How many new cards are in the Forgotten Realms Commander decks?

There are 62 new cards in the Forgotten Realms Commander (AFC) decks, with collector numbers #1–62. The remaining cards (numbers #63–331) are reprints from elsewhere in Magic's history.

Are Forgotten Realms Commander cards legal in Standard or Modern?

No. The 62 new AFC cards are only legal in Commander, Vintage, and Legacy. They are not legal in Standard, Pioneer, or Modern. Reprinted cards in the decks keep their existing format legality — appearing in AFC doesn't change that.

What are the four Forgotten Realms Commander decks?

The four decks are: Aura of Courage (White/Blue/Green, led by Galea, Kindler of Hope), Dungeons of Death (White/Blue/Black, led by Sefris of the Hidden Ways), Draconic Rage (Red/Green, led by Vrondiss, Rage of Ancients), and Planar Portal (Black/Red, led by Prosper, Tome-Bound).

What comes inside each Forgotten Realms Commander deck?

Each deck contains 1 Display Commander card, 2 foil Legendary cards, 98 regular cards, 10 double-sided tokens, and 1 Life Wheel — making a complete 100-card Commander deck ready to play.

Which Forgotten Realms Commander is considered the most powerful?

In my experience, Prosper, Tome-Bound from the Planar Portal deck attracted the most competitive attention. His ability to generate Treasure tokens whenever you cast spells from exile creates a powerful value engine that many players have built on beyond the precon. That said, 'most powerful' depends heavily on your playgroup and how you develop the deck.

Forgotten Realms Commander (AFC): Full Set Guide

Q: When were the Forgotten Realms Commander decks released?

The four AFC Commander decks were released on July 23, 2021, alongside the main Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms set.

Released on July 23, 2021, alongside the main Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms set, the Forgotten Realms Commander decks brought the world of D&D fully into Magic's most popular casual format. Four preconstructed Commander decks, each themed around a corner of the Forgotten Realms, gave players an on-ramp to Commander with a mix of brand-new cards and reprints from across Magic's history.

The set code is AFC, and the product contains 331 cards in total - 62 of them brand new.

What is Forgotten Realms Commander?

Forgotten Realms Commander is the Commander preconstructed product tied to Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms (AFR), Magic's 2021 crossover with D&D. Following the model established by the Ikoria Commander decks, each of the four AFC decks contains a mix of newly designed cards themed to the Forgotten Realms setting alongside reprints pulled from throughout Magic's history.

Think of it less as a standalone set and more as four ready-to-play Commander decks, each with its own identity, mechanical focus, and legendary commander at the helm.

Format check: The 62 new cards (collector numbers #1-62) are legal in Commander, Vintage, and Legacy only. They are not legal in Standard, Pioneer, or Modern. The remaining cards in the decks (collector numbers #63-331) are reprints, and their legality in any given format doesn't change just by appearing here - they follow whatever rules applied to them before.

The four decks

Each AFC deck comes with a distinct color identity and mechanical theme, anchored by a legendary creature as the face commander.

| Deck Name | Colors | Commander | |---|---|---| | Aura of Courage | {W}{U}{G} | Galea, Kindler of Hope | | Dungeons of Death | {W}{U}{B} | Sefris of the Hidden Ways | | Draconic Rage | {R}{G} | Vrondiss, Rage of Ancients | | Planar Portal | {B}{R} | Prosper, Tome-Bound |

Each deck leans into themes that feel right at home in a D&D game - dungeon-delving, dragon-riding, treasure-hoarding, and equipment-wielding heroes. The commanders themselves all interact with mechanics introduced in the main AFR set.

Aura of Courage - {W}{U}{G}

Galea, Kindler of Hope leads this Bant Equipment and Aura deck. The fantasy here is the classic D&D hero kitted out with legendary gear - think less combo and more sword-and-shield adventure. The deck rewards playing lots of Auras and Equipment, with Galea letting you look at the top card of your library and play Equipment or Auras from there, keeping the action flowing.

Dungeons of Death - {W}{U}{B}

Sefris of the Hidden Ways helms this Esper deck built around the Dungeon mechanic introduced in AFR. Every time a creature card enters your graveyard, Sefris lets you venture into the dungeon - and completing a dungeon returns a creature from your graveyard to the battlefield. It's a deck that rewards attrition, self-mill, and recursion, which maps beautifully onto the D&D experience of crawling through dangerous spaces and coming back from the brink.

Draconic Rage - {R}{G}

Vrondiss, Rage of Ancients is a Gruul Dragon Barbarian - and yes, that is as fun as it sounds. The deck leans into Dragon tribal and the enrage mechanic (dealing damage to your own creatures to trigger powerful effects). Vrondiss himself creates 5/4 Dragon Spirit tokens when he takes damage, which then fuel further triggers. It's a build-your-own-dragon-army kind of experience.

Planar Portal - {B}{R}

Honestly, Prosper, Tome-Bound might be the deck that generated the most buzz. This Rakdos deck is built around foretell and exile-matters synergies - Prosper creates a Treasure token whenever you cast a spell from exile, effectively giving you a second hand of resources to burn through. The treasure generation and card advantage loop felt strong enough that Prosper quickly became a popular commander to build around beyond just the precon.

What's in each deck?

Every AFC package includes:

1 Display Commander card
2 foil Legendary cards
98 regular cards
10 double-sided tokens
1 Life Wheel

That's a 100-card ready-to-play Commander deck with foil commanders, tokens for tracking game state, and a life wheel to replace the need for dice - a solid package for new players especially.

Themes and mechanics

The new cards in AFC are designed to support the mechanics introduced in the main AFR set. That means the dungeon mechanic is front and center - venturing into the dungeon, completing Dungeon cards (Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Lost Mine of Phandelver, and Dungeon of the Dragon Queen), and triggering payoffs for doing so.

Other mechanics woven through the decks include:

Foretell - exiling cards face-down to cast later for a reduced cost, which feeds Prosper's exile-matters engine
Enrage - dealing damage to your own creatures to trigger bonus effects, central to Vrondiss's gameplan
Equipment and Aura synergies - the classic Voltron backbone of Galea's deck
Graveyard recursion - Sefris rewards filling and emptying your graveyard in a loop with dungeon completion

Because the reprints can come from anywhere in Magic's history (as with the Ikoria Commander decks), the supporting cards in each deck are chosen for synergy with the commander rather than being limited to any particular era or plane.

Lore and setting

The Forgotten Realms is the classic D&D setting - the world of Faerûn, home to Baldur's Gate, Waterdeep, and the Underdark. For many Magic players, this set was their first deep dive into D&D iconography on cardboard: mind flayers, beholders, displacer beasts, and iconic character classes rendered in Magic's card frame.

The AFC commanders each occupy a different corner of that world. Sefris's dungeon-delving and Vrondiss's draconic fury feel pulled directly from classic D&D adventure modules, while Prosper's treasure-hoarding resonates with the rogue or warlock fantasy of profiting from dangerous knowledge.

Set legacy

Forgotten Realms Commander landed at an interesting moment - it was part of Magic's first full D&D crossover, and the reception was warm. Players who grew up with both games got a lot of joy out of seeing Faerûn rendered in Magic's visual style.

In terms of lasting impact, Prosper, Tome-Bound stood out as a breakout commander. The exile-matters and treasure-generation loop proved genuinely powerful and fun to build around, and Prosper regularly shows up as one of the more popular Rakdos commanders in Commander format statistics.

As an on-ramp product, the decks did their job well - each one had a clear, learnable gameplan tied to flavourful mechanics, and the mix of new cards and useful reprints gave both new and returning players something to work with straight out of the box.