Four new Commander preconstructed decks are releasing on Oct. 7 as a part of the Universes Beyond Magic: The Gathering and Warhammer 40,000 collaboration.
Each deck focuses on one of the many iconic factions from the tabletop miniatures game, bringing new cards and gameplay styles to Magic’s biggest casual format.
No Warhammer collaboration would be complete without Chaos. This traitorous faction is filled with some of Warhammer’s most grotesque and intriguing characters.
The Chaos Space Marines are represented in The Ruinous Powers precon. This UBR deck uses a fairly standard Grixis Control strategy looking to control the battlefield with spells before resolving game-warping threats.
Abaddon the Despoiler is the face commander for The Ruinous Powers. This five-mana 5/5 gives your spells cascade that has a mana value equal to the number of life opponents lost during that turn. This rewards taking an aggressive approach, looking to deal damage through combat and with direct-damage spells.
Once you get cascade ability going, Abaddon can enable some explosive game-winning turns. The best strategy will be sitting back and bringing Abaddon out during a key turn so he can immediately provide value.
A primary way this deck wants to win is through combat. Bloodthirster can provide extra combat steps while Chaos Terminator Lord and Bloodcrusher of Khorne can buff your army, helping them maximize damage output in combat.
This is important because in Commander, you need to deal lethal damage to three other players. Cards that apply damage to everyone, enable extra combat steps or give powerful keywords like double strike are necessary.
The deck has a strong Demon-tribal theme. Be’lakor, the Dark Master is an excellent secondary commander choice that supports Grixis Demons, an archetype that didn’t really exist before this release.
The four Chaos Daemons in Warhammer are represented in the 99 of The Ruinous Powers. The forces of Nurgle make up many of the Black cards in the list, providing much of the recursive threats and grindy value pieces. Tzeentch and the Thousand Sons are found in Blue and Red, giving the deck a minor spellslinger theme.
Slaanesh and Khorne are represented in the Red combat-focused cards, providing buffs to your Creatures and packing aggressive stats.
Use a healthy removal package, with both targeted removal and board wipes, to shut down the early game of opposing decks. New cards like Blight Grenade and Let the Galaxy Burn are powerful new sweepers.
The Ruinous Powers doesn’t have a linear way to win. Players will likely find that in some games they have explosive victories, winning with one big turn. Other games will be won by slowly whittling away the opponents’ life totals. This decklist will provide diverse and interesting gameplay to those that take the time to learn it.
