Looking for a New Commander but no idea who

[WWolfe]

So I've been away for a while (haven't played IRL in probably 1 year) and I've not really kept up with the current sets. I think part of what got me away from the game (other than not liking the direction it was heading and product burnout) was being stagnant with the decks I have. I love my Sidisi and Varina decks, my OG Purphoros is a nice change of pace, and my Sliver deck will always be my baby. I have multiple other decks but they're collecting dust. 

I want to make something fresh but I'm unsure what. Most of you that have been here long enough know me and know I'm usually about tribal and graveyard shenanigans. I want to branch out and try something different. Probably one of the newer legendary creatures.

I'm wide open to suggestions as far as what to try. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Morganator 2.0]

Here are some ideas based on commanders that came out "recently". These last few years have kinda been a blur.

If you still want to stick with graveyard stuff

Sefris of the Hidden Ways
2021
There are a lot of ways to do the setup for this commander so you can start venturing into the dungeon. Self-mill, sacrifice, discard effects, or all three. You can only venture once per turn this way, so you're going to need ways to put things in your grave on other players' turns, or other ways to venture into the dungeon (From the Catacombs, Midnight Pathlighter, Nadaar, Selfless Paladin, Radiant Solar, and White Plume Adventurer stand out). Make sure you understand all of the ruling differences between "venture into the dungeon" and "venture into undercity" because it gets weird. Then you can have reanimator effects alongside the value you already get from dungeons.

Captain N'ghathrod
2022
If you're a fan of tribal-decks-with-tribes-that-have-next-to-no-support, look no further than horrors. You don't need to do horrors, but it helps. Maybe Persistent Petitioners could work here. I'm a sucker for decks that let me use my opponents' cards, and Captain N'ghathrod exclusively reanimates your opponents' creatures, so you'll have to plan on the fly.

Grolnok, the Omnivore
2021
If you're a fan of tribal-decks-with-tribes-that-have-next-to-no-support, look no further than frogs. Mill yourself and use your graveyard as a second hand. Keep in mind you can only cast permanents with Grolnok, so you could make this a graveyard and Primal Surge deck. It would be a hard build, but possible.

Zask, Skittering Swarmlord
2022
If you're a fan of tribal-decks-with-tribes-that-have-next-to-no-support, look no further than insects. For real though, I don't know what you would do for this build.

Somethings that are new and interesting

Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa
2023
I still don't think poison counters are a super viable win-con, but at least in this case you they don't have to be. You can just try a "play opponents' spells" strategy and see what wacky synergies you can make. If you'd rather focus more on the poison counters side of things, Vishgraz, the Doomhive is in the same colours.

Jodah, the Unifier
2022
Whereas Sisay, Weatherlight Captain is very selective about the legends in her crew, with Jodah you get to spin the wheel of random. Be sure to add a bunch of things that trigger when you cast a spell, as you'll get double the value off of them. Also, there's a built-in Coat of Arms effect, as if legendary creatures weren't powerful enough.

Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm
2022
Miirym is one of those commanders that can be accidentally powerful. Dragons are already individually strong cards; it's part of their flavour. Having double dragons is crazy good.

Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines
2023
I heard that she's a pretty powerful mono-white deck, but I haven't seen her in action yet. Stopping your opponents' ETBs comes up a surprising number of times.

Mishra, Eminent One
2022
For a long time, Grixis has had some really good artifact synergies, without any good options for commanders (unless you count the OG Mishra, Artificer Prodigy). With this new Mishra, you can really take advantage of artifacts like Ichor Wellspring or Spine of Ish Sah. Or you can end your turn with Sundial of the Infinite or Obeka, Brute Chronologist and keep the copy. There's a lot of paths for builds here.

[nerdog]

If you want to try some shananigans try the new march of the machine commanders some have outlandish attack and others will make people hate u.But if u asked me try the "Drana and Linvala" commander.

[Landale]

So you want things that are not tribal nor graveyard based, correct? I'll use a few commanders I've worked with for suggestions.

Agrus Kos, Eternal Soldier wants a large board, so tokens, and targeted abilities that buff you. For two mana a turn, you could have Duelist's Heritage give your entire board double strike, or for 5 you could give everything you've got +2/+2, flying, and draw for each off Basilica Skullbomb. You can also get equipment shenanigans with stuff like Surestrike Trident, 6 mana and your board just does damage directly to whatever, or turn Heartseeker into a repeatable 7 mana one sided board wipe.
It will, however, likely end up with a slight soldier tribal sub theme, just because most boros tokens generally will be that if not human or goblin.
https://deckstats.net/decks/168446/2878344-agrus-kos-eternal-solider/en

