As part of MagicCon Amsterdam, Wizards of the Coast has laid out its entire 2027 plan for Magic: The Gathering’s in-universe slate, including three new sets and four more MagicCon events spread throughout the year. Nestled among those announcements, however, was one that made my ears perk up: Mystery Booster Commander.
Mystery Booster 1 and 2, for those unaware, are specially-curated sets filled with reprints that are only available at MagicCon events and through Convention-In-A-Box drops on the Secret Lair website. In Mystery Booster 2’s case, a handful of cards from Magic: The Gathering Arena saw their first-ever printings, while other reprints featured special Future Sight frames.
Mystery Booster Commander looks to continue that tradition, but with the ultra-popular casual format its primary focus. The set will feature packs of 20 cards each, and will include a myriad of reprints from throughout Magic’s history that can be drafted into on-the-fly Commander decks for quick games.
In a Mystery Booster first, this Commander version will feature 59 all-new cards only found in these packs, with the MagicCon panel previewing two of them. First, we saw Joven and Chandler, a legendary creature card that combines two recognizable faces from 1995’s Homelands set into a single card.
Next came Tolabow, Loch Rascal, a cute litter otter in blue. Tolabow shows off the new Rulebreaker mechanic, which allows a creature to break one of the rules of the Commander format if it is set as your commander; Tolabow, despite being mono blue, can have instants and sorcery spells of one additional color not in its color identity, and any basic land cards to pay for that second color’s cards.
With so much unknown about Mystery Booster Commander outside of this initial announcement, I immediately wondered what sort of reprints I’d want to see in a Mystery Booster Commander set, whether it’s because they’re Commander format staples or they’re expensive and could use a reprint. Here’s a quick list of five ideas that first came to mind.
