MTG Salvation

Welcome to the first edition of the Commander Forums Monthly Chat! Moving forward, we’ll be giving you the updates of what’s been happening in and around the Commander forums. This being our first article, we’re going to keep things simple with a few highlights from Comic-Con and a Commander-based set review for Magic 2015. You’ve probably seen a few already around the Internet, but we hope to touch on a few specifics that might have been missed. Each mod will also talk about their favorite take-away from the set.

Hush little baby, don't say a word...
• Starting off the list is a new powerhouse planeswalker, Ajani Steadfast. While he may not be as immediately exciting as some of his previous incarnations, he still has quite a nice spot in deck lists due to his versatile nature. His +1 ability is useful in Voltron decks as he gives several good combat abilities on top of the +1/+1 bonus. Notably, the combination of lifelink and vigilance allow these decks to keep their life totals bolstered and ward off attacks. His -2 ability helps token and swarm decks by acting as an anthem as well as being useful in Superfriends-type decks, giving that archetype a new way to boost planeswalker loyalty. His ultimate ability is an excellent tool to help survive being attacked, blunting powerful offenses such as a Craterhoof Behemoth-fueled stampede and even limiting Voltron decks severely.
• Avacyn, Guardian Angel - Avacyn’s new incarnation is not the immediate board threat that her predecessor is, requiring a lot more mana to act as a protective shield. She is an aggressively costed flying powerhouse though, with vigilance keeping you from sacrificing defensive capabilities. This makes her a decent choice for a mono-white commander. Her five power makes her a sword away from being a three-hit kill, though I tend to prefer +3 power equipment such as O-Naginata. Even if you have an unequipped hit, 5+8+8 still equals 21.
• Boonweaver Giant is a decent redundancy to Auratouched Mage and will likely see play in Bruna, Light of Alabaster decks. His one additional cost also offsets his ability to search the graveyard and hand, making him a source of recursion as well as a tutor.
• Constricting Sliver - Magic 2015 adds another crop of Slivers to support the various legendary Slivers—and Constricting Sliver is one of the more powerful ones. It adds a large amount of control to the board and clears the way for the horde to hit home. Sliver Queen decks in particular will like it. Be wary of accidentally protecting an opponent from a Wrath of God and keep some sacrifice outlets around to control when your opponents get their creatures back. It should be noted that this Sliver does some crazy things with Confusion in the Ranks, as you’ll be able to donate slivers and set up blink loops to abuse ETB abilities.
• Ephemeral Shields - Being able to grant indestructible at instant speed can be useful for allowing key creatures to survive long enough to provide full value. The fact that this spell can be cast with no mana open means it can take your opponents by surprise. It only shields one creature, but in a Voltron deck or with a commander like Zur the Enchanter, that can be enough.
• First Response - This card seems tailor-made for Darien, King of Kjeldor. Darien decks make good use of token generation and they usually already run a number of ways to damage themselves repeatedly in order to trigger this card.
• Hushwing Gryff is easily one of the more exciting cards to come out for Commander in Magic 2015. Commander is filled with creatures that try to get immediate value. As such, the format favors creatures with enter the battlefield (ETB) abilities, making Torpor Orb a very powerful effect. Hushwing Gryff adds a body to the effect, making it easier to tutor for in certain colors, easier to bring back, and easier to get rid of on your own turn when you want to abuse ETB abilities. It also has flash, turning it into a small Stifle for ETB abilities. I expect to see Hushwing Gryff used in a lot of decks running white, but being particularly prevalent in Karador, Ghost Chieftain decks. With Karador, Hushwing Gryff will be easy to kill off when you want to turn on your own abilities, and then easy to bring back to turn those abilities off for your opponents.
• Speaking of ETB effects, Resolute Archangel adds a new powerful effect to the list. Resetting your life will make this creature a strong contender for blink decks as a form of survival or pillowfort, while also being able to fuel life-as-a-resource black decks running Necropotence or Phyrexian Arena effects.
• Spirit Bonds is the last big splash in white. This card offers a lot of value to many decks. It's a token producer, though it requires you to run non-token creatures. This is fine in weenie decks, doubling your creature output, or in blink decks, which will reuse the same creatures to trigger it repeatedly. It also protects your powerful creatures like Sun Titan. Even if only used with your commander, it will give them a single shot of indestructibility per cast. This card will also pair well with creatures that make Spirits, such as Requiem Angel or Teysa, Orzhov Scion. Finally, it can single-handedly power a Twilight Drover.