Neera, Wild Mage wants to be a spellslinger that is manipulating the top of the deck to cast expensive spells for cheap. She's also a fairly amusing token combo deck if you build that way, which I did. Include a bunch of stuff to make creature tokens, but no actual creatures beyond a Displacer Kitten. Make a creature token, Polymorph it into the Displacer Kitten, cast literally anything while you've got Grapeshot in your deck or some sort of cast = damage trigger like Ral, Storm Conduit in play, and win.
Of note, it can't really have many counterspells in it, due to the way Neera and the Kitten work. You could only safely include counters that have some secondary option that doesn't require targeting to keep the loop going.
https://deckstats.net/decks/168446/2569902-neera-wild-mage

Jon Irenicus, Shattered One is a bad gifts deck focused around combat manipulation. You keep everyone pointed at each other through goad and Propaganda type effects while giving them buffed up but detrimental cards like Archfiend of the Dross or Hellcarver Demon. You can only keep people off you for so long though, so things to reclaim your stuff like Homeward Path are necessary.
The way I built him does involve a little bit of recursion, mostly just to keep the ball rolling if people are finding ways to dispose of your gifts.
Incidentally, you could build a nobody wins deck with him, stacking in stuff like Bronze Bombshell or Bog Serpent where the game becomes trapped in an endless loop of "Sacrifice this. But you can't." forcing a draw.
https://deckstats.net/decks/168446/2522600-jon-irenicus-shattered-one

[CleanBelwas]

Here are some recent commanders I've found to be fun:

Ashnod the Uncaring - my personal favourite of the last few years. Kind of aristocraty, but gets very nutty very quickly.
Auntie Blyte, Bad Influence - A fun balancing act.
Baba Lysaga, Night Witch - Interesting with man lands and liquimetal torque.
Karlach, Fury of Avernus - double attack triggers can get wild and backgrounds mean colours are kind of open. I've made and Izzet and a Rakdos version, both were really fun.
Myrkul, Lord of Bones - Kind of similar to Baba Lysaga. Can do some very wild and cool stuff when you're messing with card types. Incredible art too.
Rith, Liberated Primeval - there is something funny to me about "doing too much damage" tribal.
Sarevok, Deathbringer - This is an incredibly fun commander to build around and play. Kind of like Measure of Wickedness in the command zone.
The Beamtown Bullies -  This deck produced some of the funniest moments playing commander in recent times for me.
Xira, the Golden Sting - kind of interesting commander, but the best part is the token she makes.
Zur, Eternal Schemer - A fun novelty with surprisingly powerful results.

For something a little different, I present to you...

Evelyn, the Covetous - or Grixis Grandma Gonti as I call her. This is just a pet deck that is an extension of the Minigame Tribal deck I built a while a go. It's just pet cards that make me happy. Measure of Wickedness, Hidetsugu's Second Rite, Takklemaggot, Jumbo Imp. It just makes me happy every time I play it. I would highly recommend building a deck where you don't give even a single shit about who the commander is or what the power level is or anything (if you do not already have such a deck). Just full to the brim of cards you like.

[anjinsan]

Well, you can build around a commander you find interesting, or you can just make an interesting deck built around some other idea. And, you could just as easily build an old commander in an interesting way. Still, there are plenty of recent gems... I'm not sure how far back we're going, so I'll just go backward in time until I get bored...

The Future
Look away if you care about spoilers... some MoM commanders have already been revealed and, whilst these don't actually exist yet, I'm pretty psyched. Heliod, the Warped Eclipse seems pretty funky and Jin-Gitaxias is just bonkers, but I'm most excited for Thalia and the Gitrog Monster (aka "Thalrog" - you heard it here first). They're one of these value commanders with lots of text who give you "value", but also lots of things to build around (rather than just "play a land, draw a card" boring value) and lots of different directions you can take them. Is this a lands deck? An aristocrats deck? A stax deck? It likely has a graveyard element but needn't be focused on that. I'm thinking a kind of control (even "aikido", if you will): they offer value, a useful mild stax/control/provoke effect, and the world's best rattlesnake blocker, all in the command zone.

All Will Be One
The dominus cycle here are all build-arounds, but I think will see more play in other decks. Glissa Sunslayer seems very interesting, though the first strike/deathtouch is possibly trumped now by Thalrog. Potentially a bit oppressive (Phyrexian Scriptures -> repeat) but looks like an unusual deck at any rate. Ria Ivor, Bane of Bladehold is also a bit unusual. So far I've mostly been enjoying Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa, who I think kinda threw people with her odd playpattern (poison people, but don't kill them so that you can... steal their cards?). I've found it's actually a bit too easy sometimes to kill people with poison (at least, that's what Yawgmoth, Thran Physician tells me) once you've managed to get them to corrupted, but hey. I did also tool up a Vishgraz deck; this doesn't have to be poison either, since this is a big beater who makes extra bodies on ETB. We may not be talking Prossh here but I see that and I don't think poison, I think: Skullclamp, Smokestack and Descent into Madness (people are prejudiced against poison and will hate you, so make a stax deck instead). Also, Abzan Blink? That's not that weird when you think about it but it's not like we have any other command who fits that archetype.

