I dunno if I've seen a single positive comment you've made on any of these new cards, RedGauntlet. We aren't owed anything in particular, and I think WotC has hit it out of the park with all the old character throwbacks. Infinitely growing Hydra is a cool niche, and as the game goes on you can swing with your big guys that died. I think it's a cool design. If you don't, that's fine, don't play with it. I, at least, appreciate the new space this explores.
amen to that *****, and not just specifically to the person you mention in your comment.I'm just so tired of all the overwhelmingly disappointed comments going around. Like people aren't even looking at the cards, they just see something that doesn't meet their expectations and instantly rate it a fail.
Imagine that a restaurant tells you that they have a new chicken dish. You get excited about it and you order it and you're really set on getting chicken because that's what you were told it was going to be. The dish comes out and it's fish. Do you not have grounds to be disappointed? And then imagine that the person at the next table over goes out of their way to tell you that you shouldn't be disappointed, eveb though the dish is definitely not the chicken you were told about. That person is all of you stating that people shouldn't be disappointed.
If you don't want to read disappointed comments, avoid them. Because WOTC is failing to deliver on what they said the deck was and people have good reason to be disappointed with that.
Don't bother, trust me. Most people here will defend every decision WOTC makes religiously. You're not allowed to be disappointed, even when WOTC disappoints you. My advice is, only buy what you want. I'm getting a few singles and passing on the decks this year. At least so far. We'll see if the Bant Enchantment deck delivers. But I have my doubts. At the end of the day, it's my money and they'll either earn it or not *shrugs*
And then there’s this BS. So because we don’t hate the cards, we’re Wizards apologists? Last I checked, the saying goes “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all”.
Not hating the card is one thing but you started going at us for been disapointed with the product and going all defensive on it. Idon't mind if you liked the cards but went alll defensive and even quoting some us, showing quite alot of hostiltiy for us to dare to be disapointed by a product.
I don't get this deck. From all the spoiled cards only the dragon cares about lands, the rest doesn't. Not even the commanders. I don't understand why they build expectation and propose a theme, then do something else. There are more +1/+1 matters cards so far than lands matters cards.
Its frustrating because its the clear the designers didn't care to follow their own themes. Take this hydra, suppose that it costed 4-6 mana, and instead of entereing the battlefield with counters equal to the casting cost, it entered the battlefield with counters equal to the number of lands you have. Then that would have been a nice desgin. Or even better, it could have costed 3 mana and have a landfall trigger making it bigger with time. But no they made this unrelated legend.
Yeah I was really hoping for some weird combination of Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar, Omnath, Locus of Rage, and The Gitrog Monster for the Jund "Land Matters" Commander. Not my favorite card by a stretch, especially because you have to exile your creatures from your graveyard and you can't even pick creatures from your opponent's graveyards.
Totally agree... Where is the land matters in this deck? Being an X spell doesn’t really fit what I think most people had in mind when they heard the announcement... seems lazy.
I like it with tzatziki and pita bread.
Odd choice for a commander though.
Great comment, had a good chuckle.
This is a great Commander, with a lot of open-ended possibilities.
Jund has a lot of toolsy creatures that can affect the battlefield, other creatures, player's hands and planeswalkers. This allows them to serve double duty and gives you a fairly sturdy body as well.
On top of that, it's an underused tribal type in Hydra, and the art is freaking fantastic on it, really menacing and so on. This is a good design which will create some nice builds. B+/A- here.
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The "Crazy One", playing casual magic and occasionally dipping his toes into regular play since 1994.
Currently focusing on Pre-Modern (Mono-Black Discard Control) and Modern (Azorious Control, Temur Rhinos).
Find me at the Wizard's Tower in Ottawa every second Saturday afternoons.
I think all the cards are pretty cool, just not feeling the land them. Wind grace and Gyrus play in this area but as a few other have said the exception was more along the lines of The Gitrog Monster. I won't say they lied about the deck until the see the full list but I'm sad this deck didn't get more cards to build around the lands theme so far.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
I think everyone's missed a detail about how this commander product is different from the last... all of them. Source.
Normally when we make a Commander set, we start with our ideas, or our themes, or our goals, and then build outward from there.
But this time, Ken Nagle flipped the script a little.
He started with a major mission: find common Commander requests, and incorporate them into the set.
Commander sets are a great opportunity to really look at the format and see what it could use. Ken had this great philosophy baked into Commander 2018 from the beginning and did a bunch of research, combing through articles, Reddit posts, and YouTube videos. He designed a few cards for it, then I took it and ran. In a sense, it's a "bottom-up" design: a lot of how the set came together was designed around making things work out so we would have the room to make cards (and commanders) for popular strategies, and cards that addressed holes in Commander.
