When was Commander 2016 released?

Commander 2016 (set code C16) was released on November 11, 2016 by Wizards of the Coast. It is officially styled as Commander (2016 Edition).

How many cards are in Commander 2016?

Commander 2016 contains 351 cards in total, spread across five preconstructed decks: Entropic Uprising, Open Hostility, Stalwart Unity, Breed Lethality, and Invent Superiority.

What is the partner mechanic introduced in Commander 2016?

Partner is a keyword ability introduced in Commander 2016 that allows you to have two commanders simultaneously, as long as both have partner. Your deck's colour identity becomes the combined colour identity of both commanders, opening up a huge range of new deck-building possibilities.

What is the undaunted mechanic in Commander 2016?

Undaunted is a keyword introduced in Commander 2016 that reduces a spell's cost by '{1}' for each opponent you have beyond the first. In a typical four-player Commander game, this means undaunted spells cost three mana less than their printed cost — a mechanic designed specifically to scale with multiplayer.

What are the five Commander 2016 precon deck names?

The five preconstructed decks in Commander 2016 are: Entropic Uprising, Open Hostility, Stalwart Unity, Breed Lethality, and Invent Superiority. Each deck is built around a four-colour combination, leaving one colour out.

Is Commander 2016 worth buying today?

C16 introduced partner commanders and the undaunted mechanic, both of which remain relevant in Commander today. The individual decks may be harder to find at their original price points, but the cards — especially partner legends — are widely played and sought after for Commander deck building.

Commander 2016: Set Guide, Decks & Card List

Four-colour commanders were, for a long time, a glaring gap in Magic's design space. Commander 2016 filled it in spectacular fashion, releasing on November 11, 2016 as the annual entry in Wizards of the Coast's Commander preconstructed series. With 351 cards across five ready-to-play decks, C16 gave players their first real mechanical hooks for building around all four-colour combinations - and the format hasn't been the same since.

The five preconstructed decks

Each deck in Commander 2016 carries its own name and identity, centred on one of the five four-colour groupings (every combination of four colours, leaving one out):

Entropic Uprising - the chaos deck, built around unpredictable effects
Open Hostility - aggressive, going wide with creatures and combat
Stalwart Unity - a group hug and politics-friendly build
Breed Lethality - a counters-matter deck with a proliferate flavour
Invent Superiority - an artifacts-matter deck leaning into blue-white-black-red

Each deck comes with a primary legendary creature to lead it, all of them brand-new cards introduced in this set. These commanders are the real headline: four-colour legendary creatures had almost never appeared in Magic before C16, so the set handed Commander players a genuinely new design space to explore.

Themes and mechanics

Partner - the set's defining innovation

The single most impactful thing Commander 2016 introduced to Magic is the partner mechanic. Cards with partner carry the text 'Partner (You can have two commanders if both have partner.)' - meaning you can lead your deck with two different legendary creatures simultaneously, combining their colour identities to determine what cards you can play.

This was a quietly enormous design decision. At a stroke, it multiplied the number of viable Commander pairings by a huge factor, and it gave players a way to represent colour combinations that had no single legendary creature to anchor them. The partner commanders in C16 are smaller, more focused legends - each one doing a specific thing well - and the fun is in finding combinations that click together in unexpected ways.

Rules note: Your deck's colour identity when using two partner commanders is the union of both commanders' colour identities. So a white-blue partner plus a black-red partner gives you access to all four colours.

Undaunted - rewarding multiplayer

Commander 2016 also introduced undaunted, a keyword ability designed specifically for the multiplayer context Commander lives in. Spells with undaunted cost '{1}' less to cast for each opponent you have beyond the first - so in a standard four-player game, they're three mana cheaper than their printed cost.

It's an elegant piece of design. It makes certain high-impact spells feel appropriately scaled to a format where you're facing three opponents at once, and it rewards political awareness: the more enemies around the table, the more mana you save.

Lore and setting

Commander preconstructed sets don't tie into a single plane or ongoing story arc the way a standard expansion does. Commander 2016 draws from across Magic's multiverse, pulling legendary creatures, spells, and flavour from many different planes and settings. The five decks each have a distinct mechanical personality rather than a unified narrative, which is typical for the Commander series - the story being told here is the one you create at the table.

Set legacy

Honestly, Commander 2016 might be the most mechanically impactful Commander product released in the series' history up to that point.

Partner alone reshaped how people think about Commander deck construction. It became one of the most-discussed and most-built-around mechanics the format had ever seen, and Wizards has returned to it repeatedly - including partner variants in later sets like Commander Legends (2020). The simple act of allowing two commanders unlocked a staggering number of new deck concepts and archetypes that players are still exploring.

Undaunted, while a smaller contribution, is a clean example of designing mechanics that understand their format. It shows up on a handful of cards that remain staples in multi-colour Commander decks to this day.

C16 also holds the distinction of being the set that properly solved the four-colour commander problem. Before it, building a four-colour Commander deck meant either using a five-colour commander and restricting yourself artificially, or playing without any thematic leadership at all. The new four-colour legends and the partner framework gave every colour combination a home.

For players who came to Commander during or after 2016, partner is simply part of the landscape - it's always been there. But it was Commander 2016 that put it on the map, and the format is richer for it.