Jumpstart 2022
There are a few funky dudes here for sure, especially if you like tribal or tribal-ish. Argus Kros, Eternal Soldier may be the coolest, though in hindsight building him around equipment perhaps wasn't that wise (he does save mana on Sunforger activations if you play to do enough, though!). Zask, Skittering Swarmlord seems surprisingly combo-y. Morganator 2.0 doesn't know what to do with him, but I do: Ashes of the Fallen.  Also continuing the theme of "too much value for monowhite", Preston the Vanisher.

Brothers' War
If you can't find an interesting commander here you're not trying hard enough. We have three Mishras and three Urzas, and three meld commanders - who doesn't want a meld commander!? Both Lorans are cool. Like, seriously, I haven't had chance to play it for real yet but testing suggests my Loran of the Third Path deck will draw more cards than a monoblue deck with two Teferi's Ageless Insight, plus she removes artifacts and enchantments! Ashnod... frankly combos too easily, but pretty cool. Also can do funky things like turning fetchlands into artifacts if you think outside the box. Special mention to Queen Kayla bin Kroog.

Battle for Baldur's Gate
Backgrounds mean a bajillion new not-partner pairings. You can put together some really funky things this way. We also got Alaundo the Seer (tap/untap "cast massive things for free", probably storm, in Simic of all colours!  ), Duke Ulder Ravenguard, Zevlor, Elturel Exile, and many more.
Honestly there are too many good options for me to make any coherent suggestions here!

Dominaria United
The "most interesting" award has to go to Ramses, Assassin Lord. What does this do to multiplayer politics? Whatever it is, it probably isn't good for you... but it's sure interesting! Also note that you don't have to kill people with assassins. I've fooled around with "target player loses" tribal, and Ramses Dimir Storm; basically anything that can kill one person (but wouldn't normally be good at killing everyone) suddenly becomes way more viable and, whilst voltron/aggro is the first thing that springs to mind, it's not the only thing (maybe this is... I dunno, a Final Punishment deck? Get creative!).
In fact, there are a lot of cool commanders here, but Rasputin the Oneiromancer probably has to get second place as interesting/weird. One of my current favourites, though, is Ratadrabik of Urborg - because Ozrhov clones, that's why.

Street of New Capenna
This is the set that brought us both Parnesse, the Subtle Brush and Vazi, Keen Negotiator. What more do you want? Oh, a pseudo-flash discard commander who cheats commander tax? Let me introduce Oskar, Rubbish Reclaimer. A Naya "secret commander" commander, for all those Brash Taunter "stop hitting yourself" or "Why isn't Tamanoa legendary?" decks? Well, Rocco, Carabetti Caretaker will sort you out. How about a monowhite commander who draws cards? Ha, no way! Oh, wait: Bennie Bracks, Zoologist.

Kamaigawa: Neon Dynasty
I have to talk about one of my new all-time favourite commanders: Tameshi, Reality Architect. And yes, the reality he architects could be a dystopian future in which all citizens are subject to a Decree of Silence and/or plugged into a Mindslaver. But this guy can be build in so many ways: artifacts, enchantments, "bounce tribal", Azorius landfall...! Like I said: lots of text, lots of flexibility, plus card draw all in the command zone. EDIT: Also a graveyard angle, but a few hops from your classic reanimator.

Whilst I'm here I guess I can mention "They said dumping 2-5 permanents onto the battlefield every turn wasn't a big deal" Ao, the Dawn Sky, "Board wipes and X spells for 3 mana" Hinata, Dawn-Crowned, "I like to attack (or maybe I like Cunning Rhetoric type effects)" Isshin, Two Heavens as One, "Azorius Reanimator Isn't Even Cool Any More" Shorikai, Genesis Engine, "monogreen whatever-the-hell" (creatureless control?) Shigeki, Jukai Visionary, and whilst you're at it you may as well try the challenge of Myojin of Grim Betrayal.

[WWolfe]

Wow, you guys certainly gave me a ton of good suggestions to digest. I'm going to take a good look at each of these and figure something out by this weekend probably.

You guys rock!

[WWolfe]

Took a little longer than expected but found the commander I wanted to build around. Talked to my playgroup and they're okay with using him so here we go...

https://deckstats.net/decks/6217/2997449-megatron-mayhem

[anjinsan]

Cool.

Huh, looks like w3 all forgot the Transformers, too. Megaton certainly seems one of the more fun; I also like Flamewar a lot, but I play on Cockatrice and the flipping is annoying to do. A few of the others seem worth a try, too.