As much as the deck's theme is Lands matter (and Windgrace does care about lands in two out of three effects), the set's purpose is to give out things that Wizard's hasn't done yet. So we get a Commander that is a Spider (in all three relevant colors), and a Commander that is a Hydra (in... the colors to put it in). The incomplete colors set (Xantcha and Varchild) seem to heavily favor giving Vorthos things they wanted. Single cards that help do stuff for decks (Enchanter's Bane and Treasure Nabber) that Wizard's has noticed EDH commanders are worried about (Enchantments vs. Red and Mana rock abuse).
amen to that *****, and not just specifically to the person you mention in your comment.I'm just so tired of all the overwhelmingly disappointed comments going around. Like people aren't even looking at the cards, they just see something that doesn't meet their expectations and instantly rate it a fail.
Imagine that a restaurant tells you that they have a new chicken dish. You get excited about it and you order it and you're really set on getting chicken because that's what you were told it was going to be. The dish comes out and it's fish. Do you not have grounds to be disappointed? And then imagine that the person at the next table over goes out of their way to tell you that you shouldn't be disappointed, eveb though the dish is definitely not the chicken you were told about. That person is all of you stating that people shouldn't be disappointed.
If you don't want to read disappointed comments, avoid them. Because WOTC is failing to deliver on what they said the deck was and people have good reason to be disappointed with that.
Don't bother, trust me. Most people here will defend every decision WOTC makes religiously. You're not allowed to be disappointed, even when WOTC disappoints you. My advice is, only buy what you want. I'm getting a few singles and passing on the decks this year. At least so far. We'll see if the Bant Enchantment deck delivers. But I have my doubts. At the end of the day, it's my money and they'll either earn it or not *shrugs*
And then there’s this BS. So because we don’t hate the cards, we’re Wizards apologists? Last I checked, the saying goes “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all”.
Not hating the card is one thing but you started going at us for been disapointed with the product and going all defensive on it. Idon't mind if you liked the cards but went alll defensive and even quoting some us, showing quite alot of hostiltiy for us to dare to be disapointed by a product.
Actually, no. I went at you, personally, and your broken record of “doesn’t care about lands” on pretty much every card spoiled today. It’s obnoxious, and quite frankly, unwarranted.
8 cards spoiled yesterday specifically interacted with artifacts within their deck, and the sub-commanders are arguably just Izzet-things, and not specifically artifact things. 3 such cards have been spoiled that specifically interact with lands, plus another 3 reprints. The f****** day isn’t even over yet. Like I said, it’s just ignorant hate because it’s not what you want.
Imagine that a restaurant tells you that they have a new chicken dish. You get excited about it and you order it and you're really set on getting chicken because that's what you were told it was going to be. The dish comes out and it's fish. Do you not have grounds to be disappointed? And then imagine that the person at the next table over goes out of their way to tell you that you shouldn't be disappointed, eveb though the dish is definitely not the chicken you were told about. That person is all of you stating that people shouldn't be disappointed.
If you don't want to read disappointed comments, avoid them. Because WOTC is failing to deliver on what they said the deck was and people have good reason to be disappointed with that.
Don't bother, trust me. Most people here will defend every decision WOTC makes religiously. You're not allowed to be disappointed, even when WOTC disappoints you. My advice is, only buy what you want. I'm getting a few singles and passing on the decks this year. At least so far. We'll see if the Bant Enchantment deck delivers. But I have my doubts. At the end of the day, it's my money and they'll either earn it or not *shrugs*
And then there’s this BS. So because we don’t hate the cards, we’re Wizards apologists? Last I checked, the saying goes “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all”.
Not hating the card is one thing but you started going at us for been disapointed with the product and going all defensive on it. Idon't mind if you liked the cards but went alll defensive and even quoting some us, showing quite alot of hostiltiy for us to dare to be disapointed by a product.
Actually, no. I went at you, personally, and your broken record of “doesn’t care about lands” on pretty much every card spoiled today. It’s obnoxious, and quite frankly, unwarranted.
8 cards spoiled yesterday specifically interacted with artifacts within their deck, and the commander are arguably just Izzet-things, and not specifically artifact things. 3 such cards have been spoiled that specifically interact with lands, plus another 3 reprints. The f****** day isn’t even over yet. Like I said, it’s just ignorant hate because it’s not what you want.
Ignore my comments then, don't be so defensive about it. Only Varchild din't interact wih artifacts, while the othe cards, specially the legendaries, did. They aren't izzet things, izzet's thing is spell based, while the legendaries have interactions with artifacts and have a sub theme of tokens that did meld with the artifact theme. Tawnos copies triggers and activated abilities of artifacts, Sahelli reduce the cost of spells using artifacts and Brudiclad creates artifacts and is an artifact creature in itself so it has synergy with artifacts like treasure tokens for example. Don't give me this BS, I'm not the only one that doesn't think this deck is land themed wich alot of epople expected to be. It even turned into a meme in reddit. So get out of your high horse because at this points is too late since the other 3 genrals were already spoiled and have 0 relations to lands. Hell most of the new cards have 0 relations with land matters.
If you ahve a problem with my negativity just ignore it, because thats whats im about to do with your comments since they don't contribute nothing either sicne you sound like your personally insulted by me. You ignored my positive comments so you should also do it my negative ones.
