Hello and welcome to A Seat at the Table, the column where I pick a commander and talk about what I’d include in the 99. This week, a Phyrexia: All Will Be One legend that’s caught the attention of many players all over. And of course it has, it’s a Simic commander that does so much!
This time on A Seat at the Table, we’re going long on proliferate and getting down to what could make Ezuri a fierce commander. A legendary 3/3 Phyrexian Elf Warrior for 2GU that loves counters. Let’s see that textbox!
“When Ezuri, Stalker of Spheres enters the battlefield, you may pay 3. If you do, proliferate twice.
Whenever you proliferate, draw a card.”
Yowza, what a cool commander. Let’s clarify some things.
Here are some cards I think are fun for an Ezuri, Stalker of Spheres deck.
This enchantment in this deck reads “cast a spell, proliferate, and draw a card”. I remember playing this in my Ezuri, Claw of Progress deck when I upgraded the precon, and it was a house. Every time I played it, I could follow up with two little creature spells, adding a total of four experience counters to myself so that I can have a beefy beater. In this deck, Tide is worth copying with a Clever Impersonator or Mirrormade. Proliferate your heart out.
Look, you’re running a deck running on proliferating – you’re going to want to run the four drop that doubles your proliferation. Slapping an opponent with Thrummingbird now yields two proliferations. Experimental Augury is Anticipate + Proliferate x2. Plus, being able to give this an indestructible counter repeatedly allows you to run something like Nesting Grounds to give something else indestructible.
Ezuri’s first ability is an enters the battlefield ability. Having these blinking engines and three mana means that end step comes around, for three mana, you proliferate twice, draw two. This reliability will make you a threat, but Asceticism and similar cards are out there to keep your opponents from killing your commander.
Get rewarded for doing things you’re already doing. You’re playing lands and ramping so Evolution Sage sharing a battlefield is a makeshift Nissa, Vital Force emblem. Flux Channeler allows you to proliferate for all of those ramp spells, planeswalkers, artifacts, enchantments, whatever noncreature you please. Your commander wants incidental cantrips on everything!
Activate these at will and reap the rewards of proliferation. Contagion Engine can be a gradual wrath for one player’s board. Clasp hurts one target creature, but ultimately, instant speed activations can spell out danger for your opponents.
The more counters you put on these bad boys, the more you get out of them. Gyre Sage, Viridian Sage, and Marwyn all have their ways of pulling off adding mana equal to their power or counters, but with all the proliferation in this deck, they become your snowball. Just blinking Ezuri will add counters on Marwyn because he’s an Elf. Gyre Sage has Evolve, so playing your commander on curve with the help of the sage will give it a counter immediately. Fathom Mage also has Evolve, but rewards you with cards instead of mana. I know that the moment I see this in an Ezuri, Stalker of Spheres deck, I need to take it down. It’ll supercharge their hands.
Guess what permanents enter with counters? That’s right – Planeswalkers! In a deck where you’re going to be adding counters constantly, planeswalkers can be extremely scary and dangerous. There are so many planeswalkers whose ultimate ability is ignored because they can’t get there naturally without opponents attacking them. Keep on stacking these counters and show your opponents what the newest Teferi can do (single Cyclonic Rift, anyone?) or keep Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner around despite her only having a downtick ability so you can keep uncapping Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. Pick your favourite planeswalkers and maybe simply build a full planeswalker deck for Ezuri to command.
Replicating Ring adding a counter each of your turns is slow and rarely pays off. Within an Ezuri deck, you’ll get there in less than half the time and you might even make it happen twice, making you 16 mana rocks that only fuel the rest of your onslaught. Or maybe you can ultimate Tezzeret the Seeker to turn them into 5/5s.
Empowered Autogenerator, Astral Cornucopia, and Everflowing Chalice all add mana equal to the counters on them. In a deck focused on the ability to proliferate these counters, these mana rocks get out of hand really, really fast. You can even untap them with Kiora.
Want to win easily? Darksteel Reactor and Simic Ascendancy are alternate win condition cards that want you to have 20 or more charge/growth counters on them to win you the game. Simic Ascendancy gets there extremely quickly if you’ve got a lot of +1/+1 counters on your board of creatures to proliferate. You proliferate a +1/+1 counter that gets you a growth counter, but the growth counter can be proliferated, too. This is like self-poison counters!