• Ætherspouts - Ætherize's bigger brother. The ability to wipe an opponent's alpha strike at instant speed is not to be underestimated, as Wing Shards teaches me on a regular basis. Just be cautious—the player you're using it on gets to choose the order and destination of the cards. Unless you can reshuffle their deck, they may be able to recover in short order. It also only affects a single player, and its cost forces you to hold back a fair amount of mana. While the rest of the board may turn on your victim, they may also take advantage of you tapping out.



"[...] just screamed professions of love
to my inner Lovecraft"
- NGW
• Chasm Skulker combines the possibility for a big body with some wrath protection in the form of token production. Blue has a number of good ways to abuse tokens, like Opposition and Bident of Thassa. It's also the color best suited to drawing cards, powering up this Horror quickly. Add green into the mix and you open up ways to use its +1/+1 counters, such as some good synergy with Give // Take. It also fits nicely into Marchesa, The Black Rose lists, where its +1/+1 counters will keep it coming back for more. If you throw in cards like the Bident you can see some multiplicative feedback between its two abilities. Some Edric, Spymaster of Trest lists may consider this as well as an insurance effect against Wraths.
• Chief Engineer - Giving all artifacts convoke is a great way to turbocharge an artifact deck, especially one that runs a large number of creatures. It’s especially potent in lists that will be ramping out artifact creatures that spit out more tokens, such as Myr Battlesphere or Sharding Sphinx.
• Diffusion Sliver - While Crystalline Sliver is generally a stronger version of this effect, the Frost Titan style of the ability makes it useful in certain situations. It allows you to target your own Slivers with beneficial spells and abilities such as equipment. It doesn’t give the ability to your opponents' Slivers, preserving the Sliver Overlord + Amoeboid Changeling interaction.
• Jace, the Living Guildpact - Any new planeswalker will generate some interest for Commander, but this is one of Jace's weakest versions yet. His +1 has an extremely minimal effect in terms of card advantage, the -3 is a high cost to pay for its effect, and his ultimate will be hard to reach. The most that he has going for him is that he has a high starting loyalty for his cost and that he’s generally less threatening than other planeswalkers. He may see a home in some Reanimator decks.
• Jalira, Master Polymorphist - Jalira provides a repeatable Polymorph effect with some interesting limitations. On top of the typical polymorphing of tokens, not being able to find a legendary creature means that you can run a large number of cheap legendary creatures like Thada Adel, Acquisitor to control what the resulting creature will be. There are still some very strong targets you can polymorph into, such as Blightsteel Colossus and It that Betrays.
• Master of Predicaments - The relatively small body for Commander and the need to deal combat damage to accomplish anything limits this card greatly, but the reward for connecting can be very powerful. Generally it should have about a 50% success rate, but it creates opportunities to trick your opponent. There are also opportunities for politicking and collusion in multiplayer.
• Polymorphist's Jest - Sudden Spoiling is a great card to deal with a variety of threats. The loss of split second certainly hurts as this card can be countered. It also loses the ability to stop certain combos and self-protecting creatures, but it can still ruin someone's day.
• Soul of Ravnica - Its high activation cost limits the decks that will run this card, but it has its place in draw-go style decks as open mana can quickly turn into card advantage. Five-color decks gain the most value, but even three-color decks will be able to make good use of it. It also gives you a Jace's Ingenuity effect from the graveyard if you need a pick-me-up.

