The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander decks are a tour-de-force of typal strengths and power, much like the set itself. You can command an army of dinosaurs, a cave filled to the brim with vampires, a boatload of pirates, or a lagoon worth of merfolk.
It’s an exciting mix of decks, and with the first set being such a boon for Commander players, thanks to the awesome creature types, these new decks have a lot of expectations sailing along with them. We’ve decided it would be fun to rank them against each other, and we’re gonna go ahead and tell you what we think is the best of the bunch and which are a cut below the rest.
Magic: The Gathering Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander Decks Ranked
Before we jump into this, it’s worth noting that none of these decks are bad. Commander is a format where you can easily upgrade and change decks, and even as they are, The Lost Caverns of Ixalan decks are all pretty solid.
1) Explorers of the Deep
Our pick for the top deck this time around is, rather unsurprisingly, the Merfolk one. There are a few reasons for this, and only one of those is that Xolatoyac, the Smiling Flood, one of the new commanders, is a massive damn Axolotl. Most of the reasons are just the Merfolk are very strong and also that Hakbal of the Surging Soul, the face card, allows you to use the explore mechanic a lot.
Hakbal of the Surging Soul is a four-mana 3/3 that lets you explore at the beginning of each of your combats, with every Merfolk you control getting their own trigger. This lets you sift through your eck at absurd speed and either fill your hand with land or make your creatures stronger. Plus, you can put land cards into play when it attacks.
Xolatoyac, the Smiling Flood isn’t just a big old Axolotl – it’s also a six-mana 6/6 that lets you put flood counters on lands in play and untap every permanent you control with a counter on it in your end step. The combination of these two commanders is, quite frankly, offensive in the best possible way. So, it’s easy to see why this Lost Caverns of Ixalan deck comes out on top.
2) Veloci-Ramp-Tor
We’d love for this Lost Caverns of Ixalan dino-deck to be the number one, but it’s just not quite good enough. It is, however, generally very good. While it doesn’t have the same resilience as some of the other decks, the creatures you play are massive, and you can do a lot of damage with ease here. As with the others, we’ve got two new commanders to mess around with.
The face card is simpler but a little less interesting. Pantlaza, Sun-Favored is a five-mana 4/4 that lets you make use of the new Discover mechanic. Basically, the first Dinosaur that enters the battlefield in each turn (including an opponent’s turn if you’re being fancy) triggers discover X, where X is its toughness. This lets you reveal cards from the top of your library until you hit a card that costs X or less and then cast that for free. We all love free stuff.
However, if you’ve got a lot of Dinosaurs from the first Ixalan set, then Wayta, Trainer Prodigy is a far more enticing choice. This three-mana 1/5 allows you to to make creatures fight for three mana, but it costs less if you make your own creatures hit each other. Then, if a creature you control causes a triggered ability, you get to double that trigger. It’s a lot of fun to play the deck like this, as it’s a bit different from what most people would expect.
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3) Blood Rites
Vampires get a lot of decks, let’s be honest. This deck’s new commanders come in a Lost Caverns of Ixalan deck that’s deeply familiar and actually rather interesting, but both are very resilient and hard to overcome, at least when it comes to creatures. Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher is the alternative commander in Blood Rites and is a five-mana 2/2 with flying that allows you to put +1/+1 counters on it and gain life whenever someone sacrifices a permanent. You can also bring things back from the dead.
We’ve seen that before in various forms, but Clavileño, First of the Blessed, who is the face card of this deck, is something a bit more intriguing. Clavileño is a three-mana 2/2 that lets you turn your Vampire creatures into demons and creates Vampire Demon tokens when they die. This pairs nicely with the deck as it comes, of course, but it also means you can secretly play Demon typal here.
While there are a few cool cards that play into this, it allows you to play Liliana’s Contract in your deck, and you can literally just win the game in your upkeep if you control four Demons with different names, which is very, very, easy to do when all of your Vampires are becoming Demons. It’s also just a nice change of pace, and we love it.
4) Ahoy Mateys
It pains us to say this, but the Pirate deck in Lost Caverns of Ixalan just isn’t on the same level as the other decks in this set. It’s still a pretty potent deck, and with a few upgrades, it can become an absolute beast, but as it comes, it struggles to compete with the other options from Lost Caverns of Ixalan.
The face card, Admiral Brass, Unsinkable is a fun five-mana 3/3 that lets you mill cards as it enters and then also return Pirates to the battlefield from your graveyard. However, we prefer Don Andres, the Renegade, who also comes in the deck and is a four-mana 4/3 that grants each creature you control but don’t own +2/+2, menace, and death touch. You can also create Treasure tokens whenever you cast a non-creature spell you don’t own.
There are cards that lean into this strategy within the deck, like Captivating Crew and Hostage Taker, but the cards that steal other people’s things are actually fairly cheap, so upgrading this Lost Caverns of Ixalan deck in this way is a lot of fun and allows you to be just the worst kind of Commander playing goblin. We think you should embrace that.