That does it for another edition of A Seat at the Table! Let me know if there’s a commander you’d like me to cover for the next one on Instagram or Twitter at @mikecarrozza!
Get all your board game news from The Bag of Loot! www.thebagofloot.com
Get all your board game needs from Three Kings Loot! www.threekingsloot.com
Welcome to my set review of Phyrexia: All Will Be One, where I will pick five cards of each colour and discuss my favourite cards from them.
It’s time for me to cover the new cards from the Commander preconstructed decks, as well as the Commander-legal Set and Collector Booster exclusive cards.
Without further ado, here are my favourite new cards!
Teferi’s Protection brought back phasing in 2017 and we saw it take over metas all over. It truly is the best protection spell of all time. Clever Concealment is a potentially free (if you’ve got enough untapped creatures) but toned down version of Teferi’s Protection. It doesn’t phase out your lands and it doesn’t protect you or your life total, but it saves what you need to save and I love it.
This is the chase card from Commander precons if presale prices are to be believed and I understand why. Protect your enchantments in your enchantress decks, planeswalkers in your planeswalker decks, artifacts, creatures, whatever you need to protect on your board, it’s out of reach for your opponents. Protect your tokens even! Phasing! It’s awesome!
We have a new pillowfort card. Will this prompt an alpha strike to take you out? Yeah, likely. But this will give you the time to work out your defences. Also, with the influx of poison counters coming thanks to this set, we might see the second ability get some traction even without you taking damage.
Remember, if an opponent deals enough combat damage to kill you and you trigger the last poison counter, your opponent will survive.
I love the idea of seeing this in play and casting Fractured Identity on it. Enjoy cards and poison counters, ya nuts!
I absolutely love clone spells. I especially love clone spells with modality. Mockery’s closest analogue is Saheeli’s Artistry which for six mana gives you a token copy of a creature and one of an artifact.
Mockery is only for creatures, requires you to control them, and requires an artifact and nonartifact creature to entwine. Liquimetal Torque is in more and more of my decks. Adrix and Nev, Twincasters decks will likely be the ones to benefit from this most.
I am shocked at the amount of people absolutely bonkers excited for a dedicated Myr commander. It is so unexpected to me!
That said, Myr are known for being mana dorks in all colours and Urtet’s activated ability makes them a five-colour commander, so pop all those little guys into it. With these Myr getting untapped at combat, you can really just be a big mana deck and play all the expensive cards you’ve been holding off on because they’re eight mana and who has the time!
The activated ability paired with the untap means that your little Myr army can big pretty big when it’s time to swarm.
The issue is that five-colour commanders are so open-ended and while this definitely pulls you in a specific direction with the Myr type elements, it’s just easy to go whatever direction you need to go.
In white, you’re often making tokens accidentally even. Staff of the Storyteller is likely to become a Phyrexian Arena that costs one white mana instead of one life. Even on it’s ETB, Staff of the Storyteller can be 1WW for a card draw which in white isn’t the worst place to be. My Thalisse, Reverent Medium deck is going to try this out for sure. Otharri, Suns’ Glory (spoiler, my fave of the new commanders) is going to take advantage of this.
There are so many token decks in white that will have this seemingly innocuous piece outing gain advantage over time. Also, this feels like such a stupid thing to want to remove! It doesn’t feel good to target this with removal! Because it seems so innocent!
Watch your opponent get cards and then rethink your stance on not targeting this artifact. (This is more of a note to self right now.)
That does it for Phyrexia: All Will Be One! Let me know what commander you want me to write about @mikecarrozza on Instagram and Twitter!
Get all your board game news from The Bag of Loot! www.thebagofloot.com
Get all your board game needs from Three Kings Loot! www.threekingsloot.com
Welcome to my set review of Phyrexia: All Will Be One, where I will pick five cards of each colour and discuss my favourite cards from them.
Given that Phyrexia: All Will Be One also comes out with a pair of preconstructed Commander decks, I’ll also be covering my favourite new cards from there in another article.
Without further ado, here are my favourite Colourless and Lands cards!