• In Garruk's Wake - Plague Wind is already a decent card that a black control deck might consider for a one-sided sweeper. In Garruk's Wake trades the "can't be regenerated" clause for the ability to hit planeswalkers as well.
• Necromancer's Stockpile - Black card draw enchantments have a lot of competition, but this one has some nice ways to grind value out of it. Aside from simply fueling Reanimator decks, the most basic is Gravecrawler: You pitch the Gravecrawler for a card, which also creates a Zombie token that lets you recast the Gravecrawler. There are plenty more Zombies that can be discarded for profit as well. Some, like Ashen Ghoul, return themselves to the battlefield. Nim Devourer and Necrosavant sacrifice a creature to return to the battlefield, which Necromancer's Stockpile conveniently gives you. Haakon, Stromgald Scourge wants to be in the graveyard. Undead Gladiator and Tymaret, the Murder King can return themselves to your hand for reuse. The Gladiator turns the Stockpile into a token producer, while Tymaret turns it into a black Treasure Trove. Other creatures in black can return from the graveyard, and a limited few can even return directly to hand for constant reuse, such as Krovikan Horror. It also pairs well with some black enchantments that return creatures to hand - such as Oath of Ghouls and Oversold Cemetery - to provide a cheap draw effect.
• Ob Nixilis, Unshackled gives Commander its newest form of tutor hate. There are a few ways in Magic to force an opponent to search their library, such as Maralen of the Mornsong, Fertilid, and Collective Voyage. He’s a pretty sizable threat without any cute gimmicks, and he’d be a great creature to reanimate or flash out in front of a search spell. I expect to see him more in the 99 where he could be more easily cheated out from the library or graveyard with tutors and reanimators.
• Soul of Innistrad - The Avatar with the cheapest activation cost of the Soul cycle. Soul of Innistrad gives you access to repeatable recursion. One of the most interesting things about its activated ability when used from the graveyard is that it can be used in a more aggressive graveyard strategy. By putting multiple creatures into your graveyard via cards such as Buried Alive, Morality Shift, or mass dredging, you can then return multiple key creature cards to your hand without needing a specific card in hand to do so. This can enable you to set up a combo like Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion with Buried Alive and get the whole package back to your hand at once.
• Waste Not - The community-created card. It adds an interesting tool to the arsenal of discard-based decks. A dedicated discard deck like Nekusar, the Mindrazer or Nath of the Gilt-Leaf might be able to make good use of this. The ability to generate mana from Wheel of Fortune effects makes it a contender in certain storm-style decks as well.

• Aggressive Mining - Turning every land into two potential cards makes for a lot of gas. However, in a format like Commander where you constantly want to be expanding your mana base, the inability to play new lands is a major drawback. Since most decks run close to a 40% land ratio, you're missing out on nearly half of the draws this card gives you. The best way to utilize this is in conjunction with cards that let you cheat lands onto the battlefield from your hand repeatedly. There are very few of these available to mono-red, limited to Walking Atlas and Terrain Generator. If you expand into green, you open up a lot of possibilities, including Burgeoning, Gaea's Touch and Budoka Gardener. This makes Aggressive Mining a particularly interesting inclusion for Borborygmos Enraged decks, which would consider running some of those greens cards already. Red can use artifacts like Wayfarer's Bauble to keep lands coming out to fuel the mining, or sacrifice the enchantment to something like Magmaw or Claws of Gix when you decide you’ve had enough.
• Brood Keeper - A very interesting card for aura-based Voltron or Enchantress decks like Uril, the Miststalker, especially those that pack auras that can be cast repeatedly like Flickering Ward. It also has the potential to be very powerful in conjunction with Flickerform, as it can generate multiple Dragons each time it flickers.
• Generator Servant seems good in any deck that wants to drop its commander early, like Godo, Bandit Warlord. If you care about getting your commander to attack as quickly as possible, Generator Servant provides not only mana but also built-in haste. Even better, it can be used to provide haste to two creature spells simultaneously as the game develops.
• Goblin Kaboomist - It generates artifact tokens turn after turn, which can be useful for Goblin Welder or Kuldotha Forgemaster in addition to scaring off the occasional attack. It works exceptionally well with any sort of toughness buff - such as most equipment and most Goblin tribal anthems - as they will make sure it survives its own token generation on a failed flip.
• Goblin Rabblemaster combines Goblin Assault with a miniature Goblin Piledriver and lets it generate a token the turn it enters the battlefield. Token decks like Purphoros, God of the Forge and Krenko, Mob Boss get another solid token generator attached to a decent tribal effect. It's small enough to flip off of a Grenzo, Dungeon Warden activation, and yet it can potentially swing for a large amount of damage. The forced attacks can put you in a tight bind, but are easily solved with a few sacrifice outlets.
• Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient gives red another interesting and powerful commander. Rings of Brighthearth is a deceptively powerful card, and Kurkesh puts a version of that ability in the command zone. Copying cheap early game artifacts can help keep a mono-red deck in the running, and late game he can turbo-charge powerful engines like Salvaging Station or enable combos like Gilded Lotus + Voltaic Key.
• Soul of Shandalar - While direct damage is hardly exciting, Soul of Shandalar’s ability can help keep annoying utility creatures such as Prophet of Kruphix off the board. Even after it’s removed, you still get to fire a shot from the graveyard, threatening every single utility creature your opponents might play. It can also have a place in a mono-red deck packed with mana-doubling effects like Gauntlet of Might or mana generators like Braid of Fire. Expect to see it in mana-heavy Ashling the Pilgrim and Kumano, Master Yamabushi decks.

