Warhammer 40K Commander decks are coming back: which precon should you grab?

Wizards confirmed a small reprint of the four 2022 Warhammer 40,000 Commander decks, with no price, date or deck list yet. What we know, what each deck does, and which one to grab.

Aymeric Lamontagne

Oct 27, 2026

On October 8, 2026, a Wizards of the Coast spokesperson told IGN that the company had done a small reprint of the 2022 Warhammer 40,000 Commander decks, headed to distributors and stores "soon". At the time of writing, that is the whole official record. There is no price, no release date, no print run beyond "small", and the statement does not name the decks it covers. Nothing about it has been posted on Wizards' own news pages or its retailer site.

Here is the honest headline anyway: the market did not wait for the details. The regular Necron Dynasties deck had a sealed market price of $393.86 on TCGplayer on August 7, and $277.24 on October 26. Bought as singles, the 100 cards in each of the four decks have lost between 9% and 17% of their value since the day of the statement. It is also worth remembering where this started: on February 8, 2024, three of the four decks were selling for less than their $59.99 sticker price.

This piece covers four things. First, what has and has not been announced. Then each deck in turn: the commander, the plan, and the cards that carry its price. Then what the numbers have done since October 8. And last, which deck suits which kind of player. Every price is TCGplayer's market price on a stated date, and every card named here was checked against Manamancer's card index.

Yes, we can confirm that we did a small reprint of the Commander decks that will be available to distributors and stores soon.

A Wizards of the Coast spokesperson, to IGN, October 8, 2026

Original release

Oct 7, 2022 — Four 100-card decks

2022 MSRP

$59.99 — Per deck

Reprint price

Unannounced

Reprint date

Unannounced — “Soon”

Print run

Unannounced — “Small”

What is known about the reprint as of October 27, 2026.

Why this reprint is different

Most reprints add copies of cards that already exist in several printings. This one mostly adds copies of cards that exist nowhere else. Each of the four decks carries 42 cards, commanders included, that have only ever been printed in this product: the regular decks and their surge-foil Collector's Editions. That is 168 cards across the four. According to our card index on October 26, they hold most of each deck's singles value: 66% of Necron Dynasties', 77% of Tyranid Swarm's, 79% of Forces of the Imperium's and 73% of The Ruinous Powers'.

That is the mechanism behind both the climb and the drop. For four years, the only way to add another Cryptothrall to the world was to open a 2022 box, and nobody was making new boxes. A reprint of the decks is the first new supply of those cards since 2022, and it arrives at exactly one copy per box sold.

The staples are the opposite case. Their 40K printings already have cheaper twins. On October 26, the 40K Dark Ritual sold for $4.88 against $0.25 for its cheapest other printing, and the 40K Mutilate for $2.78 against $0.27. A reprint changes little for anyone who only wants the card.

None of the 400 cards is on Wizards' Game Changers list in our October 26 index. That puts the natural weight class of all four decks in Bracket 2, where precons are meant to sit. As always, that describes the shell, not your copy of it, and the stats panel in the builder is where to check.

Each deck section below ends with the same four numbers, all from October 26: the sealed deck's TCGplayer market price, the deck's singles value (all 100 cards at the exact printing in the box, foil commanders included), the change in that singles value since October 8, and how many of its cards were printed only here.

Necron Dynasties — Szarekh, the Silent King

• Szarekh, the Silent King — 1BBB · 3/4 flying artifact Necron · mono-black. The face commander.
• Imotekh the Stormlord — 2BB · 3/3 artifact Necron. The second foil legend in the box.

Szarekh, the Silent King is a four-mana 3/4 flier. Whenever it attacks, you mill three cards and may put an artifact creature or Vehicle from among them into your hand. That is the whole deck in miniature: Necrons are things that do not stay dead. Twenty-seven of the 99 are artifact creatures, and the graveyard works as a second hand.

There are three ways back. Eight cards have unearth. Triarch Praetorian draws two cards when it returns from the graveyard, Canoptek Tomb Sentinel exiles a nonland permanent, and Royal Warden brings two Necron Warriors with it. So a sweeper that kills them is a reload, not a reset. The milling is deliberate: Out of the Tombs mills two, then four, then six cards each upkeep, and once the library is empty, every draw becomes a reanimation instead. And there is mass reanimation in Living Death, The War in Heaven and Technomancer, which returns any number of artifact creatures with total mana value 6 or less.

