With novel designs and power-level intended for eternal formats, commander sets have brought about many Cube staples

It’s no secret that Commander is the most popular to play Magic: the Gathering in 2024. Since Wizards of the Coast adopted the format from the Elder Dragon Highlander committee with the release of the first pre-constructed Commander decks in 2011, Magic players have been able to look forward to cards made uniquely for the format at least once a year. Now, paired with an elevated release schedule of the game at large, each new expansion has an associated suite of four new Commander precons, which in turn have roughly a dozen new cards in them legal exclusively in eternal formats.

For people who curate Cubes — custom draft formats with parameters wholly set by the people who play them — Commander sets have been a boon. While the typical Magic expansion needs to be designed with a balanced Standard, Pioneer, and (theoretically) Modern environment in mind, these Commander decks and expansions have no such restriction. Additionally, Commander-first cards, by avoiding a primary existence in a draftable expansion, are not as limited by complexity or a set’s larger themes, allowing for novel designs that support niche strategies.

The end result? For Cubes of all shapes and sizes, Commander sets provide exciting opportunities that would be impossible to find in premiere expansions. Whether you’re interested in Vintage Cube staples like Forth Eorlingas! and Minsc and Boo, Timeless Heroes or novel archetype enablers like Cyberdrive Awakener, Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful and Occult Epiphany, Commander decks and associated sets have been a great resource for Cube curators.

Using Cube Cobra, the team here at Cardboard by the Numbers explored the card from every Commander-specific release to find the most-played new card, which you can see below. This visualization demonstrates how many beloved Cube cards have come from these sets:

What’s most impressive to me is how few misses there are in the list. Almost every release has a hidden gem to uncover or a unique piece of tech. Many of my favorite cards of the last decade can be found among this infographic, and I know that’s the same for Cube curators of all stripes!

Admittedly, this methodology is overly simple (unlike the one used in our guilds analysis), and represents popularity across Cube styles. As a result, cards that have overlap between some of the most popular styles of Cube, like Commander Cubes, Pauper/Peasant Cubes, and Cubes inspired by the MODO Vintage Cube, are over-represented. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that generically-useful cards over-index here.

Understandably, cards with mechanics like Monarch perform well here. Monarch is a great example of a mechanic that works great in multiplayer, but is disproportionately strong when used in the 1v1 context of the majority of Cubes. It’s not strictly an unintended use-case, but this explains why cards like Court of Garenbrig are strong representatives of their given releases.

By only taking the top card of each Commander set, we do miss out on some Cube classics. There are quite a few cards worth celebration, particularly from the era when new Commander decks were released just once a year. However, the hope of this article is to inspire Cube curators to take an extra look at some of the Commander sets that may have passed them by: there are gems in nearly every one!

Thanks so much for reading. We have basic land coverage on the regular as well as new Magic: the Gathering infographics and analysis every week, so if you’ve enjoyed this article, sign up for our newsletter and be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Threads!!

Miles Atherton is the editor-in-chief of “Cardboard by the Numbers” and has been playing Magic since 2006. Since studying Agricultural Economics at UC Davis, he’s built a career as an award-winning marketing executive in the entertainment industry with a love of data journalism. He’s also written for Anime Buscience and Crunchyroll News, serving as Executive Editor of the latter from 2016 to 2021.