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Hello, Nation! The Age of Commander is upon us, and everyone is writing Commander articles. Today, I wanted to do my normal set review of the new cards from a set. Since we are seeing fifty-one new cards hit print later this week, it only makes sense to talk about them as a whole unit, and discuss the hits and misses.
Before I begin, I want to take a paragraph to discuss my disappointment with one aspect of this set. The Legendary creatures, while interesting, lack any emotional connection with me. They have few ties with the multiverse we’ve seen, and they are just fifteen folks with nothing connecting them to each other, and little to other places we’ve been. Wouldn’t it have been great if just a few of these represented characters we’ve already met? You could have had one of these be Gix or Leshrac or Sidar Kondo or even Tawnos and Ashnod. Imagine if just four or five of the fifteen Legendary creatures were these old characters. For a new player, there’s no difference between a card named “Tawnos” and one named “New Legendary Creature X.” For older players, there is a lot more value in the former. Why not mix it up?
Anyway, let’s take a look-see at the Commander cards that I really like for future deck-building purposes. (I don’t think that these cards will be used in just the Commander format, and I expect to see them in other decks.)
Monocolored Cards
Alliance of Arms – Of the 1-mana sorceries that have Join Forces, this is not one of the better ones. Only the Green one strikes me as interesting. While I think the ability mines some interesting play space, I don’t feel that these will add much to the game. It will be tough timing it right to take best advantage of it.
Archangel of Strife – While I think that the “war vs. peace” mechanic of this card is quite interesting, the fact that it grants the bonus to all players makes this less powerful than I would have preferred. Perhaps it should have given others either the war or peace bonus, but the controller both? That might have been more interesting. As it is, I doubt we’ll see it in too many decks outside of the Commander decks. The only good thing I have to say about it is that it is a 9/6 flyer for 7 mana (or a 6/9 for the same).
Celestial Force – I’m a bit meh over this one. Check out Magmatic Force below for a different take on this attempt to make another Verdant Force. Life gain is nice, but these other Forces are card advantage, and this is not.
Crescendo of War – This card is weird. Over time, it pumps all attackers, even your own. But it also pumps your blockers, and none other. How come one ability pumps everybody and the other just you? Maybe the idea is to send the newly pumped attackers elsewhere while your defenders get super-huge to block and trade with? Whatever the reason, it’s weak. Note that it gets a counter every upkeep of every player, so others get the benefit of it first on the attack before you do. Yuck. I doubt we’ll be seeing this much.
Martyr’s Bond – This is much more interesting than the above cards. It reminds me a lot of Karmic Justice. Karmic Justice is a criminally underplayed card, but this certainly ups the ante. By forcing all opponents to lose something, you are really amping up the power. Then consider that Martyr’s Bond works whenever you lose something, for any reason. Sacrifice any nonland, and your opponents will be sacrificing themselves. Pull off all of the loyalty counters from a planeswalker for its ultimate, and you force others to be sacrificed. This is a great way to really dominate the table. It’s better than Grave Pact—by a lot.
Soul Snare – This is yet another example of how White gets the best cards in multiplayer. It’s amazing, it’s versatile, and it’s basically a Seal of Awesomeness. The fact it requires 1 mana to use is a bit disappointing, but it also plays well with White’s love for enchantments.
Vow of Duty – While it is true that I have no clue of how the Pacifism-lite ability works in the flavor of certain colors
Spell Crumple – It’s virtually a Hinder except you can’t Memory Lapse the card and your spell goes on the bottom of your library for reshuffling madness. I think this is very fair and very reasonable. Oh, look, your Commander just got put in your library!
Trench Gorger – Getting a 20/20 trampler for 8 mana is pretty good. It strikes me as a bit hopeful that you won’t see an Armageddon effect (or something similar). Like a few other cards that can win the game (Myr Incubator), it’s sort of going all-in and hoping you have the winning hand. That will appeal to a ton of folks out there. Just note that you can have similar-sized bodies for less investment of mana and cards from your library (such as Serra Avatar, Lord of Extinction, or Sutured Ghoul with the Trample and the exiling of graveyard, not library, cards).