Imotekh the Stormlord is the payoff for all of that. Whenever one or more artifact cards leave your graveyard, it makes two 2/2 Necron Warriors, so every unearth is three bodies. Biotransference makes every creature you own an artifact — on the battlefield, in your hand and in your graveyard. That brings the two non-artifact Shards of the C'tan into the plan, and every artifact spell then costs 1 life and brings a free 2/2.

The removal is mono-black at its most direct. Mutilate and Defile scale with Swamps, and the deck has 30. Their Name Is Death destroys every nonartifact creature, which here is close to one-sided. Cryptothrall gives every other artifact creature hexproof, and Darkness cancels a turn's combat damage.

The cards that carry the price

• Cryptothrall — Hexproof for every other artifact creature. $24.24 on October 26, down from $31.92 on October 8.
• Sceptre of Eternal Glory — Three mana of one colour with three lands of the same name. With 30 Swamps, that is every game. $16.14.
• Resurrection Orb — Lifelink, and the equipped creature comes back at the next end step. $15.19.
• Canoptek Spyder — A card for every nontoken artifact creature or Vehicle that enters. $10.75.

Where it falls short: graveyard hate. The deck's plans B, C and D all live in the graveyard, and anything that exiles it takes all three at once. At a table made of these four decks, the card to fear is Tyranid Swarm's Malanthrope, which exiles a graveyard as it enters. The card draw is also thin for a deck this size — Canoptek Spyder, Triarch Praetorian, Chronomancer, Mask of Memory, Hedron Archive, Endless Atlas and The War in Heaven's first chapter. And Szarekh has to attack to do anything.

Sealed

$277.24 — Highest of the four

Singles value

$242.85 — Highest of the four

Since Oct 8

−11% — Singles value

Printed only here

42 cards — 66% of singles value

Necron Dynasties by the numbers, October 26, 2026. Sealed: TCGplayer market price of the regular deck.

Verdict: the most valuable deck of the four by every measure we have, and the most self-sufficient plan in the box. It rebuilds after a sweeper better than any of the other three. It is the deck for a player who likes a long game and a busy graveyard, and who can live with an opponent exiling it.

See the Necron Dynasties decklist — All 100 cards on Manamancer.

Tyranid Swarm — The Swarmlord

• The Swarmlord — 3GUR · 5/5 Tyranid · Temur. The face commander.
• Magus Lucea Kane — 1GUR · 1/1 Human Tyranid Wizard. The second foil legend in the box.

The Swarmlord is a six-mana 5/5 that enters with two +1/+1 counters for each time you have cast your commander from the command zone this game. It draws you a card whenever a creature you control with a counter on it dies. In this deck, nearly every creature has a counter, because the deck is built on ravenous: eleven of its creatures cost {X}, enter with X +1/+1 counters, and draw a card when X is 5 or more.

So the plan is mana first, then X. The ramp is the deepest in the box: Cultivate, Farseek, Rampant Growth, Harrow, Explore, Biophagus, Atalan Jackal, and Sporocyst, a ravenous wall that fetches X basic lands. Nexos gives every basic land "{T}: Add {C}{C}" for {X} costs, and the deck has 22 basics. Shadow in the Warp takes two off the first creature you cast each turn and deals 2 damage to each opponent the first time they cast a noncreature spell in a turn.

Then the counters compound. Hardened Scales adds one to every placement. Clamavus gives each of your creatures +1/+1 for each +1/+1 counter on it, so a creature with five counters gets another +5/+5 on top of them. The First Tyrannic War puts a creature from your hand onto the battlefield — an X creature arrives with as many counters as you have lands — and then doubles a creature's counters twice. Tyrant Guard sacrifices itself to make everything with counters hexproof and indestructible for a turn.

Magus Lucea Kane is the most interesting card in the box for deckbuilders. She taps for two colourless, then copies the next spell you cast with {X} in its cost that turn. A copied Sporocyst fetches lands twice. A copied Mawloc fights two creatures.

