MTG: The Warhammer 40k Commander Decks, Ranked

Updated Oct 8, 2026, 1:32 PM EDT Ryan Hay (He/Him) is a freelance writer who loves all games and has written for publications including ScreenRant, DailyEsportsgg, and Upcomer. Send him all your hottest bad game takes on Twitter. Magic: The Gathering's most popular multiplayer format has been inundated with new Commander precon products in 2026. By the end of the year, we'll have seen at least 25 new decks added to the pool, but few will ever be as valuable as the Warhammer 40,000 Universes Beyond collection. Until recently, these decks had market values north of $300, largely due to their limited print run and initial popularity. However, with Wizards of the Coast confirming a reprint run for these decks, we wanted to revisit our initial rankings and see whether we still agree with it, or whether the years have been kinder to some decks than others. Updated on October 8, 2026, by Niall Walsh: With reprints confirmed for these decks, we've revisited the list to make sure we're happy with the rankings and update any info that may have become moot over time. 4 Tyranid Swarm The Tyranids are an extragalactic species whose sole purpose seems to be to consume, adapt, mutate, and consume some more. The Tyranids come in all shapes and forms, some radically different in size and mutations, but all share one goal, to sweep over the galaxy and consume all life. The Tyranid Swarm deck is great for players who want to quickly build a monstrous army that can handle various situations. Across the 37 new Tyranid creatures in the deck, there are plenty of ways to build not only a wide army but a tall one, with the ability to cast naturally large creatures and pump up your little ones with extra counters. The deck also includes some great Commander staples that make the Tyranid Swarm a good choice for newer players. Cards like Hardened Scales and Abundance can give your green-based decks some serious firepower, and a plethora of lands to help make deckbuilding a little easier is great. Despite some new takes on adaptive creatures, the Tyranid Swarm Commander deck falls short on power compared to the other three Warhammer 40,000 decks. That isn’t to say the Tyranid Swarm deck is bad; it has some extremely powerful new cards like Tervigon, Old One Eye, and Magus Lucea Kane that are worth exploring and building around on their own. If you want to upgrade your Tyranid Swarm deck a little, add cards that help spread and add more counters to your creatures, like Unbound Flourishing and Inexorable Tide. Another way to boost your deck is to use cards that protect against board-destruction effects, like Heroic Intervention or Eldrazi Monument, to make your creatures indestructible. 3 The Ruinous Powers Chaos, a term given to the interdimensional and metaphysical force that exists in the Immaterium, or the Warp, is also given form in Magic: The Gathering through The Ruinous Powers Commander deck. The Warp is a dimension where emotion is given form, where Daemons and Chaos Gods originate, and from there, they seek to corrupt the galaxy and its inhabitants. The featured mechanic from The Ruinous Powers is cascade, an extremely powerful ability that lets you reveal cards from the top of your library until you find something that costs less than the spell you cast, and you cast it for free. Even the primary commander from The Ruinous Powers, Abaddon the Despoiler, lets you cascade cards in your hand if their mana cost is equal to or less than the damage you deal to your opponents in a turn. Bringing Chaos to Magic: The Gathering also means bringing in cards that rely on chance, like Chaos Mutation and the titular The Ruinous Powers. A reliance on randomness is fun and wild for Commander decks, but it can be a double-edged sword. If chaotic, demonic, and tempestuously powerful The Ruinous Powers sounds like your type of deck, there are plenty of ways to make it your own. Nalfeshnee will double up on your exiled cards from cascade triggers, while Etali, Primal Storm adds another element of randomness to your deck while giving you some bonus synergies with the rest of The Ruinous Powers deck. 2 Necron Dynasties Impossibly ancient and utterly devoid of emotion, the once dormant Necron army is here to reclaim what is theirs. Unfortunately for the galaxy, they lay claim to everything. Their singular goal is represented in Magic: The Gathering by being the only deck from the Warhammer 40,000 series to be one color: black. Staying in theme with the mechanical monstrosities from the miniature game, the Necron Dynasties deck focuses heavily on artifact strategies and creating tons of artifact tokens. To support your artifact strategies, Necron Dynasties includes cards like Biotransference and Shard of the Void Dragon, which can quickly set up game-winning combos. Of the four Warhammer 40,000 decks, Necron Dynasties has arguably the strongest Commander in the set: Trazyn the Infinite. By gaining all the activated abilities of the artifacts in your graveyard, the possibilities are endless. By adding a few simple cards, like Pili-pala, you can easily generate infinite mana in many ways. A few quick upgrades can bring your Necron Dynasties deck to the next level; cards like Bolas’s Citadel give you tons of card advantage, while Darksteel Forge truly turns your Necron army unstoppable. 1 Forces Of The Imperium The power of a galactic empire, the Imperium of Man, is the unified might of all of humanity. Countless numbers of humans work together towards an ultimate goal: to keep humanity safe and advance the will of the Emperor of Mankind. The Forces of the Imperium deck focuses on creating advantages even when it seems like there are none. Focused on humans, Forces of the Imperium is a token-based deck, with board-control elements thrown in for safety. The new squad mechanic rewards late-game draws by allowing you to spend extra mana for additional copies of the creature you’re playing, a clever way to represent the armies you’d be playing in the tabletop Warhammer 40,000 game. These token strategies shine when you switch out the main commander, Inquisitor Greyfax, with the alternate Marneus Calgar. Marneus Calgar rewards you for making tokens with card draws and gives you a way to make tokens with your extra mana. Oddly enough, Marneus Calgar doesn’t care whether the tokens you make are creatures, so cards like Smothering Tithe can draw you cards even during your opponent’s turn. With an emphasis on tokens, the Forces of the Imperium deck can be upgraded with other token-based cards like God-Eternal Oketra and Intangible Virtue, which give you an army and make it much more difficult to deal with. Franchise Magic: The Gathering Original Release Date August 5, 1993 Publisher Wizards of the Coast Designer(s) Richard Garfield