This is a fun colourless commander. There aren’t a ton of amazing token generators, but my first thought was make an army of 1/1s and turn them into 5/3 Juggernauts. There’s something fun about Solemn Simulacrum daring your opponents to block it when it’s going to eat what’s in its way.
Graaz can be a real finisher in a Thalisse, Reverent Medium deck or even a Krenko, Mob Boss deck. Just any deck where you have a huge amount of creatures that would be buffed if turned into 5/3s, Graaz is your new anthem that’ll make people smile. You can also Goblin Welder this out! Loot on end step, Goblin Welder, untap, swing. GGs, everybody.
You can pay three mana for a fetch land. Or you can play Mirran Safehouse to be the Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx you just hit with a Beast Within. Playing a mill deck? You’ll surely find a utility land to somewhere for you to take advantage of. Mirran Safehouse isn’t fancy, but it’s cool, it’s new and it’s a Strip Mine away from being a Cabal Coffers that’s also… a Strip Mine. This is sneaky!
I love a good callback.
Staff of Domination has been Compleated and Staff of Compleation tells you to pay life instead of mana. It will add up, but in a superfriends deck, you’re looking at adding loyalty for three life. Card draw is a little steep, but paying four life and tapping this with Vilis, Broker of Blood under your control gets you practically a new hand. I don’t consider this quite a mana rock since it will dig into your life a little too aggressively, but it is one in a pinch. It’s versatile and useful, but be careful with your life!
Turn your land into any nontoken artifact you control by paying for it again. Mirage Mirror so good you need another? Good, here it is. Want a second Sol Ring or Mana Crypt? Consider it done. As long as you’re not looking for an ETB trigger to copy, The Mycosynth Gardens are a solid include for nontoken artifact targets like a Conjurer’s Closet or Sword of the Animist. It’s a land and it filters for any colour. Enjoy testing this one, it is bound to surprise many of us as the set rolls out. It’s not stuck at sorcery speed either!
Keep token players on their toes with this ability to blow them up at any time. It’s a Ratchet Bomb, we’ve seen this before. But this is legendary and fits in your legendary matters decks and, in certain cases, you can remove ten oil counters to deal a knockout blow of 10 damage. I really like that we have a legendary Ratchet Bomb. With the legendary matters push in Dominaria United, I think this is a solid and interesting addition to the card pool. I’m running this in my Will the Wise / Mike, the Dungeon Master deck.
That does it for Lands and Artifacts! Catch you next time for the new cards from the Commander Precons!
Get all your board game news from The Bag of Loot! www.thebagofloot.com
Get all your board game needs from Three Kings Loot! www.threekingsloot.com
Welcome to my set review of Phyrexia: All Will Be One, where I will pick five cards of each colour and discuss my favourite cards from them.
Given that Phyrexia: All Will Be One also comes out with a pair of preconstructed Commander decks, I’ll also be covering my favourite new cards from there in another article.
Without further ado, here are my favourite Gold cards!
I really, really like Tyvar. Here comes a planeswalker Thousand-Year Elixir with upside. He works with the original Tyvar Kell if you run him in an Elves shell.
Yes, it’s more fragile than Thousand-Year Elixir and you can’t activate it at instant speed, but this is about redundancy in the right decks. I run Will the Wise / Mike, the Dungeon Master, and Tyvar was such a windmill slam in that list I can’t recommend it enough. The -2 ability gets Will back out of the graveyard, too! It’s great for self-mill strategies. It’s a planeswalker, so it’s a different card type to cast with Muldrotha, the Gravetide. I am a big fan of this card, but recognize it’s getting the beatdown every time.
This is one of the best designed cards I’ve seen in a hot minute. I think it tells a story so well and its mechanics are useful and interesting. The static ability keeps Kaito balancing and helps you get a recast on a creature you want to leave or ETB again.
Sivitri, Dragon Master decks are going to love this. My Aminatou, the Fateshifter superfriends deck is going to love this.
Don’t sleep on the token Kaito creates. Drones are a plant for more because that token is strong. It deters attacks and when a board wipe hits, if you have four or five of these, that’s eight or 10 life per opponent. I am a massive fan of this card and believe it’ll be way more impressive than people can tell right now.
