Commander 2016: Red

I still think the best selection of cards by color are in White. Let's see what Red has to offer.

Charging Cinderhorn: In a balanced table someone will be attacking this turn. It reads like a card with limited use that can cause mayhem in the right situation, which fits what Red is supposed to do.
Divergent Transformation: I would have to choose the two biggest threats, and then hope that the free cast does not come back to bite me.
Frenzied Fugue: An Act of Treason for permanents is a really strong card. It's an even stronger card if you also play a card that reads 'sacrifice a permanent you control.'

Goblin Spymaster: Pure mayhem. I like it. If you buff this and wipe for -1/-1, you can get rid of all those tokens while causing your opponents to attack with creature they don't want to attack with. It can definitely come back to bit you.
Runehorn Hellkite: Another 'this card can go horribly wrong when you cast it' card. Your opponents are getting seven cards, and some of them may not have any cards in hand.... I am not getting why this card would work most of the time. I am thinking of situations when you cast this card and pretty much guarantee you lose. Maybe if the table is down to you and one opponent and it makes sense for that one player to cause them to discard their hand and draw seven new cards... I am still puzzled in finding the up side of this effect.
Alesha, Who Smiles at Death: In Commander, you should not have too many low drops. I don't see this card having a big effect on games.

Blasphemous Act: One incredible board wipe in Commander.
Breath of Fury: Reads like a game finisher if well timed. You are losing the creature if you are able to deal combat to the player, and then you get the bonus of untapping and attacking again.
Chaos Warp: Well named. This effect can be awesome, and it can be game crippling, hence the word 'Chaos' in the name.

Daretti, Scrap Savant: Let's quote what it does.
[+2: Discard up to two cards, then draw that many cards.
−2: Sacrifice an artifact. If you do, return target artifact card from your graveyard to the battlefield.
−10: You get an emblem with "Whenever an artifact is put into your graveyard from the battlefield, return that card to the battlefield at the beginning of the next end step."
Daretti, Scrap Savant can be your commander.]
Whichever deck Daretti is in, having Daretti will make up for any of the other red cards that can backfire (and there seem to be enough of these in red).
Dragon Mage: I am not getting the up side with this card. Your opponents are often going to have less than seven cards. True, when they draw a new batch of seven cards, they will be drawing some lands. Still, this can go sideways on you, I think.
Godo, Bandit Warlord: Seems like a weird include because some of the wording favors Samurai, and I am sure the Commander deck this card is in does not have a bunch of samurai.

Grab the Reins: You get a lot, and for a lot of mana. Its Commander, it's OK.
Hellkite Igniter: With a lot of artifacts, it can hit for a lot. Nice that it has Haste.
Hellkyte Tyrant: Trample makes it deal damage to a player much more easily, and if you steal a bunch of artifacts, you can use them to boost Hellkite Igniter.

Humble Defector: I played against this card in Standard, and, yes, there are ways to make it a one sided card draw, but I was not looking forward to playing it. Maybe it's because I like more linear forms of play.
Kzuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs: It can deter opponents from attacking you, or it can give you tokens. Either way, there is a bonus involved.
Past in Flames: I think this is the most valuable card of all of the decks at the point of being spoiled. Of course, this product will be printed to demand, and that means that the current price of Past in Flames is not that important anymore. An incredible late game play with a lot of available mana.

Reforge the Soul: This is the third 'discard your hand, draw seven cards' I have come across. Unless I am missing something, this effect is a little lame unless you have some effect that benefits from it, and I have not come across it yet in these cards (something like 'whenever an opponent draws a card, they lose 1 life').
Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer: A good way to protect a valuable artifact with the sacrifice of a less valuable artifact. You can play it early game. Someone will want to target remove it.
Stalking Vengeance: Another deterrent card. I imagine some players will be happy chump blocking to make sure the damage cost does not get assessed.

Taurean Mauler: This was one of my go to creatures when I was making Modern decks featuring Hardened Scales. This thing can get big fast. An unique and great reprint.
Trash for Treasure: Another 'discard an artifact to recover a better artifact' card. Sounds good to me depending on how treasured the recovered artifact is.
 Volcanic Vision: It can be an easy board wipe against all opponents. That is one awesome effect in a Commander game.