Dread Cacodemon – When you have a creature that costs 10 mana in your deck, you usually want to have the ability to put it into play with other things—reanimation, Tooth and Nail, Quicksilver Amulet, and more. You certainly don’t have to. Feel free to pay 10 mana and drop this bad boy. But it’s nice to have backup plans to get these folks onto the battlefield. With this, you have to play it from your hand, or else it’s just an 8/8 vanilla creature. This does not fit into many Black strategies. It won’t like Dread Return or Living Death or Recurring Nightmare. It does like Cabal Coffers and making a ton of mana quickly to pump it out. That’s about it. When you do drop it, it’s like a Plague Wind minus some tempo. Man, this thing wants Haste.
Scythe Specter – I already spent a whole article talking about this bad boy last week. Let me tell you that it is a great card. I’m happy to have previewed it, because I believe you have a winner with this one. I would have found it difficult to discover ways to sell Alliance of Arms, but this was easy. Believe my hype.
Sewer Nemesis – I do like the combination of Lord of Extinction for just one foe with a bit of milling too. It’s clever. I just don’t know that I want my opponent to be doing some light milling outside of a dedicated mill deck. With a hundred cards, you aren’t going to deck opponents any time soon, and there a ton of graveyard goodies getting tossed around. I don’t want to mill a Life from the Loam, Glory, or—heaven forbid!—a Gaea’s Blessing. (Ouch, dead Sewer Nemesis.)
Syphon Flesh – This was clearly an homage to Syphon Soul and Syphon Mind. Those cost 3 and 4, so this costs 5. Forcing sacrifices while making tokens is brilliant! This combines all of the power of an Edict for all with a strong token-maker. The more players you are looking at, the more powerful this bad boy becomes. I love it!
Avatar of Slaughter – It’s like a janky Red enchantment plus a creature. Unfortunately, I feel that it is another entry in the “Gives Good Things to Others” camp of Archangel of Strife and Crescendo of War and Alliance of Arms et al. This is not a card I am looking to play in my decks. Sorry. (Even if it is an 8/8 double striker for 8 mana.)
Chaos Warp – I think this is a much better way to show Red’s chaos than coin-flipping, and I think it’s a very smart design. This is Red enchantment removal, Red artifact removal, Red creature removal, Red planeswalker removal, and Red land removal. It is everything that Beast Within was and more. It might not make anything, or it might make something even better. It’s a perfect gamble for Red. Even though they have a high price tag, I recommend grabbing a ton of these, because I can easily see these as four-ofs in a lot of decks. If you don’t, I suspect you’ll be sorry, because will likely be as useful for Red as Harmonize and Beast Within were for Green.
Death by Dragons – This card is funny. It’s not that good, but it’s certainly funny! It’s an event card. Everybody at the table will laugh and then you move on. It has all of the long-lasting value of Pointy Finger of Doom.
Magmatic Force – Let’s look under the hood of this awesome creature. You get a vanilla 7/7 for 8 mana (at first). It has no abilities to keep it around, or to help other creatures, or to assist in combat. However, on the very next turn, you are going to see it start to deal some damage. Note that this triggers on every upkeep, just like Verdant Force. Verdant Force is also a 7/7 for 8 mana with no other abilities. Verdant Force is amazing. Magmatic Force is also amazing, and perhaps even better. Would you like a few 1/1’s or the ability to deal 12 damage? This will be a great card for your decks.
Mana-Charged Dragon – I remember R&D talking about how the set The Dark got its name. Everybody called it that in development, and then eventually got used to it and liked it, so it stuck. However, it was a silly name. I wonder if this dragon was named “Mana-Charged Dragon” in development, and it stuck. It’s a
Stranglehold – Because every set must actually have a weird Red rare enchantment. This is your typical annoying card. I would have preferring nuking it a bit and making it affect the controller, too, because then it would be more fair, more build-around-able, and thus not as likely to get offed by enemies.
Hornet Queen – Okay, so, let me see here. I get 6 power of flying creatures. I spend 7 mana. All I get is a 2/2 and some 1/1’s. It’s in a color that can give some love to token creatures. (Doubling Season and Parallel Evolution, for example). They all have Deathtouch, which is cute. I can abuse it with all of the established ETB tricks (flickering, bouncing, reanimating, etc.). It doesn’t suck, and I’ll put one in Abe’s Deck of Happiness and Joy for sure, but I don’t think it’s going to make the cut in any of my hundred-card Commander decks any time soon.
Hydra Omnivore – If you’re not going to have any abilities to break through a defense (Flying, Trample, Landwalk), having the ability to hit all opponents at once is strong. I think this is my favorite Johnny card in the set. How often do you get some combo that kills in the combat phase, only it will kill just one player? Now you can kill a ton of players. It’s a very Johnny/Timmy card, and as a 60% Johnny/40% Timmy, I just adore it. I already have a deck in mind for next week’s article.