Yeah, seven mana is a lot, but Hexproof and six loyalty with card draw, draining, and of course, that huge -3 ability. Incredible. I cannot express properly just how brutal this is going to be against the right decks. I cannot tell you enough how nuts this is going to feel when you land it. I love Kaya, I feel comfortable saying she’s my favourite planeswalker. This card solidified her up there for me.
Superfriends and Orzhov tokens are the likeliest homes for Kaya, Intangible Slayer. Thalisse, Reverent Medium has Anointed Procession rocking, so it’s even more value. Let’s get hype! This card is expensive to cast, but its impact will be noticeable.
Big surprise, the aristocrats guy likes the Rakdos commander. A non-legendary pseudo-death Cascade makes this the leader for a “secret commander” deck. Build a deck around that and stuff it with legendary creatures to dodge. Rakdos legends are so fun, I think you can build this to be an interesting varied experience every time.
I’ll be trying this out in my Lyzolda, the Blood Witch. Let’s see what Kethek can pop out!
This is going right into my Zaffai, Thunder Conductor and if I want to, I might even just swap Ovika for Zaffai from time to time. I think Ovika is so interesting. Sure, you can go the Impact Tremors route too!
I really like Ovika because it’s very flexible. You see it in Izzet colours and you think instant and sorcery, but it only says noncreature. Instants, Sorceries, Enchantments, Artifacts, Planeswalkers – you can build Ovika a bunch of different ways. Targeting Ovika is difficult and one Sunbird’s Invocation gets you six tokens, then every cast spell gets you another, and if they aren’t creatures, boom, more Goblins.
Jesus, it’s also a 6/6 in the air if you wanna just swing. I think Ovika is cool as hell.
That does it for Gold! Catch you next time for Lands and Artifacts!
Get all your board game news from The Bag of Loot! www.thebagofloot.com
Get all your board game needs from Three Kings Loot! www.threekingsloot.com
Welcome to my set review of Phyrexia: All Will Be One, where I will pick five cards of each colour and discuss my favourite cards from them.
Given that Phyrexia: All Will Be One also comes out with a pair of preconstructed Commander decks, I’ll also be covering my favourite new cards from there in another article.
Without further ado, here are my favourite Green cards!
This is a solid contender to replace Crucible of Worlds in decks that need their artifacts to do something else while also allowing for calculated single plays. That second ability isn’t always going to be activated, but playing a fetch land or something from your graveyard, that’s every time.
The Gitrog Monster is one of my only remaining green decks, and when I tell you that some turns I only play one thing and the rest is activated abilities, I think this is going to find an easy slot in there.
This is definitely limiting, but in a pinch, it can be exactly what you need. Just don’t go playing Underworld Breach from this activation.
A new Craterhoof Behemoth for mono green decks or decks running Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth just dropped and she is sickening, honey.
Sure you can pay five mana, four life for a three loyalty planeswalker, but paying six, mana for five loyalty is also a sweet spot. The plus one in a deck poised to take advantage of big tokens like Ghired, Conclave Exile can get out of hand if you’ve got Nissa out on seven. That is of course if you don’t just ultimate her immediately. Nissa is a threat on the table or a surprise in hand. This is the scary planeswalker of the set for me!
Lagrella, the Magpie decks just got a new win condition.
Go ahead and look up cards that target any number of creatures. Then build up a board and target all of them. Venerated Rotpriest does not care who targets your creatures, whether that creature is a token or not, Venerated Rotpriest only cares if they are targeted by a spell.
Keep this one in your pocket until the time is right because this sick little freak is going to turn some heads. It’s only one mana! And that art! Good god, this card is beautiful.
Tamiyo’s Safekeeping, this is not, but Tyvar’s Stand does grant two of the best keywords to a creature for one mana and then you have the option of buffing that creature up as much as you need. Obviously, pop this on a trampler and get damage all the way through.
I think we are at capacity for Caustic Caterpillar type cards. Cankerbloom looks disgusting and the choice of cashing it in for destruction or construction is great in the right deck. Get over the top in your token swarm counters deck and mess with the math. Fynn, the Fangbearer decks get a little extra utility here. All in all, proliferate isn’t necessary everywhere, but it is nice to have when the time is right.
