3 color Shard EDH / Commander Awards

From : #BeatTheBuylist - 18/04/2022

14 years ago (!!) the term "Shard" was born in the Shards of Alara set, where the plane of Alara was split into 5 sections - each only able to access three of the 5 mana colours.
This year, the latest set Streets of New Capenna brings back the Shard concept with warring crime Families, much like The Godfather, each Family has carved out it's own piece of the pie.
The center colour in the group is the "primary" colour, giving most of the direction and flavor of the cards, and the allied colours either side provide support mechanics. (Which is different to a wedge colour scheme where the support colours are the "enemy" colour pairs)

It's too early for New Capenna to be making a mark here, so lets look at the position BEFORE it drops!

1. Most popular commander
2. Most expensive Commander to build
3. Most salt inducing commander

Most Popular Shard Commander

An interesting top section here - on a very satisfying note, the top 5 is one of each shard combination - the top two most popular commanders Korvold, Fae-Cursed King]] and Alela, Artful Provocateur have two things going for them. First, they come from the [s[Throne Of Eldraine set - a famously overpowered set, and secondly, they are the commanders from the first ever set of brawl decks - cheap 60 card standard legal commander style decks, that are then fairly easy to upgrade to a full 100 card commander deck - Wizards wanted to push these decks power wise, so a lot of players picked them up

I didn't expect Arcades to be in the top 5 here - the engine is strong, but the deck kind of builds itself here - play a wall or blocker with defender which replaces itself with a new card, then use all those high toughness cards to attack in. I would have thought it was a little restrictive - but I guess the concept is a bit different

Rounding out the top 5, we have Kess, Dissident Mage, who has strong CEDH backing and Gishath, Sun's Avatar - lets face it, who DOESN'T like smashing face with dinosaur tribal?

Decks	Commander
7,354	Korvold, Fae-Cursed King
5,646	Alela, Artful Provocateur
4,894	Arcades, the Strategist
4,800	Kess, Dissident Mage
4,761	Gishath, Sun's Avatar
4,455	Chulane, Teller of Tales
4,364	Lord Windgrace
4,317	Nekusar, the Mindrazer
4,249	Oloro, Ageless Ascetic
4,096	Atla Palani, Nest Tender

Most Expensive Shard Commander

The number we're looking at here is the 75% quartile - 25% of decks for a commander are built to be more expensive than this price (so 75% are less expensive)

Also shown on the chart is the 90% quartile - so only 10% of decks are built to be more expensive than this - if the 90% marker lies outside the thin line, it is classed as an outlier to the data - an unusually high value compared to the rest

A few interesting call outs here:

• Partners, Partners EVERYWHERE! - Commander Legends brought in so many new partners, and its interesting to see that they absolutely dominate the most expensive list
• There is a huge gap between the top end decks of the top 6, and the rest of the pack - there is a shocking $10,000 difference in the 75% top end build for number 6 and 7 in the list!! These partner combinations almost DEMAND a high expense cost when deck building
• The top 10 most expensive shard commanders contain 7 and 3 partner combinations - Blue and Black are, true to what I would anecdotally expect, are the expensive colours to be in (Due to all the legacy playables in blue? hmmm..I'll probably look at this in a future article!)
• Who on earth is Gwendlyn Di Corci]] !? I'd honestly never seen that card before, which is exciting - From [s[Legends, look at that art! In the MTG Lore, she is known as "one of the greatest temptresses in Dominaria" (Wait...one of?! what are they doing over there?) - and lives on Urborg, and may have been responsible for killing Ramirez DePietro - early MTG lore sounds absolutely wild...oh, and the card is decidedly mediocre (giving a single targetted discard per turn), and currently costs $500, but THAT LORE....

75% $$$	Commander
$20,969.50	Armix, Filigree Thrasher // Kraum, Ludevic's Opus
$20,960.00	Kraum, Ludevic's Opus // Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools
$20,709.00	Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh // Silas Renn, Seeker Adept
$19,512.00	Armix, Filigree Thrasher // Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker
$18,960.50	Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker // Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools
$18,636.00	Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator // Tymna the Weaver
$8,610.25	Jeska, Thrice Reborn // Silas Renn, Seeker Adept
$8,118.50	Dargo, the Shipwrecker // Silas Renn, Seeker Adept
$7,040.00	Krark, the Thumbless // Silas Renn, Seeker Adept
$6,759.25	Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator // Vial Smasher the Fierce

Most Salt-Inducing Shard Commander

Using the EDHRec salt scores to rank our Shard Commanders, (Basically, this means the most maddening decks to play against - depending on what type of person you are, that might just mean the most fun to play), we see

• Again - dominated by partner combinations - the ability to have two salty effects in the command zone seems undeniably powerful
• and make up 9 out of the top 10 - this makes total sense - blue counterspells and black kill/discard/drain spells can be infuriating to play against (especially when you clone and double them up like the number one deck does)
• The lone deck (Thrasios, Triton Hero // Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful) in the pack was a little odd, however, it looks to me that the white doggo partner is thrown in just for access to Stax effects, such as Grand Abolisher and Drannith Magistrate ("Oh - did you want to play instants? play your commander? WHITE NOPE")
• A single non partner commander makes the list - Sen Triplets]] - one of the original Salty Shard commanders from [s[Shards Of Alara - Whats simultaneously more fun than playing someone else's cards, and more unfun than having your cards played on someone else's battlefield?

Salt Score Average	Commander
77.84	Sakashima of a Thousand Faces // Tymna the Weaver
73.47	Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker // Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools
68.02	Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator // Tymna the Weaver
67.04	Kraum, Ludevic's Opus // Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools
66.65	Armix, Filigree Thrasher // Kraum, Ludevic's Opus
66.23	Sen Triplets
64.53	Jeska, Thrice Reborn // Silas Renn, Seeker Adept
63.54	Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh // Silas Renn, Seeker Adept
61.62	Armix, Filigree Thrasher // Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker
59.11	Thrasios, Triton Hero // Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful

Wrap up

Thanks again for reading - what other subjects would you like to look at? Let me know on social media (click the icons at the bottom of the page) or comment below!.