Okay, we're in the final stretch here. Today we're looking at the new commanders and cards from the LCI Commander precons. This will be a long one, so strap in.
First up, let's see the commanders of each deck.
Right off the bat, I feel like Brass and Don Andres below got effect-swapped. Again there is probably a story reason I don't know about, but I feel like the ressurection effect should go on the Vampire guy and the theft-related effects should go on the Human Pirate. But that aside, neither of these new Legends gets my blood pumping to build that Pirate tribal deck, so I will continue to wait and let WotC cook.
Again, this is cool, but just doesn't spark that urge to build within me. Keep trying. WotC!
Whatever else I might say to this guy's credit, he's still nowhere near as cool as Amalia Benavides Aguirre.
Again, just completely outclassed by Amalia. But, gorgeous artwork and an interesting build-around in its own right. Still as much as I like the creative approach this and Clavileno take, I'm just all-in for Amalia.
Okay we have a winner here, this time. As much as I loved the U/W Merrow of Llorwyn, this Hakbal guy seems absolutely busted as a Fish commander. He's very Simic and very powerful, yet in a much less obnoxious way than the typical pushed Simic Mythic guys we usually get. I'm extremely motivated to build this one.
On one hand I appreciate that this guy isn't just another busted Simic ramp/draw commander, but on the other, it just seems bad. I definitely could be missing something. It does synergize with Explore; I caught that interaction, I just don't think it's very meaningful. Whatever, this thing bores me. It's a cute lil guy though.
I appreciate that Gishath and Zacama have their fans, and deservedly so, but this is the Dino commander that really speaks to my soul. You all know of my deep and abiding love of Maelstrom Wanderer, so it should come as no surprise that I'd gravitate to this dude. I can't wait to build Pantslaser the Dino-Gacha.
I was very confused by this card until I remembered that Enrage exists. Definitely made specifically for that niche. Fine for those that were waiting on an Enrage commander, I suppose. Not my bag, so I don't really know if it's actually good or not. Too hyped for Pants anyway so let's move on.
These next two aren't in the precons, as their color identities don't even fit the four decks we're getting, so I have no idea where/how you get them but they are legendary creatures so we'll talk about them as commanders anyway.
Why the hell is this not in Abzan instead? I have very specifically been wishing for a card that both populates and proliferates, but the intersection of those two abilities BY FAR fits the Abzan wedge better than it does Sultai. I have no idea what to do with this in Sultai but I practically have the list already built in Abzan. Ugh. What a nightmare.
I completely forgot this idiot had a back side, but it's too much of a pain in the ass to fix it now. Also I just hate this card anyway so I just don't see the need to put that bit of effort in if I'm just going to say "thank you, next" and move the fuck on.
Alright, now to the non-Legend stuff.
Five mana 2/2? Yikes! Oh, wait, this is a color-swapped Tendershoot Dryad. Alright then, this seems fine actually. Probably quite good, even.
More DFC hell. I don't really like DFCs much. This one is neat, but I'm probably not going to play it.
Same as above. Cute design, but not really my style.
Pretty good Rabid Bite variant. Feels more like an uncommon to me, but whatever. Rarity is kinda arbitrary in these precon decks anyway. Great removal option for green decks with massive commanders - if your guy is 6 power or better you almost certainly want to give this a try.
Grasp of Fate as a dinosaur. Great discover hit off Pantlaza, which is obviously what it was designed to be. Probably less exciting for the other big Dino commanders, but still probably a welcome bit of on-theme removal.
I'm not sure about this one. Putting the choice into your opponents' hands is usually bad and while sometimes a card like this will break "the Browbeat Curse" and be playable, but I don't think this is one such card. I mean I
might play this in Edgar for tempo reasons, but I'm far from sold.
Aight, this one seems far better. I don't think most Edgar Markov lists have quite enough lifegain sources to really make this work, but in Orzhov Vampire lists (like my girl Amalia!), I think this is far more likely to perform.
I mentioned I hated finality counters but I'll reiterate the point here. Because that aspect, plus the tribal restriction, AND the restriction to pilfering your own graveyard alone just makes this look pathetic next to even Debtor's Knell or Virtue of Persistance. Of course if you're in mono-White and playing a tribal archetype, this is kinda the best you can do. Still a stinker, though.
Weird use of devotion but cool design. I think you mainly play this just to make a bunch of Vampire tokens, but if you happen to get the Devotion effect that's just a bonus. Definitely would play in Orzhov vamps, but probably not Edgar Markov.
More surprised to see Coven here than I was Devotion on the card above, but I guess it makes sense. Worth noting this is not mechanically tied to vampire decks in any way, so you can just use it wherever you think you can reliably get that trigger. So, like, redundancy for Alesha, perhaps? Neat card, but possibly not as reliable as one might hope. Karmic Guide is probably better in most cases.
Here's a Vehicle I'm not all that jazzed about. It's certainly spicy, and is obviously a massive upgrade over Coastal Piracy, but it's very much a take or leave it card, in my opinion, unless you're running it for thematic reasons. So in a Pirate deck, sure this is great, but for most other archetypes I'll just stick with Bident of Thassa.
Your merfolk army suddenly all taking to the skies can certainly catch an opponent with their pants down. Encore is a nice touch, too, as this is sure to be a prime removal magnet. I like it. It's not mind-blowing, but it's certainly solid.
This is going to be SO annoying in planeswalker-heavy builds. I loathe it already.
I kinda like Parley. Well, I like Selvala. Okay, I like it when one of my opponents is playing Selvala. This just seems really "meh" though. I don't see a compelling use case for this.
LOL, this is probably the best pun name I've seen WotC make in ages. Kudos. Solid card, but like Whelming Wave and similar cards we've seen, this is great if it fits the theme you're doing, not so great otherwise.