Yeah, I cheated, but for good reason. There is so much happening on this card. A mana dork that eats your opponents graveyard before becoming a small beater is incredible. Targeted graveyard hate is more and more necessary, and when it’s just tacked on to something that’s making you mana? Lord save us all. This is a power creep canary has been long dead in this coal mine moment.
That does it for Green! Catch you next time for Gold!
Get all your board game news from The Bag of Loot! www.thebagofloot.com
Get all your board game needs from Three Kings Loot! www.threekingsloot.com
Hello! Welcome to my set review of Phyrexia: All Will Be One, where I will pick five cards of each colour and discuss my favourite cards from them.
Given that Phyrexia: All Will Be One (aka ONE) also comes out with a pair of preconstructed Commander decks, I’ll also be covering my favourite new cards from there in another article.
Without further ado, here are my favourite Red cards!
Okay, so it takes a little time to become full on Ball Lightning, but this triggering every combat and letting you keep the token until your end step is great.
Any extra combat decks out there? Oh, there are? Fantastic, here’s one for you. Every combat, you’ll get a beefier token that just wants to rushdown your opponents. Got a Fling deck like Ziatora, the Incinerator? Do you run Warstorm Surge? How about Stalking Vengeance? Maybe it’s time to run these along Vicious Shadows to embrace the birth and death of these Phyrexian Horrors. This is going into my Grand Warlord Radha deck and I’m excited to see how it turns out.
This card combos with so many cards that it is going to be hard to justify not killing the player who puts it out. Cathars’ Crusade is a mild case if you’ve got a bunch of tokens entering. The infinities with this are The Red Terror, War Elemental, Quest for Pure Flame, and Talon of Pain.
Pair this and damage based board wipes like Blasphemous Act and Soul-Scar Mage and you’ll have a board wipe that gets around indestructible but also will likely kill an opponent if not all of them. Your Vivid lands enter the battlefield and become real Shock lands. It’s cool, it’s splashy, but it’s also very scary. Play with caution!
This is one of the coolest looking of the Domini. Solphim is a Furnace of Rath that doesn’t deal double damage to yourself or things you control. A discard outlet as an activated ability that gives Solphim indestructible is also pretty solid in the right decks. Put this in any deck that wants to play the game in fast forward. Punisher decks found a new commander or at least one that can tag team with Zo-Zu the Punisher. Impact Tremors, Purphoros, God of the Forge, and Witty Toastmaster all become way more dangerous with Solphim out. There’s a lot to love about this card, but what I think is coolest is that it puts aggro strategies back on the menu for Commander. Get ‘em!
I talked about Slobad in a previous article and I remain just as intrigued. Wearing the remains of Bosh, Iron Golem as armor, Slobad is an interesting take on a mana dork. I love Illuminor Szeras and Soldevi Adnate, so seeing a Phyrexianized Slobad, Iron Goblin follow their line but as an Artifact mana dork makes me wonder what we’re about to see.
Obviously, you can’t sacrifice a token for mana with Slobad, but you can use your curve to your advantage. Portal to Phyrexia is nine mana, but is nine mana that much when you’ve found a way to turn your expensive mana rocks sideways and then bin them for value? Gilded Lotus taps for three and then sacrificed for five, that means you’ve got eight mana without even touching your lands. There are artifacts that run their course like Meteor Golem or the Wellsprings. You can use Liquimetal Torque and Liquimetal Coating to sacrifice nonartifact permanents to Slobad! I love Atsushi, the Blazing Sky for this personally. And if you’ve got too much mana to use well, you can always find cards with activated abilities, like Gemstone Array or Equipment that untap Slobad.
Speaking of Equipment, reducing equip costs by one is huge. Skullclamp and Swiftfoot Boots become free activations. Reducing equip costs by two when it’s the Aspirant though means that you’ll be able to free equip all the Swords of X & Y to it and swing basically unblockable and get a ton of triggers!
That does it for Red! Catch you next time for Green!
Get all your board game news from The Bag of Loot! www.thebagofloot.com
Get all your board game needs from Three Kings Loot! www.threekingsloot.com
Hello! Welcome to my set review where I will pick five cards of each colour and discuss my favourite cards from them.
