Commander Spoiler Roundup

It's been slow, so let's talk spoilers. I'll post a batch of the latest officially spoiled cards from the upcoming Commander decks and talk about them. This won't be like a set review, because these cards are basically designed specifically for EDH play. That doesn't mean they'll all be good, though, so I'm just going to talk about what ideas, if any, I get from reading these cards

 This was the first card with the Join Forces mechanic to be spoiled. Overall, I'm not terribly impressed. Symmetrical effects like this can easily backfire by giving  your opponent an advantage over you. Mostly, these effects are relegated to "Group Hug" decks.
I do think this will be fine in token decks that are built in such a way that the tokens you get will be bigger or better than the tokens you give everyone else.
Elesh Norn and Massacre Wurm have been brough up as ways to exploit the symmetry, and those are fine suggestions, but I'm still not overly impressed with this card for EDH play. Incedentally I kinda want 3 or 4 of them for a 60-card Suture Preist deck I'm working on.


 Best art spoiled so far. Underwhelming card, but seems like she'll be playable in the right decks. Ironcially she's good IN Elesh Norn decks and AGAINST them.

I'm really hoping to see her become the target of a kicked Rite of Replication some day.

 Yet another card whose art is of disproportionate quality to that of the card itself. Beautiful, yet rather dull. The whole "Players can't cast spells during combat" seems like it doesn't really hose anything widely played in EDH. No one plays Giant Growth.

She DOES hose Tainted Strike, though. So in some groups that might be enough to justify running her. As a general, I think the recently printed Jor Kardeen is about 100 times more interesting AND playable. Meh.

This goes in every Kaarthus, Tyrant of Jund deck EVER. Conversely if you have a Kaarthus deck in your group that you are NOT the pilot of, you want to say clear of this.

I'm really digging this dude's style. He's going to be very interesting, I think, to see how he plays out. He seems like the coolest one of the two-color legends to build around, and he can easily fit into many decks as one of the 99. I probably will want to play him in Rafiq, but he might even wind up as a General of his very own deck.

The best part is how intricately designed his simple ability really is. He nets YOU card advantage, which makes people want to kill you or him, but at the same time he offers to share that same card advantage with the rest of the table... IF they go after each other, rather than you! Brilliant!

 Obviously, this guy was meant to be a successor to Teneb for reanimator shenanigans. This guy has some pluses and some minuses in comparison to Teneb, but all-told I think he will be a slightly stronger General. That doesn't mean Teneb is wholly obsolete. Combine this with Sheoldred, Teneb and Geth, and you have some serious reanimation going on.

Nin is pretty interesting, but I'm a little concerned that right off the bat, most Nin decks will all look annoyingly similar. They will all play Stuffy Doll for example. Still, a compelling reason to actually play Stuffy Doll can't be all bad, can it?

This seems terrible to me. It does fill a niche or two - Dredge decks will have a field day with this guy targeting themselves, but on the whole I really don't want to run this too many decks. Also, he dies to Time Spiral.

I'm still debating if he's even worth a slot in Wrexial... I would like to think so, but I can't help but feel like Nemesis of Reason is still just plain better.

I'm still not sure about this one. His ability is cool and unique, which will be enough for some people to be all about this guy. I'm actually more intrigued that he has Haste. A two-mana Haste guy that gets bigger and bigger even if you kill him does have merit. I expect him to be very popular right away, but I don't know if the decks built around him will live up to expectations or not... time will tell.

For now, he's probably the least interesting or exciting to me, and I'm just not inspired to build a B/G deck for him.

I really wish they'd come up with a cheaper Legend for the WB guy, but I gotta say, this guy lives up to his price tag. & mana gets you a 5/5 flying lifelinker that eats your guys AND your opponents guys. I love him. He's playable as one of your 99 in any WB deck, but could very easily be promoted to General status.

Again, personally I was hoping for a 3 or 4 mana Legend, as this guy doesn't really fit the specific WB deck I was hoping to build, but I feel like he's good enough to warrant changing my design paramaters to fit him better.










There are a few others spoiled, but I'll get to those tomorrow or Wednesday...