This Ancient Commander Has Gotten Better With Age! Arcanis, the Omnipotent in EDH

Hey friends, it’s Tomer, and I’m back with another “pre-Commander” legendary brew! If you’ve been following my articles here you know that I’m kinda obsessed with oldschool legendaries, ones that were designed way before Commander was a format.

 Because none of them were designed for the format and come from a time when cards were weaker – especially creatures! – they often provide a unique deckbuilding challenge that you rarely see with modern “made for Commander” designs. 

Instead of 2025’s Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER, which comes in, equips himself, already has haste to immediately swing, draws you cards, gives you treasures, deals damage to be your finisher, cooks you dinner and lets you choose the movie to watch before snuggling in bed – instead of all that, you can pick a pre-Commander legendary like Selenia, Dark Angel, and 5 mana 3/3 flyer that can bounce itself to your hand for 2 life! That’s it, that’s all she does! Whee!

I say that sarcastically but sincerely I love Selenia way more as a brewer: she’s my Lifeswap commander, activating her ability multiple times (holding priority) to bring my life total down to 1 or 2 and then swapping life total with Profane Transfusion, or gain all the life back with Children of Korlis, then turn the lifegain into opponent’s lifeloss with Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose.

I love my other pre-Commander, Karona, False God, for similar reasons: I built her as an Auras deck that slaps on goad auras like Shiny Impetus so she’s forced to attack someone other than me, then I hand her around the table and watch my opponents kill themselves. Or the auras get removed and Karona kills me instead. Always a fun time regardless!

I’ve also recently covered another pre-Commander in a previous article here: Dralnu, Lich Lord, where we turn his downside of sacrificing permanents into a win con by donating him to opponents and then dealing oodles of damage to him so they have to sac their board. Eeeevil!

So now I’m back to talk about another pre-Commander, my favorite oldborder legendary and in my opinion one of the strongest to bust out in 2025: Arcanis, the Omnipotent

Out of all 2,589+ legendary creatures in the game, Arcanis is peak nostalgia dopamine for me. I distinctly remember coming across this mysterious wizard as a kid and it capturing my imagination like no other legendary ever did. The name. The flavor text. The ability to draw THREE cards every single turn. And the art! I was enthralled. Who was this mysterious badass character, what was his deal? I never found out, but the card definitely left an impression.

I’m actually surprised that it took so long for me to actually add Arcanis to my personal collection, but I finally did so for a Commander Clash episode, which may or may not have been released by the time this article comes out (episode is scheduled for 11th of July). Without spoiling too much from that video (go watch it if you wanna see gameplay footage), I will say the deck is a blast to pilot, and I want to share with you how it was built.

So unlike most oldschool commanders, Arcanis actually isn’t too janky – he won’t randomly kill you like Selenia or Karona can. In fact, he’s actually a good card draw engine that doesn’t require tons of hoops to get his value, just tap him to draw 3 cards, easy! Sure, he costs 6 mana in a color not well-known for ramp, doesn’t have haste, and his only protection from removal is a 4-mana self-bounce which isn’t great, but these are all things we can easily fix in the 99. Honestly out of all the oldborder commanders, I’d bet Arcanis is in the Top 10 most powerful, probably even Top 5! If properly built around he’s certainly able to hang with 2025 commanders no problem!

Alright, let’s talk deckbuilding. Arcanis taps to draw cards. Therefore more untapping = more draw = more win. There’s numerous cards that can untap Arcanis these days, some double as protection like Shore Up, we’ve got two classic combo auras that untap like Freed from the Real, but the unsung heroes of this deck are actually the flexible repeatable untappers like Ioreth of the Healing House. These are 9 creatures that basically all have the same ability: they can untap another permanent. So you can untap Arcanis to draw 3 more cards, but they also double as ramp by untapping lands and mana rocks.

But we aren’t just untapping any old land/rock, no, we’re going big! Sceptre of Eternal Glory, Thran Dynamo, Throne of Eldraine, Coveted Jewel, Gilded Lotus, all of these are tapping for 3+ mana, so a Vizier of Tumbling Sands untapping one of these for us is generating 3+ mana! Same thing applies to our lands: we’re running as many lands that tap for multiple mana, like Arid Archway, Coral Atoll, and best of all Lotus Field. With these and untappers we’ll be swimming in not just card draw but also mana!

There’s other exciting untappers in the deck too, like Sting, the Glinting Dagger, which can give Arcanis haste and then also let him draw 3 cards on everyone’s turn, so that’s 12 cards draw per turn cycle. Unstoppable Plan and Intellectual Offering are two extremely potent mass-untappers, so tons of extra mana and another Arcanis activation. Retreat to Coralhelm looks innocent enough usually untapping one thing per turn but if you manage to combine it with PuPu UFO or Walking Atlas you get to dump all the lands in your hand on to the battlefield, and we can draw a LOT of lands once we get going. But my favorite untapper is Chakram Retriever, this good pupper allows you to essentially storm off if you’re drawing cards with Arcanis and got a mana untapper on board too.

After we make oodles of mana and card draw, we’ll put our opponents out of their misery by winning the game. There’s a few ways to do that: option 1 is the beatdown plan, drop down a Chasm Skulker, Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim, or a fully level Wizard Class, draw cards to grow our creatures, punch people for damage. Option 2 is drawing tons of cards and then either making someone lose with Atemsis, All-Seeing, drain out all opponents with Psychosis Crawler, or making us win with Twenty-Toed Toad. And finally Option 3 is combo off to draw our entire deck – there’s a few different ways to do this like Aphetto Alchemist tapping to untap itself infinite times with Unctus, Grand Metatect out so you loot through your entire deck – and then win with the classic Laboratory Maniac (or Thassa’s Oracle if you want to be more sweaty).

The rest of the deck is filled with cards to protect our board and slow down our opponents. We’re Blue so we’ve got all the countermagic and bounce to deal with anything, but also since we draw so many cards we can run free card disadvantage interaction like Commandeer, Foil, Misdirection, and March of Swirling Mist too.

My favorite interaction card in the deck though is Domineering Will, which can give us surprise blockers to deal with attackers, or it can untap our creatures like Arcanis for another round of activations, and we can even treat it as a Blue Threaten if we have a haste enabler like Lightning Greaves and swing at people with their own creatures. Lots of fun!

Alright, so here’s my current personal paper version. Budget is currently like $180usd (tcgplayer mid) or 150eu (cardmarket).

That’s my current list. I think it’s a comfortable bracket 3. There’s a lack of draw in the 99 because I feel pretty confident in dropping Arcanis and refilling the hand with him before he dies, but it would certainly be bad if you dump your hand + Arcanis and get wiped before you can refill.

There’s plenty of room to power up/down the list depending on your playgroup. The biggest upgrade to the deck would be Mind Over Matter, which easily lets you draw your deck and make infinite mana, but I think that’s too strong for my own groups. I’m also currently not running any game changers but generic stuff like Cyclonic Rift, Fierce Guardianship, and Rhystic Study are obviously great here as they are in any deck.

Anyway, thank you for reading! Arcanis truly holds a special place in my heart, it’s the first ever legendary creature to spark wonder in kid me when I started playing, and it’s really cool to see that he actually is still quite strong even decades later. In fact I’d argue that he’s one of the few oldschool options that got better with age thanks to all the strong untap cards they’ve been printing in recent years! That’s all I got for now but I’ll be back with another brew next month!