Given that Phyrexia:All Will Be One (aka ONE) also comes out with a pair of preconstructed Commander decks, I’ll also be covering my favourite new cards from there in another article.
Without further ado, here are my favourite Blue cards!
Blade of Shared Souls is one of the strangest and coolest clone effects I’ve seen in a while. For three mana, you essentially get a Glasspool Mimic or a 2/2 Rebel, so even if your board is empty, your clone isn’t dead (although, Mimic is also a land, so there’s that).
But the real charm is in the ability triggering when you equip the Blade to a creature you control for only two mana! If that Rebel dies or you need to reset the clone, it’s that easy. Care to suit up that 2/2 Zombie with the Blade in your Wilhelt deck and get a second Undead Augur? Why not! Does your commander have an ETB and not much else going for it? Turn it into a Sun Titan, baby, let’s go! Uh oh, I’m being attacked but I have a Puresteel Paladin and metalcraft? Time to turn my 0/1 Plant token into that big Etali, Primal Storm I swung with last turn.
Blade of Shared Souls feels like the kind of card that will create game moments people will talk about for a while. I am going to jam it in all my blue deck and see what I can do with it!
This is one of the most disgusting card designs I’ve ever seen, and I mean disgusting in the same way I call ‘a brutal breakdown in a deathcore song’ disgusting.
Giving all your planeswalkers the ability to plus one all your other planeswalkers, and then give them the ability to Time Walk is absurd. I have an Aminatou, the Fateshifter Superfriends deck, so of course I am going to run this. The question is whether or not this will be a fun experience for everyone, and I think the answer might be no. This is going to be a lightning rod no matter what your set up is.
Having that second ability listed after something so explosive in the first ability is also pretty sneaky. While it’s not quite proliferate because it limits it to one counter and one permanent, it still basically says “cast an noncreature spell and get an extra counter wherever you want.” There are lots of strategies that love counters and this will slot in, but I think this second line of text is going to go under the radar for a little while.
A card that, as of writing, I’m not absolutely certain is real. Unctus, Grand Metatect made me crane my neck when I read it the first time. This reminds me of Grand Architect in a few ways and works with it quite nicely. Being able to turn your creatures into blue artifact creatures and then giving them a looting ability when they tap means that a Pili-Pala infinite is likely going to get you to a Thassa’s Oracle or Laboratory Maniac win.
That said, I like Unctus as a commander in a mono-blue aggro deck. Just swing and get to your cards fast then run stuff like the shuffle Eldrazi or Elixir of Immortality to keep the party going.
I personally think that I will be giving this a go in my Oona, Queen of the Fae “mono-blue” mill deck.
First, it was Mycosynth Lattice. Next, we saw a creature version in black with Biotransference. Finally, we have a one-sided land-excluding non-mana-fixing version of Lattice.
Turning all your nonland permanents into artifacts – whether they are in play or not – is bound to lead to shenanigans. Saheeli, the Gifted is a great example of a commander who will love to see this. Sharuum the Hegemon decks that are still kicking around no longer have to only pick from the artifacts in the graveyard, but any nonland permanent card, as they are now artifacts, too.
Playing this in Urza, Prince of Kroog means you get to pick any of your permanents to turn into a 1/1 token. A weird build of Ashnod the Uncaring might want this to sacrifice enchantments to double. I think these cards tend to be combo pieces and it’s exciting for some players.
There are a lot of artifact tokens that get created very easily. With Transplant Theorist, you may draw and discard for each other, or as many as you want. You aren’t forced to. You get to loot when the theorist lands too!
The second ability says, “hey, I know it was a hard decision to discard that card. Do you want it back in your deck? Put it at the bottom, I know you were saving that fetch land for a good reason.” I think this card will be a powerful uncommon we see more often than you’d think.
That does it for Blue! Catch you next time for Black!
Get all your board game news from The Bag of Loot! www.thebagofloot.com
Get all your board game needs from Three Kings Loot! www.threekingsloot.com
Hello! Welcome to my set review of Phyrexia: All Will Be One, where I will pick five cards of each colour and discuss my favourite cards from them.
Given that Phyrexia: All Will Be One (aka ONE) also comes out with a pair of preconstructed Commander decks, I’ll also be covering my favourite new cards from there in another article.