Wheel of Fate: This is the fourth 'discard your hand, draw seven cards' I have come across. There must be a commander that does something awesome when this effect gets triggered.
Whims of the Fates: Wow, one unique way for everyone to start from a different strategic vantage in their respective gameplay. This is an awesome card in multiplayer.
Whipflare: A great way to clear the board of a bunch of weenies.

Commander 2016: Black

I am a sucker for counters and was gaga over the White cards. The Blue cards are pretty good too.

Cruel Entertainment: Very interesting multiplayer card. I guess this is a good way to force two of your opponents to weaken each other.
Curse of Vengeance: Nice addition to the Curse cycle from Innistrad and Dark Ascension. It's only a one drop.... nice. That can be a lot of spells casts, you just need to be sure that the cursed player will die before you do!
Curtain's Call: It's an instant, and with five opponents, it's a one drop. I am loving Undaunted.

Magus of the Will: Very interesting card. In the late game in Commander, say you have ten mana available, you can cast this mid game and if it is not removed, you have seven mana to cast cards from your graveyard. That is great.
Parting Thoughts: A somewhat limited card. The creature you destroy better have counters! True, if it doesn't have counters, it is well costed (similar to Murder, at 1 Black Black).
Army of the Damned: Fun junk mythic from Innistrad. In Commander, it is a much more possible play.

Bane of the Living: From Legions. Clever board wipe.
Beacon of Unrest: Great reprint. It's versatile. I want to play it.
Brutal Hordechief: I had a lot of fun playing this card in Standard. It goes well with Hellrider from Dark Ascension.

Executioner's Capsule: Somewhat limited, but with many players, someone will have a nonblack creature you want to destroy.
Festercreep: Very good against a zillion 1/1 tokens. Otherwise, somewhat limited. Now, if you make it the source of counters you can add with other cards, you can remove multiple counters for a bigger effect.
Ghastly Conscription: Great effect in Commander. When done right and with luck, it should place you in a really strong position in comparison to all other players, and it will make you the table's target!

Guiltfeeder: Nice effect against the correct player. It's a mid game play, and some of your opponents will have a board full of blockers. I wonder how effective this can be.
In Garruk's Wake: Nice late game effect to clear out some of the last players still standing.
Languish: Solid is solid. It should be very effective in Commander.

Necroplasm: I have never played this card. It reads strong. If there are lots of one mana and two mana creatures on the board, someone will have to remove this or else. On the flip side, it can have a limited effect if it is removing three mana creatures when everything on the board is at a lower mana cost. Dredge still puzzles me. Someday, I would like to play a dredge deck and understand it well.
Sangromancer: Awesome card to boost above the Languish threshold.
Waste Not: A community design, and a really fun card in any format. I am not seeing enough cards that cause opponents to discard to make it really powerful when played only with these cards.

Wight of Precinct Six: This can get insanely big with a table full of opponents. I want to see that!

Commander 2016: Blue

Let's continue with Blue. White was awesome.

Coastal Breach: Great with Aetherworks Marvel... wrong product. Anyways, another 'Delve for multiplayer' card. I am guessing there is one in every color?
Deepglow Skate: Awesome with a lot of Proliferate, also if you have many planeswalkers out. With planeswalkers, this can be the trigger for an ultimate. Also, if you are able to place negative counters on opponents' permanents, this can mean destruction for those permanents.
Fairie Artisans: You get to create the token copy only one at a time, and once you create a new one, the last one gets exiled. The copy does not get haste. It will give you a higher artifact count, but you can't attack with it. You can only use it to block. I guess that's all right.

Grip of Phyrexis: Excellent. You get to keep the newly controlled equipment. That's great. Your opponent can get it back with a 'bring back to hand' card or destroy it to put it in their graveyard. Otherwise, it's yours now.
Manifold Insights: This set gets better with more players. Some of the effects become amazing if there are seven players (six opponents). This card can give you such an awesome draw with six opponents. They have to choose a nonland card, and that is very important. That clause makes this card great in almost any draw, and if you draw eight lands, it will get you out of a mana flood situation-or get you mana screwed if land is what you needed.
Academy Elite: Another card that gets better the more opponents you have. The three mana activation is repeatable.

Aeon Chronicler: I am not a fan of the cards in hand effect. It will at least be a card draw engine, and that's better than the cards in hand effect.
Arcane Denial: Great play when you are trying to eliminate an opponent and there is no next turn when those cards would have been drawn.
Chain of Vapor: If you don't mind losing a land, this card will work well. It reads like a desperate play, though.

