns out leaning into Tawnos botched not one, but two picks. So it goes...

Regarding Tocasia, it's tough to anticipate a set arriving at the end of the year dedicated to doing exactly what Tocasia does. But that's not all I botched. Here's last year's analysis:

"Pro: Tocasia offers a hyper-flavorful use of Surveil. Con: That bottom ability has an unbelievable setup cost. Not only is it outrageously expensive, but you need to get her into the graveyard somehow first."

My error was clear: I overestimated the use case for Tocasia's activated ability, while underestimating her static. Based on most decklists, it appears players leaned far more into the vigilance/Surveil thing, while the eight-mana activation is just gravy. Expensive gravy, yes, but yummy when it works.

Lastly, we come to Liberator, Urza's Battlethopter, a card I described as "something out of Maximum Overdrive." If that didn't get you hyped for the rest of my comments, I don't know what will.

"...We get a Shimmer Myr in the command zone that gets bigger the bigger the spells you cast. Not bad, but Shimmer Myr reads better than it plays. Plus, you'll need to accumulate four or five counters before this thing comes close to being a legitimate threat."

I assure you, my reading comprehension score on the SATs would suggest I would've done better than this. However, I failed to comprehend the text about "colorless spells," meaning you can do broken things like cast All Is Dust at instant speed.

Also, Commander Masters arrived in August, bringing with it the "Eldrazi Unbound" precon deck, which was packed with goodies for Libby. Just look at its Top Cards...eight of them come from that deck!

Recap

Correct Picks (26)

1. Myrel, Shield of Argive - Over (4,081 decks)
2. Ashnod, Flesh Mechanist - Over (960 decks)
3. Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor - Can't-Miss Pick (2,629 decks)
4. Titania, Nature's Force - Over (1,168 decks)
5. Titania, Voice of Gaea - Over (1,891 decks)
6. Harbin, Vanguard Aviator - Over (948 decks)
7. Urza, Lord Protector - Over (3,473 decks)
8. Urza, Prince of Kroog - Over (1,701 decks)
9. Queen Kayla bin-Kroog - Over (1,719 decks)
10. Tawnos, the Toymaker - Over (1,536 decks)
11. Urza, Chief Artificer - Over (7,972 decks)
12. Mishra, Claimed by Gix - Over (3,047 decks)
13. Mishra, Tamer of Mak Fawa - Over (1,418 decks)
14. Ashnod the Uncaring - Over (2,117 decks)
15. Mishra, Eminent One - Over (4,934 decks)
16. The Archimandrite - Over (2,28 decks)
17. Loran, Disciple of History - Under (59 decks)
18. Loran of the Third Path - Under (169 decks)
19. Sanwell, Avenger Ace - Under (142 decks)
20. Hurkyl, Master Wizard - Under (211 decks)
21. Urza, Powerstone Prodigy - Under (329 decks)
22. Farid, Enterprising Salvager - Under (440 decks)
23. Feldon, Ronom Excavator - Under (135 decks)
24. Mishra, Excavation Prodigy - Under (69 decks)
25. Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea - Under (473 decks)
26. Hajar, Loyal Bodyguard - Under (115 decks)

Incorrect Picks (4)

1. Tawnos, Solemn Survivor - Over Under (513 decks)
2. Drafna, Founder of Lat-Nam - Under Over (642 decks)
3. Tocasia, Dig Site Mentor - Under Over (827 decks)
4. Liberator, Urza's Battlethopter - Under Over (2,267 decks)

My Brothers' War Correct Prediction Percentage: 87%

My Overall Correct Prediction Percentage: 75%

Hey, not bad! That's a 12% jump from our last set and my best since an 87% effort with Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. Perhaps BRO wasn't the most popular set overall, but I'll remember it as a personal success. Here's hoping for more in the new year!

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