Without further ado, here are my favourite White cards!
I’ve already discussed this card in my preview review, but this remains one of the most exciting cards in the set, full stop.
Elesh Norn was bound to have an amazing ability as the big bad of the current storyline and WotC delivered. A Panharmonicon that isn’t limited to artifacts and creatures while being a Torpor Orb for all of your opponents’ permanents is, in a word, nuts.
Creature decks are plentiful in Commander and ETBs are everywhere. While Norn doubles your triggers, make no mistake – this is a stax piece. Shutting down your opponents will not make you a popular player. We’ve seen what she can do in the command zone on Game Knights and with all the different versions of her available, we’re about to see a lot of her. Pack your non ETB based removal and get ready because Norn’s new form as ParharMOMicon enables a ton of strategies without even thinking about it and shutting out other players as an afterthought.
Yes, it’s easy to pick mythics as your favourite cards of a colour, but can you blame me? This cycle of Domini is incredible. They can be in your command zone, they have incredible doubling effects, and they have an activated ability to gain an indestructible counter. Of course, I’m going to be interested!
Anointed Procession can now be in your command zone. If you’ve ever played a white token swarm deck, I would love to hear why you wouldn’t change your commander to Mondrak. Doubling your tokens can be powerful, whether it’s from Smothering Tithe or Call the Coppercoats, you’re making a lot of stuff. There’s a reason Anointed Procession, Parallel Lives, and Doubling Season command the price they do and it is because this ability is massive.
Where will I be putting Mondrak? I’ll be taking it for a spin in the 99 of my The Ever-Changing ‘Dane deck and I’ll definitely be popping it into my Will the Wise / Mike, the Dungeon Master lists. I think the utility of the indestructible counter and the cost of its activation being potentially life payment should not to be overlooked.
I’m also hoping we get playmats for the art of all of these because they are gruesomely gorgeous.
I am in love with the art of this set. It took my breath away. Norn’s Wellspring is an artifact I expect to see tested a ton in tokens and aristocrats. Of course, a passive scry 1 means that you’ll get better selection in your Thalisse, Reverent Medium decks that already run a ton of sacrifice outlets, but being able to use a mana from Ashnod’s Altar to pay for this and draw a card is sweet.
At two mana value, this is easily recurred. As an artifact, it’s easily recurred. It can be a reliable extra draw with upside in proliferate decks. I think this card can be pretty sneaky good in the right shell, but recognize that this may also just be relegated to lower-powered decks. I don’t expect to see this in competitive settings, but I do expect to see it and kind of brush it off until it does something… which is valuable unto itself.
I think The Eternal Wanderer is a beautiful design. At six mana, you get to use any of her loyalty abilities when she enters. This resets clones in clone decks, reuses ETBs in blink decks, makes good tokens in token decks (slowly, but makes them) and gives you all the power in a big board wipe, all while her static ability makes sure that only a single creature can come at her at a time.
I have my planeswalker deck helmed by Aminatou, the Fateshifter and this set has a lot for her to enjoy. The Eternal Wanderer is one of them. I think she’s just very strong and will hit some tables pretty hard. Look out for Orzhov of BWx shells trying to live the dream with her and Tergrid, God of Fright.
Last but certainly not least is Skrelv, a creature I wish had a story spotlight. Disgusting yet cute, Skrelv is the latest one mana legend to join us in Commander. In the command zone, Skrelv is a strange Mother of Runes / Giver of Runes that also can get in for some early poison counters.
Skrelv is also an artifact creature which means if you’ve got a Boros shell working Goblin Engineer / Goblin Welder, you can recur Skrelv, or have Skrelv out to sacrifice to the Goblins.
Do I think Skrelv is particularly powerful? No. It remains to be seen whether Skrelv can impact a board the way I hope. The activated ability is really good, but the idea of turning any creature you control toxic is going to raise alarms that honestly need to calm down.
Poison counters can be a boring way to lose, but the hate they receive when the game has accelerated so much is a little much.
That does it for this one! Keep your eyes peeled for Blue coming up next!
Get all your board game news from The Bag of Loot! www.thebagofloot.com
Get all your board game needs from Three Kings Loot! www.threekingsloot.com