The cards that carry the price

• Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph — Turns every 1-damage ping into 3. The most expensive card in any of the four decks: $27.18 on October 26, from $33.29 on October 8.
• Shadow in the Warp — Two off a creature every turn, and a tax on everyone else’s spells. $15.69.
• Biophagus — A two-mana dork whose mana gives a creature an extra counter. $13.74.
• Sporocyst — X basic lands onto the battlefield, and a card when X is 5 or more. $8.58.

Where it falls short: interaction. The deck has Mawloc and Zoanthrope for creatures, Hull Breach and Aberrant for artifacts and enchantments, and Starstorm, Aetherize and Exocrine as sweepers — and Exocrine also hits your own creatures and every player. There are no counterspells. Its most expensive card is a poor fit: Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph wants sources that deal exactly 1 damage, and this deck mostly deals damage in large amounts. The commander is slow, too: six mana for a creature whose only card draw needs your other creatures to die.

Sealed

$228.77

Singles value

$175.71 — Lowest of the four

Since Oct 8

−9% — Singles value

Printed only here

42 cards — 77% of singles value

Tyranid Swarm by the numbers, October 26, 2026. Sealed: TCGplayer market price of the regular deck.

Verdict: the most straightforward deck in the box to play. Choose X, get a creature that size, and draw a card if it is big. It also turns a land drop into more power than anything else here. It is the deck for a player who likes ramp and big numbers, and for a newer player who wants a plan that explains itself.

See the Tyranid Swarm decklist — All 100 cards on Manamancer.

Forces of the Imperium — Inquisitor Greyfax

• Inquisitor Greyfax — 1WUB · 3/3 Human Inquisitor · Esper. The face commander.
• Marneus Calgar — 2WUB · 3/5 Astartes Warrior with double strike. The second foil legend in the box.

Inquisitor Greyfax is a four-mana 3/3 with vigilance that gives your other creatures +1/+0 and vigilance. For {1} and a tap, it also taps down an opposing creature and makes a Clue. An anthem with card draw built in tells you what the 99 want: a lot of bodies.

Most of them come from squad. Six creatures let you pay {2} any number of extra times as you cast them, for that many token copies. Ultramarines Honour Guard is an anthem that copies itself, so two extra copies are three +1/+1 anthems. Sicarian Infiltrator draws a card for itself and for each copy, and Space Marine Devastator destroys an artifact or enchantment the same way. Around them are Martial Coup, Deploy to the Front, Defenders of Humanity, Company Commander, Birth of the Imperium and Inquisitorial Rosette, which makes an attacking 2/2 every combat.

Marneus Calgar is the draw engine: a five-mana 3/5 double striker that draws a card whenever one or more tokens enter under your control. Every squad cast, every Rosette attack and every Clue from Greyfax is a card.

The Vehicles are the closers. Reaver Titan is a 10/10 with protection from everything with mana value 3 or less, and it deals 5 damage to each opponent whenever it attacks. Knight Paladin deals 4 to each opponent as it enters, and Thunderhawk Gunship brings two 2/2s and gives the whole attack flying. The squad tokens crew them.

It also has the best removal of the four: Swords to Plowshares, Utter End, Mortify, Primaris Eliminator and Deny the Witch. On top of those is Hour of Reckoning, which destroys all nontoken creatures, so your tokens both help cast it with convoke and survive it.

The cards that carry the price

• Celestine, the Living Saint — A lifelinking flier that reanimates at your end step. The deck’s most expensive card: $21.29 on October 26.
• Reaver Titan — Five to each opponent every attack. $14.43, down from $22.48 on October 8.
• Commissar Severina Raine — Each opponent loses a life for every other attacker. $14.16.
• Vexilus Praetor — Flash, and your commanders have protection from everything. $12.15.

Where it falls short: Greyfax is the weakest of the four commanders on its own — a 3/3 for four whose best line is an anthem. Squad is also mana-hungry: an Honour Guard with two extra copies costs eight mana. And the deck needs all three colours early, since Greyfax costs {1}{W}{U}{B} on turn four.