Chasm Stalker: So much fun playing this card when it was in Standard. It can become a real nuisance to your opponents. It's a cousin effect to that of Hangarback Walker.
Chief Engineer: A great card with a bunch of artifact creature tokens on the board-e.g. Thopters. I played it a lot when it was in Standard.
Devastation Tide: A casual card to be sure, and not one of the better miracles from Avacyn Restored. In Commander, though, all permanents can mean many, many permanents!

Disdainful Stroke: In Commander, this is a very effective counterspell.
Etherium Sculptor: Solid reprint. An auto-include in many Blue/Artifacts decks.
Ethersworn Adjudicator: A mid-game flyer in Commander. Nice target destruction.

Evacuation: Powerful effect in Commander.
Master of Etherium: It's great that it applies only to artifacts you control. Would be much better in an artifact creature token deck, yet in Commander you can get to have many artifacts on the board.
Minds Aglow: A very interesting card. I would play it when I had a ton of mana and I knew I was not going to mill myself, but also near the end of the game to make sure that no one puts down a lot of mana just to avoid getting milled.

Propaganda: Another great lockdown card from the old days (Tempest). Great artwork too.
Read the Runes: A costly way to draw cards unless you have dropped a lot of tokens that are not as important to you as what you can draw.
Reins of Power: If you are the one playing a deck where creatures are not a big part of your strategy, you can pick the opponent with the best creatures and drop it on that opponent. That will work great.

Spellwine: A great way to remove an offending instant or sorcery from one of your opponents' graveyards.
Swan Song: Great card from Theros. If what you are protecting is more important than the created token, it's worth it.
Tezzeret's Gambit: Sweet card draw with a counters bonus mid game. It's refreshing to see Phyrexian mana get reprinted, as broken as it proved to be.

Thrummingbird: Proliferate is one of my favorite abilities. It comes out early game in a format with lots of fatties. I can see being able to hit with this unopposed for a few turns early game.
Treasure Cruise: Nice! So broken! In Commander, it will definitely be as good as casting Ancestral Recall.
Trinket Mage: Better in Vintage to tutor for one of the Moxen. A solid card here too.

Vedalken Engineer: a solid mana dork in decks that are running four colors.
Windfall: Awesome reprint. Another card that gets better the more players there are.

Commander 2016: White

I was not planning to do a detailed card by card review for this product. I was only planning a fast glance at it. I just wanted to take a look at all of the great reprints. But as I started going through the cards, I found myself wanting to write a note for each card, and soon enough I had a detailed review in the works. Here it is.

I am much more interested in getting all these cards and putting them into a cube, then adding more cards to have more fun combos. This, in my opinion, is the best Commander product to date, just because of all of the great reprints in it. There have been a few bombs in the Commander decks of the last two years, and for each one, I bought the one deck I thought had the best card (True-Name Nemesis and Wurmcoil Engine). Of these three years, this is the first product for which I want to get all the decks.

The sets like Conspiracy that are aimed towards drafting have a few awesome reprint bombs, and then a bunch of limited jank that is unplayable outside of limited. I can't imagine opening a Conspiracy pack looking for powerful cards in the common and uncommon slots. The opposite is true for this product. The commons and uncommons are solid, and some are just absurd broken-e.g. Treasure Cruise. I would love it if some day Wizards issued a side Commander product with packs for the cards in these pre-constructed (precon) decks. I would even change the distribution of those Commander packs to 7 commons, 4 uncommons, 3 rares, and 1 mythic rare in every pack. I would pay $10 for one of those packs.

A brief note of thanks to the designers: you get us casual players, you get us. We love counters and Johnny combos. They belong in Commander, and here they are.

Duelist's Heritage: I like the multiplayer focus of new Commander cards. Maybe someday I will be able to routinely play with six or seven people. I am not there yet.
Entrapment Maneuver: So you are being attacked by a 7/7 creature. At instant speed, you drop 7 1/1 tokens. It's a way to live to the next turn, and maybe stall for a few turns.
Orzhov Advikist: This is a 'group hug' card since everyone gets to do this. Of course, if you are the only one with a 'counters matter' deck, you will gain the most from this effect.