Scavenging Ooze – I’m actually surprised to see this in the Commander cards. It’s a cheap little creature, it spends just a tad of mana to nuke cards from graveyards, it gains you a tiny amount of life, and simply makes it a tad bigger. These are the foundation cards that other decks build on. Based on most of the spoilers we saw for the set, it’s full of the big splashy effects, but not this guy. In a set with larger creatures and bigger spells, it slides right in at the 2 spot. This is great in a very subtle way. I think it’s very undervalued right now. Remember that the cards in this set could be reprinted in future sets. If Flusterstorm is a major hit for Legacy and costs $30 a piece, they can just reprint it in another set in a year and drop its value massively. Similarly, cards like Syphon Flesh, Spell Crumple, Chaos Warp, and this are easy to see in a normal set.
Tribute to the Wild – Even if you are forcing people to sacrifice artifacts and enchantments, which Green happily destroys, is forcing a foe to sacrifice really in the flavor of Green?
Colorless Cards
Acorn Catapult – It’s cute. It’s versatile. You can ting a creature you own to make squirrels or ting opposing creatures and give them a squirrel as an apology. Well, I killed your Merfolk Looter, but here’s a nice happy squirrel! No more Mother of Runes, but here’s a pretty squirrel! Sorry about your Essence Warden, but don’t you like squirrels better anyway?
Champion’s Helm – It reminds me of Tenza, Godo’s Maul. That was a pretty specific card, and this one is too. Feel free to play and rock it. We’ve all had decks with Tenza in them.
Command Tower – If you had asked me a month ago what I thought the worst-designed card of all time was, I would not have hesitated to tell you. It was a Black creature from Homelands. By the time Homelands was made, no one was playing ante anymore, but they decided to print Timmerian Fiends any way. You bought packs and cracked a card that you simply could not play, ever. There were probably ten people in America who still held on to this archaic way of playing. Magic was clearly not about ante, and clearly never would be. People were dropping hundreds of dollars on the game, and the very concept of ante was not working. When you had just a starter and a few boosters, ante was interesting. However, it easily went against the very concept of a collectible card game. It was clear that Timmerian Fiends would never, ever be played in a tournament. It had a virtual silver border—before those things existed. Today, the worst-designed card of all time is Command Tower, because R&D should have learned their lesson from Timmerian Fiends. Remember that these fifty-one cards have black borders. They are legal in Eternal formats. Despite that, this card has no ability in any format outside of Commander. They could have printed a clever card that made all five colors of mana that I could use in my Five-Color deck, or my Highlander decks. This is the first time we have ever seen a card in Black Border Land that only works in one format, period. It would be like printing a land tomorrow that had one ability that read “
: Add a mana of any color to your mana pool. Use this ability only if your deck has a Black Lotus in it.” Would you print that card? Of course not. This card is lazy design, it’s bad in terms of flavor (Oh, let’s put the format’s name in the title, look how clever we are!), and it’s offensive in what it means for Magic. They should have just put a silver border around it and called it a day. Other than the ante cards, there has never been a black-bordered card, ever, that you simply could not play at all in most formats. If you don’t play Commander, feel free to put Stranglehold in another deck, or run Vow of Wildness. This card can never be used except in Commander, and that’s a sad state of affairs. This wasn’t an intentionally bad card like One with Nothing, to make Johnnies and others sit up and take notice. This is beyond that. It is an affront to the very concept of the game of Magic.
Homeward Path – Lands that tap for colorless but have a useful ability have some real pull in this format. You’ll see cards like High Market, Mystifying Maze, Reliquary Tower, and more. If this card simply gave you back your stuff, I’d love it for every deck. It gives everybody back their stuff, so if you get something good off a Bribery or Praetor’s Grasp, you’ll have to give it back. That makes this a bit more limited. It’s still quite good in any deck that doesn’t have a method of stealing stuff. That’s a lot of decks in which this automatically becomes very powerful. It’s probably a good thing they didn’t amp the power any further, or else it would be an auto-include in almost every deck.