Sealed

$257.27

Singles value

$190.47

Since Oct 8

−17% — Steepest of the four

Printed only here

42 cards — 79% of singles value

Forces of the Imperium by the numbers, October 26, 2026. Sealed: TCGplayer market price of the regular deck.

Verdict: the most complete deck of the four, with the best removal, a card-draw engine in the box, and closers that end games. It is the deck for a player who wants a bit of everything. And if Greyfax is not to your taste, Marneus Calgar is in the same box, in foil.

See the Forces of the Imperium decklist — All 100 cards on Manamancer.

The Ruinous Powers — Abaddon the Despoiler

• Abaddon the Despoiler — 2UBR · 5/5 trampling Astartes Warrior · Grixis. The face commander.
• Be’lakor, the Dark Master — 3UBR · 6/5 flying Demon Noble. The second foil legend in the box.

Abaddon the Despoiler is a five-mana 5/5 trampler with one of the stranger lines in Commander. During your turn, spells you cast from your hand with mana value X or less have cascade, where X is the total amount of life your opponents have lost this turn. So the deck's job is to make opponents lose life early in the turn, then cast spells.

The cheapest way to do it is Exalted Flamer of Tzeentch, which deals 1 damage to each opponent whenever you cast an instant or sorcery. In a four-player game, one cheap spell with the Flamer out is three life lost across the table. After that, every spell with mana value 3 or less that you cast from your hand cascades. A trampling attack from Abaddon himself sets up your second main phase the same way.

Cascade is the theme even without him. Five spells have it printed — Deny Reality, Bituminous Blast, Let the Galaxy Burn, Heralds of Tzeentch and Noise Marine — and Dark Apostle and Sloppity Bilepiper grant it. A spell cast by cascade is cast from somewhere other than your hand, and that is what the payoffs count. Keeper of Secrets deals damage equal to the spell's mana value to an opponent, Poxwalkers comes back from the graveyard, and The Lost and the Damned makes a 3/3 Spawn. The deck's namesake enchantment, The Ruinous Powers, lets you play the top card of a random opponent's library each upkeep, which also counts.

Be'lakor, the Dark Master points the deck at Demons instead, and there are 17 in the 99. He draws a card for each Demon you control when he enters, and every other Demon that enters deals damage equal to its power to any target. With him out, a Bloodthirster deals 6 before it ever attacks.

The cards that carry the price

• Bloodthirster — Untaps and grants another combat whenever it connects. The deck’s most expensive card: $25.48 on October 26.
• Exalted Flamer of Tzeentch — A ping to each opponent per instant or sorcery, and a spell back every upkeep. $18.31.
• Magnus the Red — Instants and sorceries cost {1} less for each creature token you control. $7.41.
• Keeper of Secrets — First strike, haste, and damage for every spell cast from outside your hand. $7.29.

Where it falls short: control. Cascade is random by definition, and so are Chaos Mutation, Knight Rampager, Mutalith Vortex Beast and Khârn the Betrayer, who changes sides whenever he would be dealt damage. The deck draws through Brainstorm, Tallyman of Nurgle, Lord of Change, Be'lakor and Blood for the Blood God!, but its best turns depend on what is on top of the library. And Abaddon does nothing on a turn when nobody has lost life yet.

Sealed

$187.55 — Lowest of the four

Singles value

$178.67

Since Oct 8

−10% — Singles value

Printed only here

42 cards — 73% of singles value

The Ruinous Powers by the numbers, October 26, 2026. Sealed: TCGplayer market price of the regular deck.

Verdict: the deck with the best stories and the least control over them. On October 26 it was the cheapest of the four sealed. It is the deck for a player who would rather see something new every game than win the same way every game.

See The Ruinous Powers decklist — All 100 cards on Manamancer.

What the market has done

Three numbers matter here, and only two of them exist. The sealed price of the 2022 decks and the value of their singles are real and dated. The price of the reprint has not been announced. So this section describes what happened to the first two and stops there.

"Sealed" is TCGplayer's market price for the regular deck, not the Collector's Edition. "Singles" is the sum of TCGplayer market prices for the 100 cards in the box, each at the exact printing it ships in.