Selfless Squire: In Commander, you are more likely to have four unused mana. If your deck has other 'prevent damage' cards, this creature can get really big every time someone attacks you, or act as a deterrent for you to be attacked. BUT, all this means that this creature has a 'hit me with target removal' sign on it's forehead. And in Commander, all opponents can have a lot of unused mana, including your opponent.
Sublime Exhalation: Delve for multiplayer, I like it a lot! It would be awesome in a Standard set, even if we end up in a Treasure Cruise situation. I so want to play this at a table with six opponents!
Aban Falconer: Very useful. You get a counter on it, and you don't have to put in that many flyers in your deck.

Blazing Archon: Nice way to end games in Commander. Also, has a 'destroy target creature' banner on its forehead.
Blind Obedience: Great reprint. Very good in the early game, and not so useful in mid and late game. Extort is the real winner on this card if you have a way to cast many cards.
Brave the Sands: Very powerful for only two mana. Menace and Vigilance? I will take it!

Cathar's Crusade: In Commander, this is bonkers. Yes, in constructed it comes in too late in Modern, but we are talking Commander here. You are going to have the mana, and this comes in mid game in Commander. You can play a lot of creatures after you drop this in Commander.
Citadel Siege: Go counter crazy and tap the daylights out of your opponents. Play it!
Cusrodi Soulbinders: Wow. Play it when there are ten or more creatures on the battlefield. This card would be pure joy with six opponents all playing creature-heavy decks.

Dispeller's Capsule: Useful in some circumstances. Again, the way to enjoy all of these cards is to have a table full of players, and have each player on a different deck. Someone is going to have a bunch of artifact and enchantments and you can play this against them.
Elite Scaleguard: Mid game fun with counters.
Ghostly Prison: Awesome reprint. One awesome lock card.

Hoofprints of the Stag: You can play it early, and every time you get enough counters, you can drop a 4/4 Flying token? Awesome.
Hushwing Gryff: Great ability to hose Enter the Battlefield (ETB) abilities for your opponents. A card like this one will likely be in the next block to hose all those ETB Energy cards in Kaladesh.
Mentor of the Meek: One of my favorite creatures. So much card draw out of this guy! Pure joy.

Mirror Entity: Absurd fun, enough said. Well, I have to say more. So many ways to make this big... so many ways.
Oblation: A great way to take out a major threat. Oh, you played some big Eldrazi? Here you go!
Open the Vaults: Play it after you have exiled all or most of your opponent's graveyards. Black goes so well with this card. Have a sacrifice outlet and dump a bunch of goodies in your graveyard pronto.

Phyrexian Rebirth: Not the rare you want to open in a $10 New Phyrexia pack (I have experienced this exact bad feeling). In Commander? Absolutely bonkers.
Revellark: Great reprint. So many one and two drops to reanimate with this!
Reverse the Sands: Now, this is a fun decision to make. Make the player doing the best take the smallest life total. I like it.

Sanctum Gargoyle: Classic reprint. In Commander, you can play this mid game, this can be a gigantic artifact.
Sphere of Safety: Great lock-down card.
Swords to Plowshares: The Path to Exile of Legacy. Great in all format, and even better in Commander, where your opponent gaining 7 life isn't that big of a deal. Best artwork (Therese Nielsen, my favorite artist). Must have. Incidentally, one of the oldest cards in this product, going all the way back to Limited Edition Alpha.

Wave of Reckoning: Another great board wipe. A very creative design.
Windborn Muse: Part of the muse cycle (there is one for every color). Another great lockdown card.

Solitaire VIntage: Saheel Rai Build-around

This shell is the easiest way for me to see Saheel Rai at work.

Only in Vintage.

Here I use the -2 ability to make a second Thran Dynamo. There are two types of artifact replications that I see this planeswalker helping with: a high power artifact creature you just cast, or a mana rock artifact that allows you to cast something a turn early.

Here, I use that extra mana rock to case a Wurmcoil Engine one turn earlier.

In that same game I was able to set up a really strong position very early.

That first build needed more Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and it needed more card draw. In some games, I was able to cast one big artifact creature and then I would sit there waiting for something else to come out.

Now we are talking. A solitaire turn 1 only possible in Vintage.

Here is a great early game state.

And turn 4 I can copy one of my creatures for the win.

With Foundry Inspector, I can bring out my artifacts faster.

Here is a solitaire turn 2 where I copied a Sol Ring to cast Foundry Inspector.

And when I copy a Foundry Inspector, I can cast several artifacts at a discount.

Here is great solitaire turn 5 state thanks to copying Foundry Inspector.