Reasonable protection from Wrath effects for your vamps. Cool. Can't help but be a greedy bastard and wish this said "undying" instead of "persist" but that's probably completely unreasonable. Protecting your army seems good nonetheless.
LOL this thing is wacky. Partner? Does anything else in the set even have Partner? WHOSE BIRD IS THIS?!
Not terrible, but there are better options for both self-mill and reanimation. You're likely playing this strictly for theme/flavor, rather than cause it's the best card for the job.
Holy shit this thing is fucking absurd. I think most Edgar lists would rather see this in their opening hand than Sol Ring, and that's just nuts. Bonkers. People on Arena are going to see you play this T1 and just scoop, not knowing your hand is full of lands and white cards, LOL.
Odd card, not sure how to rate it yet. Populating your 1/1s from Edgar Markov, for example, doesn't seem quite good enough. The sorcery half is just whatever. Fine if you have the opportunity to go for it, but I think you play this almost entirely for the Enchantment half, if at all.
This pun is lame compared to Wave Goodbye, but I appreciate that the attempt was made. Seems a bit slow and clunky for the current state of the format. Even casual decks seem to be a bit too fast and over the top for this level of durdle. I like that it exists but fear it will struggle to be relevant in the average meta.
Swing and fling, bruh.
Equipping your Treasure tokens seems like a bit of a nightmare to track in paper, but I guess it's not the worst thing we've seen. I am just detecting a very clear trend in WotC designing paper Magic cards as if they just assume that everyone is playing digital Magic so these concerns over IRL/paper complexity appear to matter less and less to them these days. Then again, few cards are as obnoxious to track in paper games as Cathar's Crusade and that hasn't stopped most of us from playing it regardless. Still, despite WotC officially saying on many, many occasions that paper Magic is still more important than digital, the complexity/memory issues they are introducing seems to indicate that the official stance is little more than PR.
More juicy tech for Enrage Dinos. Someone tell Ulvenwald Tracker to ditch the bear and start hanging with the Dinosaurs. Fun card, and probably perfectly acceptable in any Dino deck, not just the Enrage-focused lists. Makes combat math and absolute nightmare for your opponents, and probably will get you some free wins when they forget exactly what this thing does.
Man, at first I thought this really sucked ass, but I missed that it says "copy this
twice". I'm certainly not above running some Regrowth type effects, and getting back three permanent cards for 2 mana is a fantastic rate. But like all these
Descend 8 cards, it's pretty sketchy outside of decks that are heavily focused on self-mill or other graveyard-based fuckery.
Dino draw to draw more Dino.
Great bit of recursion for your Merfolk (and/or Druid) tribal decks. Neat stuff. Retrace seems odd until you consider the heavy explore theme in this deck, which will likely provide an ample surplus of lands to discard once it gets going. Outside of specifically Hakbal, this gets a little more iffy. Then again, Simic has a number of popular commanders that happen to be Druids - Kinnan, Tatyova, Imoti, and Rashmi to name just a few. I probably wouldn't run this JUST for my commander alone, but chances are good most of those decks run a few other Druids incidentally, and you could probably find a few more that fit whatever your deck does quite easily.
"Can i offer you a nice egg in this trying time?"
-- Frank Reynolds
Very solid rate for a Myriad guy. Relevant utility damage trigger. Hard to imagine this not being mandatory in pretty much any Dino deck. Lack of Trample probably doesn't matter
that much, but of course it would be welcome to help it get through and do it's thing. But hey, that's certainly an easy problem for Green to solve.
Notable that it doesn't say "until end of turn". No, it just stays as whatever you copy until you decide to have it copy something else. Clearly useless outside Dino decks, but let's face it, those are going to be more popular than ever after this set, I think. This is one that I think is perfectly fine if you wanna run it, but it's not an essential piece.
I'm just not that into Map tokens, I guess. Maybe they'll play better than I imagine, but right now my feeling is that most of these cards are just decent. I kinda wish this followed the "Tireless" pattern - i.e. 3/2 for three, makes a Map when you play land - but doubling the effect of your Maps and other Explore effects is pretty cool too.
Another solid looking role filler. Not mechanically exclusive to Merfolk decks, but wants at least to be in lists with heavy +1/+1 counter themes. But that particular archetype is severely spoiled for choice, and I know every time I build around +1/+1 counters, be it Simic, Abzan, or some other G/x combination, I wind up with enough playables to build two decks, so this guy is up against some wicked competition if you're considering him outside of a Hakbal build.
Keyword salad! This thing does it all. Vampires are notorious for going wide, and quickly, especially in Edgar Markov decks. Should be trivially easy to power this out by like T5 or so in an Edgar list. I can certainly seeing this somehow turning out to be more clunky and awkward than it looks on paper, of course. But my gut says this is very much worth checking out. I really think this thing is just going to kill people out of nowhere, especially in groups that skimp on removal.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Flash. Saving a guy from removal is, of course, a sweet effect that we can probably make use of quite easily. But giving all your Merfolk Flash is the main attraction, to me. I am a die-hard fan of cards like Leyline of Anticipation or Alchemist's Refuge. When you can just do everything, or at least
most things, at the last possible second, it feels so damn good. This set may not be the tipping point for me building a Pirate deck, but it sure as hell is going to get me to finally build a Merfolk deck. And this is probably my favorite of all the new Merfolk in the set. So good.
Meh. Even in a Pirate build, I think I'd rather just run a few of the Swords of X and Y instead.
More flash enabling along tribal lines, but somehow I'm not as stoked about this one. Depends on the tribe, I guess, but overall I think this is a little too narrow and restrictive to be all that exciting. Decent, maybe, but nothing to get worked up over.
Okay. That's it! We're done; go home.
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