Six times in two years

The climb took two years. On February 8, 2024, sixteen months after release and the first day in our sealed archive, the regular Necron Dynasties deck sold for $67.88. The other three sold for less than their $59.99 sticker: $47.40 for Tyranid Swarm, $46.30 for Forces of the Imperium and $41.65 for The Ruinous Powers. Each then peaked in the summer of 2026, at six to seven and a half times that February price: Necron at $415.53 on July 15, Tyranid at $347.12 on July 24, Imperium at $341.73 on June 1 and Ruinous at $282.86 on July 11.

Then they fell. Our sealed archive has a gap between August 7 and October 26, so we cannot say how much of the sealed drop came before the statement and how much after. The rumour also had a head start: IGN asked Wizards after reports that stores could order the decks again. The singles we can date. Across the four decks, singles value slipped 2% to 3% between September 26 and October 8, then lost 9% to 17% in the eighteen days that followed.

Eighteen days after the statement

The steepest single move belongs to Thunderhawk Gunship. It held between $15.48 and $17.03 from August 7 to October 8, then fell to $5.77 by October 26: 64% in eighteen days. Reaver Titan lost 36% over the same days, and those two cards are most of why Forces of the Imperium lost more than the other three decks. Here are the twelve most expensive cards across the four decks on October 8. Every one of them was printed only in this product.

All twelve went down.

The decks nobody mentioned

One comparison shows the mechanism clearly. The surge-foil Collector's Editions, which the statement does not mention, barely moved. Between August 7 and October 26, the Necron Dynasties Collector's Edition went from $644.29 to $632.85 (−2%). Tyranid Swarm's went from $460.62 to $448.53 (−3%), Forces of the Imperium's from $448.91 to $444.22 (−1%), and The Ruinous Powers' rose from $370.53 to $398.41 (+8%). Over the same window, the regular decks lost between 11% and 30%.

So the market is pricing the reprint as regular decks only. Wizards has not said that. It is a bet, and the flat Collector's Edition prices are what that bet looks like.

The regular decks still sell for more sealed than as singles. On October 26, the sealed premium ran from $8.88 for The Ruinous Powers to $66.80 for Forces of the Imperium. That gap is the part a reprint attacks most directly. A sealed box is the product a reprint replaces outright, because anyone who wants the box can now wait for a new one. A single Cryptothrall, by contrast, is only replaced at one copy per box opened.

Which one should you grab?

Until Wizards says which decks the reprint includes, this is a guide to the decks rather than to the reprint. With that said:

• You want the most self-sufficient deck, and you like a busy graveyard: Necron Dynasties. It is also the most valuable of the four, on every number above.
• You want the most complete deck — removal, card draw and a finisher: Forces of the Imperium, with Marneus Calgar in the box as a second commander.
• You like ramp and big numbers, or you are buying for a newer player: Tyranid Swarm. Choose X and get a creature that size; the plan explains itself.
• You want a different game every time you shuffle up: The Ruinous Powers.
• You want one card, not a deck: check the singles first. The staples in these boxes are cheaper in other printings, and the 40K-only cards are the ones the reprint adds supply to.
• You want a Collector's Edition: nothing announced so far includes them.

All four side by side

My take

Which one are you hoping for?

We don't know the price, the date, or even the decks. That has not stopped anyone from having a favourite. If the reprint reaches your store, which box are you taking home?

What to make of it

A small reprint with no price, no date and no deck list is a thin announcement, and the market has treated it as a big one. That is not irrational. These decks hold 168 cards that no other product has ever supplied, so any new supply is news. But until Wizards publishes the details, every comparison between a 2022 box and a 2026 one has one side missing. When the price, the date or the deck list does arrive, the numbers here are the ones to measure it against.

All four lists are on Manamancer now; the buttons above go straight to them. Save one to your decks and the stats panel shows its curve and counts. If you want a second opinion on what to cut first, the Agent tab reviews any Commander deck against deckbuilding quotas and only ever recommends cards that exist — the guide explains how.

May your Necrons never stay dead, and may every cascade find the Bloodthirster.