In the nearly fourteen years since Wizards of the Coast first began officially supporting the Commander format, they have experimented with many multiplayer-focused mechanics. Some of these mechanics were popular enough to make regular appearances in multiplayer supplemental products, like Monarch, Myriad and Goad. Others, however, often get overlooked, and some are outright hated for being too powerful. Today, I'd like to go over two multiplayer mechanics that fall into that group: Lieutenant and Eminence.

Lieutenant was first introduced in Commander 2014 with a cycle of five mono-colored creatures appearing in each of that year's preconstructed decks. It is an ability that gives you some kind of bonus if you control your commander but does nothing if you don't. Since EDH decks typically have game plans that require their commanders out, it can be very easy to trigger Lieutenant, but the cards with the keyword typically don't do much else otherwise.

The first five creatures demonstrated the strengths and weaknesses of the keyword perfectly, granting strong abilities when your commander was in play and being slightly overcosted french vanilla creatures when your commander wasn't in play. Thunderfoot Baloth is a perfect example: this 5/5 beast costs and has trample and a Lieutenant ability gives your board +2/+2 and trample. If you can keep your commander out it's a solid anthem and potential game ender for Green stompy decks, but without Lieutenant it's worse than Colossal Dreadmaw. This card may not see as much play today, but it's still a powerful card in lower bracket and budget decks

While Lieutenant has the potential to be a very strong keyword, it has not received much support or fanfare since its inception. As of April 2025, there have only been thirteen cards printed with the mechanic. Its biggest limiting factor is that the mechanic only works in Commander and thus can only show up in Commander-focused supplemental products. It also suffers from a lack of powerful cards. There are a lot of forgettable mechanics that stay in our memory thanks to one or 2 powerful examples, but Lieutenant doesn't really have any that spring to mind. A new Lieutenant card just got printed in Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander though, so for now the mechanic is still on WotC's radar.

In stark contrast, our next mechanic is a contender for the most infamous mechanic in the history of EDH. Eminence debuted in the Commander 2017 preconstructed decks, with each of the four face commanders boasting the keyword. It is an ability that is active as long as your commander is on the battlefield or in the command zone, meaning that you can take advantage of it without ever casting your commander.

The Ur-Dragon and Edgar Markov are the poster children of how broken Eminence can get. Edgar's Eminence ability creates a 1/1 vampire token with lifelink whenever you cast a vampire spell, and the Ur-Dragon makes all of your dragon spells cost one generic less. Not only that, but they both also have abilities on the battlefield, with the Ur-Dragon drawing cards and cheating permanents into play from your hand and Edgar putting counters on all of your vampires when it attacks. These two commanders are considered some of the strongest ever printed, and as such are the number two and number three most-built commanders on EDHREC.

Eminence is a problematic mechanic for multiple reasons. For one, it is nearly impossible to interact with, having an immediate impact on every game from outside the game. You could try stealing an Eminence Commander with a theft effect once they're on the board, but by then the damage is likely already done. They also homogenize their archetypes, especially in the case of Edgar and the Ur-Dragon. It is very hard to print new vampire or dragon decks in their colors that can compete with the free value they offer, and often they are just the correct commander to play for those decks. Because of Eminence's numerous issues, designers like Gavin Verhey have said that it's very unlikely that we'll see more of it in the future. For six years, Eminence disappeared, although Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir's printing in March of the Machine Commander shows that they might still be willing to experiment with the mechanic.

That's it for today's Mechanics Overview! I would say to go out and experiment with these mechanics, but statistically speaking, you've probably already built one of these commanders. Give Lieutenant a try instead, the newly-printed Ironwill Forger looks like a lot of fun.