• Genesis Hydra is only one mana cheaper than Genesis Wave and provides less value, but still has some benefits associated with it. It is more difficult to counter a triggered ability than a spell. Animar, Soul of Elements will like this card due to reducing the value of X in its cost in order to dig further into the library.



Behold the birth of a new Commander staple.
• Hornet Nest has some nice flavor and adds a spark to green token creation. It’s a mediocre rattlesnake on its own, but toss in a Blasphemous Act or a Darksteel Plate and the story changes quickly. You can also force the issue with green's new abundance of cards with fight effects.
• Kalonian Twingrove provides a lot of power split across two bodies. That makes it harder to remove and harder to block. Mono-green ramp decks could enjoy the inclusion.
• Life's Legacy is a great addition to green card draw. Losing a creature is a tough cost, and you need more than 2 power to break even on cards and likely more than 4 to make the card draw worth the total mana investment. That said, with high enough power, the amount of card draw this spell can provide is excellent. Green can also make an abundance of large tokens with cards like Kalonian Twingrove and has some recursive creatures such as Gigapede and Phytotitan.
• Nissa, Worldwaker resembles Garruk Wildspeaker quite a bit due to her untap option and ability to protect herself, (though her land animation might be avoided for fear of Wrath of God effects.) Whereas Garruk enjoys a lot of popularity in Commander due to his low threat-level, Nissa’s capacity for untapping more lands as well as a scarier ultimate will lead to her being killed much faster. Garruk’s ability to untap any land also helps cards such as Thawing Glaciers and Gaea's Cradle. Nissa will likely shine in decks that utilize effects like Stasis and Winter Orb to efficiently bypass their drawbacks. She may also be seen in Stonebrow, Krosan Hero decks as the trampling lands become an even greater threat. She will also like the haste effect Stonebrow provides should you manage to activate her ultimate.
• Nissa's Expedition holds the potential to be a faster Explosive Vegetation due to convoke. However, since most of the one-drop creatures that would be run in Commander tap for mana, it generally won’t be worth the risk outside of Wort, the Raidmother decks.
• Phytotitan gives green another large self-recurring fatty. The lack of any cost to recur it is nice, though the upkeep timing means it takes more than a full turn cycle to become active again. At least you can dream about cycling it through a Greater Good a few times.
• Reclamation Sage is one of the key Commander gems of the set. Previously this ability at this cost was held exclusively by Harmonic Sliver. Adding enchantments to Viridian Shaman’s potential targets at the cost of one toughness is a huge upside. The toughness loss makes it Skullclamp fodder as well.
• Yisan, the Wanderer Bard brings Hibernation's End to the command zone. Starting a search at one rather hurts, but proliferate cards such as Throne of Geth can help bypass undesired numbers. Creatures that untap him such as Scryb Ranger will also help crank out his verse counters earlier, while copying his ability with Rings of Brighthearth generates extra value. Add in a Seedborn Muse and you can start spitting out an army quickly. The ability to tutor from the command zone should never be underestimated, as it allows for quick assembly of combos.