Multicolored Cards
Animar, Soul of the Elements – Protection from roughly 40% of cards is quite good. (You get lowered percentage from artifacts but increased from gold and hybrid cards, so I think roughly 40% is where you’d be). I gotta admit, I’m a little tickled that an elemental legendary creature has the three colors that have elementals that make sense to me. (Water, Sea, Plants, Earth, Fire, and forth. I don’t buy a Dawn Elemental or Desecration Elemental as things which make sense as elements). I like that this representation of the elements has protection from those colors which are not the elements. It makes sense. In terms of flavor, this is my favorite card in the set for those reasons, until you get to the mechanics. As it gets bigger, your spells get cheaper. It’s a very interesting combination of abilities. Now, I’d prefer that, for flavor reasons, this soul behind the elements to cost more mana and be bigger initially, but I have to admit that the abilities are more powerful as a cheap 1/1. This is a very strong card in ability. However, it suffers from a common problem among three color cards. Where is the blue? Blue doesn’t get +1/+1 counters for creatures. It doesn’t make creatures cheaper to play—those are green. Green gives it Pro Black and Red gives it Pro White. What is blue adding to the card, mechanically? I get the flavor it adds a lot, but in terms of design? I feel that as a swing and a miss. There also a question of what it gets from various elements. Perhaps this:
4URG – 5/5, Flying, Firebreathing with any color of mana, landwalk (not unblockable, not forestwalk, but actually landwalk), Whenever a creature comes into play under your control, both it and Animar get a +1/+1 counter.
Now it looks like the soul behind the elements, and the combination of wood and earth, stone and fire, sea and air. Giving it actual landwalk would give it basically unblockable with a very flavorful way of doing it. Plus, flying from the air, firebreathing with any color of mana represents several elements, and the pumping of both it and other creatures from its embracing of life and green. That would be more of “The Soul of the Elements.” It would also look closer to the awesome artwork.
Why isn’t this a spirit elemental?
Basandra, Battle Seraph – Unlike many of the other effects that work for everyone in this set that I don’t like, this I very much like. It is super easy to play and build around, yet it forces opponents to end their little tricks. There will be no Giant Growth…er…Titanic Growth. It still allows things like fast effects though. You can sacrifice creatures after blocking, or make creatures as instants with Ghave or tap a Maze of Ith. I think this would have been interesting as a ban on all activated abilities as well, but then perhaps they tried it and they found it made combat too boring and too predictable.
Damia, Sage of Stone – There are a few legendary creatures in this set that I feel are rather blah. I can’t distinguish them from other weird creatures that have been printed at the mythic level. This is one of them. But I get to draw cards back to seven every turn! Yes, but you have to do it in colors that are not the most proactive in the game. Blue? Black? These are generally more oriented to reactive stuff—Terror, Counterspell, Capsize, etc. They are also the colors of great card advantage anyway. Drawing two cards every turn instead of one because you can’t blow through your hand quickly and you have all of these great draw spells is sad. If Damia had been {R/G/W}, then we would be talking. There’s only so many ways you can build around her (morph, suspend, etc). I think we have an overrated card here.
Edric, Spymaster of Trest – Due to a cheap cost and highly underrated ability, Edric wins my prize for best Commander of these 15. Want to draw a card by hitting you’re your creatures? That’s okay, attack my enemies. If you hit me, you don’t get to draw cards. It encourages people to attack elsewhere, and makes them super happy to do so—look, cards! This is a great way to send people elsewhere with their attacks without any hard feelings at all. Plus, since your deck is built around this card, you’ll likely be drawing more cards.
Ghave, Guru of Spores – Of the five wedge color combinations, Ghave has the most powerful color combination. It has the mana ramping of green, the mass removal of white, the pinpoint removal of black and white, the reanimation of both black and green, the artifact and enchantment removal of white and green, the absolute beaters of all three, the life gain of white, and even the best three color combination of planeswalkers. You have Pernicious Deed, Congregate, Vindicate, Avatar of Woe, Akroma, Angel of Wrath, Woodfall Primus, Angel of Despair, Primeval Titan, Death Grasp, Tooth and Nail, and even Desolation Angel, (if you are so inclined). I think Ghave offers the most powerful Commander of the lot. (In terms of just sheer power, not subtlety). It’s obvious how to abuse him (everything from Doubling Season to Khalni Garden, Spike Weaver to Fertilid, Mindless Automaton to Pentavus, and Ant Queen to Decree of Justice). The only other options for this amazing combination are Doran, the Siege Tower, Karador, Ghost Chieftain, and Teneb, the Harvester. I don’t think they have the pure power and usefulness of Ghave. Ghave is instantly the best General for one of the best three color combinations out there. If you don’t buy the decks, I’d get some, because you can use this in any deck with those colors, and it’s the best option for this strong color combination.
