Top 10 Non-Legendary Cards from Lost Caverns of Ixalan

Hello and welcome back. It’s officially time to dive into the Lost Caverns of Ixalan and find our Commander goodies. The legendary creatures command the most attention for Commander players, and rightly so. We’ve seen a lot of very good legends, some of which are already adored.

The world is larger (and deeper) than just our commanders, with a whole 99 to back them up. In today’s article, as I usually do, I’m going to go over my top ten best cards for commander decks from the Lost Caverns of Ixalan. All of these picks will be from the main set only, and not feature any reprints unless found within.

Dauntless Dismantler

Okay, I’ll admit this one is a bit more of a meta call than I usually want on the list, but it hoses (most) Treasure token production by having them come into play tapped, which can buy some real extra value in time to respond to some ridiculous value your opponents might vomit onto the board, including fast mana and mana rocks. It also comes with built in removal and is easily brought back by the bevy of White recursion abilities we have now. This card isn’t necessarily a staple, but it will come close in certain playgroups.

Get Lost

White has a long history of taking away but giving back. This card slots right into the tradition, but I think the drawback is easily worth what you get for it. Taking a problematic permanent out of the equation and giving you opponent a semi-random effect? Seems like a good trade to me. The flexibility of the removal is really what makes the card. It’s an easier answer to most planewalkers than most other kinds of removal White has. Since it also says destroy instead of exile, shenanigans can be had by targeting your own stuff with it and just recurring later if needed.

Tishana's Tidebinder

This set is filled to the gills with good Merfolk, but for the purposes of this list I’m going to focus on the cards good overall for decks of many kinds. While this card is somewhat narrow in application, there are many target this can interact with and many decks, like Alela 2.0 or any Merfolk deck, that this card will slot into.

Likely this card will be useful in meats with decks with a high dependence on their commander, like Feather, Prosper or Eriette. Another thing it does and I rather enjoy is stifling those Eldrazi “it’s to protect me from mill” triggers. I’ve already added a copy to Phenax. Get milled.

Kitesail Larcenist

This creature brings with it some interesting quasi-removal and helps provide a window to interact by making up to one thing each player has a Treasure. While the actual “removal” part of the card is on the weaker side as the chosen cards are only Treasures as long as the Larcenist remains on the field, the flexibility of play around the effect is worth much more. It can turn off static effects, make vulnerable a permanent that wasn’t before, and save certain things from mass removal.

For once I’m glad something has ward so you are slightly less likely to have the Larcenist removed and you have time to set up something else to take advantage of the opportunity it could give you.

Bringer of the Last Gift

Bringer here is just Living Death on a stick. Sorta. It does have the clause that it must be cast, so no reanimation shenanigans here. Still, any powerful effect from Black on a creature should always be given serious consideration. Black can easily manipulate the graveyard, and being able to reuse this might be ever relevant.

Another key difference is that it tells you to sacrifice creatures rather than exile them. This has the potential to be a drawback when an opponent does it, but the benefit to the usual Black/X strategies should outweigh those concerns most of the time.

Starving Revenant

Another excellent Surveil card to add to the roster with some card draw built and given a bonus for. Even its “drawback” is only really one if you cast this early. In Commander though, having 8 permanents in your graveyard early isn’t undoable. The Ancient One could fill the yard up quick, or just a lot of aggressive milling for reanimation decks. Even if you have to “suffer” with the drawback, you’re still netting 2 cards for 6 life and 4 mana. Not the best, but with life to spare it is an easy trade. Vilis decks will be especially pleased.

Bonehoard Dracosaur

Our Red mythic dragon of the set (there always seems to be one) that also helps give us some impulsive advantage. It doesn’t do it immediately, but luckily we usually have time in Commander to wait a turn around the table. When we get there, we might get two token creatures, two treasures, or one of each in addition to our regular draw. I like the fact that the card kind of covers the weakness present in its own exiling effect. Need to cast a card? Here’s some mana in treasures. Getting flooded? Here are some blockers. While I wish this also had an ETB for the effect, it’s plenty good as is.

Curator of Sun's Creation

Hear me out here. No this card isn’t going to be awesome right now in most places, but if Discover is used largely to replace Cascade in the future, you may want to have this hanging around for that time. Besides that, it can easily double up on some of the better Discover effects, like Hit the Mother Lode (which barely didn’t make this list).

Growing Rites of Itlimoc

Alright. I really, really didn’t want to pick this card. I just can’t not though. While other cards in this set do amazing things as well, this card is the Gaea’s Cradle of an entire generation of our playerbase. I don’t think I need to say how great of a reprint this is but in case you haven’t experienced this one way or another, it’s nuts.

Roaming Throne

Okay, so I’m cheating a little here. This is a kindred card that is a Panharmonicon for whatever creature type you chose. Getting double of something is always better than a single time effect or use. As such, this will go in so, so many decks from Reaper King to Goblin kindred decks. I don’t know where this is going to settle on price, but if you have a kindred deck I would keep an eye on this and add it to your deck if it happens to have a lot of ETBs.

Honorable Mention – Poison Dart Frog

I had to find a place for the frog. It won’t go in every list since even Green decks don’t always use mana dorks, but for those that do I had to include it for one reason: Reach.

Flyers can be really annoying to deal with in Commander, and I’m sure that there are many times you’d wish you had a way to defend yourself from one. Enter the frog. It has Reach built in and fixes your mana. What’s better, it can gain deathtouch to eat a pesky flyer on the cheap. The frog wins for overall usefulness.

Into the Core

That’s it for my top ten picks for this set. While the kin creatures got A LOT of new and great support, I wanted to shine a light on the general goodness your decks can still get if you don’t have any of these kindred type decks.

This list is just my opinion of course, and frankly I want to add 5 extra cards, but limitations help keep things chugging along. Let me know what cards have or you think will shine from this set in the comment below.

Until next time, keep exploring the world!