At least it looks like a real Sliver...

• Garruk, Apex Predator - At seven mana, he competes with Karn Liberated's and Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker's spot on the curve. Unlike those two, he doesn't dominate the board as soon as he hits. Generating a single modest creature a turn makes him a terrible token engine for his cost, and needing three turns to recharge from his use as removal limits him on that front. Killing planeswalkers is not likely to come up too often, and his ultimate only affects one opponent in multiplayer.
• Sliver Hivelord adds a new five-color commander to the lineup. It breaks the 7/7 tradition of older Sliver lords, but its indestructible nature makes it a difficult foe to deal with. It is not likely to replace Sliver Overlord for a dedicated Sliver tribal deck, but it still makes a decent standalone general in its own deck where a well-timed Jokulhaups would leave it as the sole survivor to pick off your opponents.

• Avarice Amulet - Since commanders rarely go to the graveyard, Commander is one of the formats that can help negate the drawback of the card. Vigilance is a valuable combat ability, and the personal Howling Mine will be welcome in several mono-colored decks.
• The Chain Veil adds a new dimension of threat to planeswalkers. Aside from simply doubling their output, every single planeswalker is now one turn closer to an ultimate than you previously expected. If you’re counting on that extra turn to deal with a planeswalker, you might be in for a nasty surprise. This becomes even nastier if Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient or a Rings of Brighthearth copies the ability.
• Perilous Vault adds a new staple for colorless removal. While it loses some of the repeatability and protection of Oblivion Stone, the capability to exile problematic threats is a large power boost in a format with as much recursion as Commander.
• Soul of New Phyrexia is a potent addition in the Soul cycle. A 6/6 trampler for six mana is decent value, but the ability to protect your board almost completely is extremely powerful. Having a second shot from your graveyard is a powerful effect as well.

I know I'm in the minority on this one, but I think the new Jace is pretty awesome. Commander is a format where the graveyard is often a second hand, with nearly all decks featuring some form of recursion. His +1 allows graveyard-based decks to fuel themselves by ditching a fatty for reanimation, or a spell with flashback or retrace for some value. Not only that, but it gives you a way to really improve the quality of your card draws! There's no doubt that Sylvan Library and Sensei's Divining Top are great even if you don't use them to actually draw any cards, because they can drastically improve the quality of your draws. I see this Jace as being similar. His -3 is perhaps the most underwhelming of his abilities, but it's a bounce spell in a pinch. His ultimate is very obviously powerful, and can easily win you the game if you manage to use it. With a starting loyalty of 5, it's quite easy to get up to 8 counters, and with Doubling Season, The Chain Veil, and several proliferate effects in the format it's easy to cheat that loyalty up quickly. The Mind Sculptor he is not, but in my opinion he walks all over Memory Adept and Architect of Thought, and is a solid utility walker for any deck that can run him.

When I started looking at the cards that I would want to highlight from this set, most of the souls readily stood out. I really like them for Commander; they’re decently big, have a decent cost, and most have decent abilities — even if slightly expensive. The rattlesnake option of a second use from the graveyard also sits well with me. Of them all I settled on the red Soul for a few reasons. Aside from killing Prophet of Kruphix, first strike is a wonderful ability to have. Its ability has a reasonable cost. Its shots will help clear the way — as well as speed up the game — and best of all its ability has the best rattlesnake from the graveyard. While several others have more powerful abilities, until a person deals with your graveyard, Soul of Shandalar threatens not only annoying utility creatures like Prophet, but many of the format's craziest commanders, including Kaalia of the Vast, Riku of Two Reflections, Glissa, the Traitor, and others who simply can’t be allowed to stay on the board.