Kaalia of the Vast – Mechanically, the legendary creatures from the R/W/B deck are the best designed. They use all of the space in their colors. Putting an angel, dragon or demon into play and attacking, without the common “exile or kill it at the end of the turn” is sweet. I also appreciate that she is not any of those creature types. (Wouldn’t it be neat if she had been all three?). The banner creatures of all of those colors can come out to play.
Karador, the Ghost Chieftain – I assume that because of its ability, you can reduce its play to replay it from the Command Zone after it’s been nuked a few times, and that’s very strong. As the game goes along and it costs more to bring out, it also gets cheaper—very interesting design space, and very subtle. In a normal product I would have missed its design for Commander and just thought of it as a normal creature. Casting creatures from your graveyard is swanky, and its cheap ability brings it back after it dies. It’s also easily fooled. A simple reshuffle effect or Tormod’s Crypt like ability nukes your deck, your plans, and your creature becomes a 3/4. It’s fragile. It almost feels like it is just as all-in as Trench Gorger, but without as much pay out if it works.
The Mimeoplasm – I think this is a great attempt at cloning two creatures, and since it takes them from the graveyard, it totally feels black and green, and since it clones, it feels blue as well. It’s a perfect combination of abilities that makes the creature sing. I think it’s a fine general for a very controlly wedge color combination. Only R/W/U feels more so.
Nin, the Pain Artist – Nin will draw you a bunch of cards at the expense of one of your creatures. She can also draw you a handful of cards and keep that creature alive by going small. In an emergency, feel free to trade a ton of cards for a creature. The one issue I have with her is I feel she will encourage people to attack me. Please Mr. Nin Controller, kill my creature so I draw cards! I don’t want that!
Riku of Two Reflections – So, you get forks and clone tokens. Meh. It only forks and clones your stuff, not your enemies. I think it will be very unrewarding as a Commander and hard to just slide into any ol’ deck. There are many more creatures that whet my whistle from this set.
Ruhan of the Fomori – If this set were Standard legal, this would be a major card. A 7/7 for four mana that would have to attack every turn—oh noes! It’s amazing in duels at the kitchen table. Outside of that, I’m just not feeling it in multiplayer. It attacks and will easily be blocked by creatures that are cheaper to play or killed by those more expensive. It seems like it has a tiny window to actually do something, and it will never do that. I wouldn’t play a 7/7 for four mana that had to attack every turn without the random clause, let alone one with it. By the way, what aspect of this card is blue or white? Random? Check. Must attack? Check. Those are both Red. This could easily have been mono-Red without any problems at all.
Skullbriar, the Walking Grave – I adore the design of this card. It does new things, interesting things, fun things! At heart, it’s just a Whirling Dervish. It also gets hosed by a single -1/-1 counter, so beware!
Tariel, Reckoner of Souls – The vigilance is white, the reanimation is either black or white, and the random aspect is Red. This checks all of the boxes. It’s also the legendary one I think will be the most powerful in Abe’s Deck of Happiness and Joy. Vigilance combines well with tap abilities, and you have the right size to threaten. Nip in for some damage, keep it untapped for blocking, then reanimate something. Perfect!
Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter – I certainly enjoy vampire legends as much as the next person. We all remember Baron Sengir with more glee than we probably should. His ability works, it makes sense, it has power, and it will get played in my decks. It’s also feels a bit underwhelmling as a legendary creatures ability and beside all of these other new abilities. Is this really the best you could have done with a B/W legendary for Commander.
Zedruu, the Greathearted – Ah yes, our final entry. It’s odd and different, and I certainly like that. I think this will need to get some play before we really know what to think. Usually, I can spout off an opinion based on how other cards play. I think this needs some shuffle time. My guess: it will be the third most powerful of the 15. I wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up being the third worst though.
Despite the low card count of new stuff, this set is heavy with cards for my review because it’s heavy with cards for my formats. Multiplayer and causal formats just got a major injection of love. It’s clear that Commander is going to have a huge impact on my games in excess of a normal set, and I recommend you get some of the cards or decks now. We have no idea what will happen with the single prices, but my guess is that they will rise and rise. Many are too multiplayer specific to see print again soon. Next week we’ll look at decks made from these cards (regular 60 card decks too). Since I’m over 5,000 words, I had better call it now. Thanks for tuning in, and I hope you found some things useful!
See you next week,
Abe Sargent
