Dominaria United is releasing two preconstructed Commander decks to accompany the main booster set featuring two classic Magic characters.
Jared Carthalion and Dihada, Binder of Wills are the two face cards for the Cominaria United precons. Jared Carthalion is the general for the Painbow deck. Dihada leads the deck named Legends; Legacy. This Commander release is smaller than the five precons from Streets of New Capenna.
Dominaria United releases on Sept. 1 in Magic Arena and Magic Online, followed by a global tabletop release on Sept. 9. The full Dominaria United Commander preconstructed decklists will be revealed on Aug. 19.
Dihada, Binder of Wills
- Mana value: 1RWB
- Type: Legendary Planeswalker Dihada
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Starting loyalty: Five
- First ability: +2: Up to one target legendary Creature gains vigilance, lifelink, and indestructible until your next turn.
- Second ability: -3: Reveal the top four cards in your library. Put any number of legendary cards from among them into your hand and the rest into your graveyard. Create a treasure token for each card put into your graveyard this way.
- Third ability: -11: Gain control of all nonland permanents until the end of turn. Untap them. They gain haste until the end of the turn.
- Dihada, Binder of Wills can be your commander.
Dihada is a Mardu legendary-matters card that wants to engage in combat and find value out of the graveyard. The +1 is an excellent way to force unfavorable blocks in combat, giving a strong creature three great keywords vigilance, lifelink, and indestructible.
The -3 is a solid source of card selection and gets better if you are able to play cards from the graveyard similar to how a Kethis, Hidden Hand deck is run. This ability will generally draw you two or three cards in a dedicated legendary-matters list. If you’re struggling with mana, the treasure generation is a form of temporary ramp.
Reaching the ultimate is unlikely. The -3 is strong enough that you’ll want to use it frequently. If you’re in a position to reach 11 loyalty then the ultimate should just win the game. This is where something like The Chain Veil can come in to get Dihada to the ultimate faster.
Jared Carthalion
- Mana value: WUBRG
- Type: Legendary Planeswalker Jared
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Starting loyalty: Five
- First ability: +1: Create a 3/3 Kavu Creature token with trample that’s all colors.
- Second ability: -3: Choose up to two target Creatures. For each of them, put a number of +1/+1 counters on it equal to the number of colors it is.
- Third ability: -6: Return target multicolored card from your graveyard to your hand. If that card was all colors, draw a card and create two treasure tokens.
- Jared Carthalion can be your commander.
This is an interesting twist on a WUBRG commander. Jared isn’t the best five-color good cards commander, instead wants to lead a team of multicolored creature cards. The basic plan with Jared is to use the +1 to create a token and then the -3 to give that token five +1/+1 counters. That’s not bad.
Taking it a step further, Jared can be the commander of a deck that runs the best three, four, and five color creatures in Magic. Each of the Streets of New Capenna crime bosses would work well in a Jared Carthalion deck. There are 23 creature cards legal in Commander that are WUBRG. Two cards—Esika, God of the Tree, and The Kami War—are WURBG Enchantment cards with a creature component.
Since Jared’s precon is called Painbow, there may be a group slug component to a successful deck built around Jared that players are unaware of. When full decklists are revealed, Jared’s true strength will become clear.