If there's one thing I love in Commander, it's card advantage. Whether it's being able to affect multiple things with a single card, mass card draw, or being able to reuse cards, I look for cards that aren't one-for-ones. Ætherspouts has the promise of being such a card and goes well with something else I love: disruption. Naturally, every time we get shiny new cards we evaluate them in the best possible light. For this card, that is an opponent alpha striking with their whole board, including their commander. Now, since that doesn't happen all the time, I think we have to take an honest look at this card and ask ourselves some questions. How often does that happen? What does the attack step in a typical game look like? Does your deck want to hold up five mana every turn? These are all things that make the card less useful, and to top it off, the opponent gets to choose the order. That sucks, and it makes it less likely that you won't force them to shuffle their general away - a HUGE favorite of mine - unless you run a way to make them shuffle their library. And let me just say that if you run Soldier of Fortune I have much respect for you. So far, I'm not making the card look that great, but the fact that the cards go on top of the library and not to the hand is pretty big. That means turns where they aren't drawing something else, and as a blue player that gives you longer to save up that Counterspell. How many times have you overloaded a Cyclonic Rift just for the tempo delay and your opponent dumps half their hand back on the field? Not with this card they won't. And at the worst it's just a nifty combat trick to avoid damage — something blue never dislikes.

I stand by this card as being the best card in this set with Hushwing Gryff possibly being the other option. What really sells me on the sage is really a whole package sort of deal. This girl has everything correct: the mana cost, the size, the creature type, really everything is spot on for what I would want on this critter. It doesn't really have a specific build that she belongs in but she is just great in almost any deck that has green. One of green's strongest advantages is its ability to tutor for creatures and she is so cheap that when combined with a lot of the cheap tutors she adds a lot of versatility to a deck for very little mana. In the past, you had to consider artifact or enchantment removal on creatures under the five mana Acidic Slime, assuming you didn't have access to Harmonic Sliver. What she really does is that she lowers the mana entry to tutoring for these type of answers for a lot of green decks, which is huge. The key to this girl is just the number and variety of decks that will want to consider running her.

Ever since the pre-constellation cards in M14, (notably Ajani's Chosen), I've been contemplating a deck with the Auratouched Mage-Flickerform interaction. Using the Auratouched Mage to fetch Flickerform and then blinking him repeatedly to fetch more auras - especially ones with ETB abilities like Treachery and Flight of Fancy - is a powerful engine that can trigger Ajani's Chosen, Eidolon of Blossoms, and other constellation cards multiple times per iteration. He can also stock your board and graveyard with auras to transfer onto Bruna, Light of Alabaster on swing. Unfortunately, with only one copy of the Mage, it's difficult to build a deck around this interaction, especially because excess auras that get drawn are effectively dead, and any that end up in your graveyard can't do much either. Enter Boonweaver Giant. Not only does he provide redundancy for Auratouched Mage, but he also combines the abilities of Iridescent Drake and Academy Researchers into the same package, allowing you to perform the Flickerform combo regardless of where the pieces end up. This also lets him perform any combo that the Drake or Researchers could do as well, including infinite sacrifices with cards like Abduction, Fool's Demise, Gift of Immortality, and False Demise. If all else fails, he can always just be a seven mana 14/14 trample annihilator 2.

Green has a number of good draw spells, but adding another valuable choice to the pack really solidifies its options. To give some insight, even Skulltap is a decent card in Commander, and this is a merger between Skulltap and Greater Good. The biggest advantage of this card is that it’s great at any point of the game. Early game you can use it early on a Solemn Simulacrum to get your early plays rolling. Late game you can easily pitch a fatty to fuel up your board, Greater Good-style. It easily finds a home in Omnath, Locus of Mana decks, but is a strong option for any creature-based deck.