Commander 2015 (C15): Set Guide and Overview

Every November, Wizards of the Coast drops a new batch of Commander preconstructed decks onto tables worldwide, and Commander 2015 - officially styled as Commander (2015 Edition) - was no exception. Released on November 13, 2015, C15 continued the annual tradition that had been building momentum since the original 2011 Commander release, following directly on from Commander 2014 (2014) and setting the stage for Commander 2016 (2016).

The set contains 342 cards spread across five preconstructed decks, each one designed to be picked up and played straight out of the box - and, more importantly, to give experienced players a foundation worth tinkering with.

The five decks

Commander 2015 shipped with five named preconstructed decks, each built around a different colour pair or identity:

| Deck Name | Primary Colours | |---|---| | Call the Spirits | White/Black | | Seize Control | Blue/Red | | Plunder the Graves | Black/Green | | Wade into Battle | Red/White | | Swell the Host | Green/Blue |

Each deck comes with a legendary creature as its face Commander, a 99-card singleton deck, and a mix of reprints alongside cards new to Commander. As with the wider Commander series, every deck is built for the multiplayer Commander format - 100-card singleton, starting life total of 40, and all the politics that entails.

Themes and mechanical identity

I'd encourage you to think of each C15 deck as a mechanical thesis statement. Wizards designs these products to highlight what each colour pair does best in Commander, and the five decks cover a wide spread of strategies.

Call the Spirits leans into the white/black identity of resilience and attrition - draining life, recurring threats from the graveyard, and grinding out value over a long game. Seize Control takes the blue/red approach: instants, sorceries, and taking things that don't belong to you, which is a very on-brand combination for those colours. Plunder the Graves is the green/black graveyard deck, treating the discard pile as a resource rather than a destination. Wade into Battle is red/white aggression - wide boards, equipment, and going over the top with combat. Swell the Host rounds things out with green/blue creature-based ramp and growth, the kind of deck that wins by making one thing very large.

Format check: All five decks are designed specifically for Commander (also called EDH). They're not legal in Standard, Modern, or Pioneer out of the box, though individual cards within them may be legal in various formats depending on when they were originally printed.

Limited and draft

Commander 2015 is a preconstructed product, not a booster-draft set, so there's no traditional Limited format associated with it. The decks aren't opened in boosters and drafted - they're sold as complete 100-card packages. If you're looking for a Limited experience from the 2015 product calendar, Battle for Zendikar (BFZ) and Oath of the Gatewatch were the Standard-legal sets released around the same time.

Playing and upgrading the decks

One of the things I genuinely appreciate about the annual Commander releases is how they function as starting points rather than finished products. Each C15 deck is perfectly functional on its own - you can sit down with one against three other people playing their own C15 decks and have a real game.

But the real joy, in my experience, is the upgrade path. Each deck signals clearly what it wants to do, and the Commander community has spent years mapping out which cards from the broader card pool slot naturally into each strategy. Whether you're piloting Plunder the Graves into a full graveyard-combo shell or just adding a few pieces to Swell the Host, the C15 decks are a solid foundation.

Lore and setting

Unlike a Standard set tied to a specific plane and story arc, Commander products are mechanically focused rather than lore-driven. The five C15 decks don't follow a single narrative or visit one particular plane. Instead, the legendary creatures leading each deck are drawn from across Magic's multiverse, making Commander products a wonderful place for Wizards to reprint or introduce commanders from planes and stories that might not get their own Standard set spotlight.

I don't have specific lore details about the individual commanders in C15 from the source material available to me, so I'd recommend checking the individual card pages on Scryfall or the MTG wiki for the story context behind each legendary creature.

Set legacy and place in Commander history

Commander 2015 sits comfortably in what I'd call the consolidation era of Commander products - the years when Wizards had proven the annual Commander release was a genuine success and was iterating on the formula. Commander 2014 had introduced the experiment of mono-colour decks and planeswalker commanders; C15 returned to the two-colour structure that had defined earlier releases.

The five-deck, five-colour-pair structure of Commander 2015 mirrors the original 2011 Commander release and Commander 2013, giving players a well-rounded spread of strategies and colour identities to explore. Compared to Commander 2016, which would push into four-colour decks and partner commanders the following year, C15 is a relatively traditional entry in the series - but that's not a criticism. Sometimes the comfortable formula is comfortable for good reason.

For players building or upgrading Commander decks today, C15 remains a point of reference for reprints and for some of the new-to-Commander cards introduced in its decks, many of which have gone on to become format staples in their respective archetypes.