I think everyone's missed a detail about how this commander product is different from the last... all of them. Source.
Normally when we make a Commander set, we start with our ideas, or our themes, or our goals, and then build outward from there.
But this time, Ken Nagle flipped the script a little.
He started with a major mission: find common Commander requests, and incorporate them into the set.
Commander sets are a great opportunity to really look at the format and see what it could use. Ken had this great philosophy baked into Commander 2018 from the beginning and did a bunch of research, combing through articles, Reddit posts, and YouTube videos. He designed a few cards for it, then I took it and ran. In a sense, it's a "bottom-up" design: a lot of how the set came together was designed around making things work out so we would have the room to make cards (and commanders) for popular strategies, and cards that addressed holes in Commander.
As much as the deck's theme is Lands matter (and Windgrace does care about lands in two out of three effects), the set's purpose is to give out things that Wizard's hasn't done yet. So we get a Commander that is a Spider (in all three relevant colors), and a Commander that is a Hydra (in... the colors to put it in). The incomplete colors set (Xantcha and Varchild) seem to heavily favor giving Vorthos things they wanted. Single cards that help do stuff for decks (Enchanter's Bane and Treasure Nabber) that Wizard's has noticed EDH commanders are worried about (Enchantments vs. Red and Mana rock abuse).
Thanks for this, that was actually really helpful. I mean I probably should've read the launch article already but I'm glad you reminded me to do so
I can't help but still feel a bit disappointed simply because I was also really excited by the idea of jund commander which crossed between gitrog and rage omnath, simply because I wanted it to be. And I guess we did get some jund-y flavored gitrog variant in Lord Windgrace so maybe they thought they were meeting that need. I have very little interest in any of the PW commanders though but that's just personal choice. With PWs in general I mostly just feel like either your comboing with Doubling Season or you're vastly overpaying for a sorcery (since everyone goes way out of their way to kill it).
But the article definitely clears the situation up. And I actually appreciate the approach. Since the actual decks are just temporary fun that get broken up for parts in a week or two. I'd rather a confusing deck with good parts then the other way around.
This hydra may not have anything to do with lands but I do like him as a part. He seems like an interesting build around. Could be a cool voltron deck where all utility is in the form of small ETB creatures. Although there is already too much graveyard hate in my meta so I'm very resistant to building new GY focused decks. But can't hurt to brew!
Even if Wizards said that a major focus in this commander set was to fill in the gaps of what people were requesting of in a commander set, there's no denying there's a lot of mixed marketing going on here. If the major release of information was about the themes of the four decks, I think it's totally understandable why some people are upset that the majority of the new generals in the jund deck are not following that theme, especially since yesterday 3/4 generals of the izzet deck do follow an artifact theme.
I am bummed that there wasn't at least a 2nd new Lands Matter general made for the jund deck.
I also don't think that Gyrus, Waker of Corpses is really worth building for, because Sedris, the Traitor King does the same thing but better as you're not restricted to only one inherent trigger a turn. Otherwise Gyrus is a big fatty that needs trample and can be used as a voltron general, but for Jund I'd rather do Kresh the Bloodbraided for that effect. I like the recasting part of the card to make it bigger, but that's the most interesting thing about the card. Otherwise you're looking at one cheat in creature token a turn that you can abuse etbs or big creatures or something.
Just to note -- I think that Thantis The Warweaver is a pretty awesome general and was a good example of something that hasn't been done too much in the past.
Oh the marketing definitely... missed, prioritizing the deck's 'themes' as our first news over the 'print cards commander players want' as the real important detail. I simply relayed the article as it was on point to goofus and goofus's argument raging across the thread. The difference between 'land matters general' and 'izzet artificer general' is there's been a very defiant push for an izzet artifact commander for years. Thus we got Saheeli AND the perfect storm old character who never got a card before who cares about artifacts in an interesting way that isn't just 'gimme card advantage.'
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Myr is only really an artifact matters commander if you squint (in that tokens are often artifact tokens).
Of the four commanders out of this particular deck, I'm here for Xantcha.
And I wouldn't compare Gyrus to O-Kagachi, Gyrus at least passes the playable test.
I'll disagree with you on the TMNT Myr being the only one (the artifact trigger general and Saheeli both interact with artifacts, making artifacts matter in the deck).
But I do agree that Xantcha, Sleeper Agent is the most exciting card to come out so far.
I don’t mind the hydra, just mad they dropped the ball on making a second jund land matters commander.
Would’ve been more interesting if you could return a creature from your graveyard to play with power less than or equal to the number of lands in your graveyard. Or something along those lines that would appeal to not only the land lovers, but the reanimator fans as well
While I thought the complaining about the reveal steam was unjustified the complaining about this deck is definitely justified. Of the new cards revealed 4 are lands matters cards. Windgrace himself, who is really superficial in his "lands matters"-ness. Nesting Dragon, a fine card but certainly not revolutionary(not that I'm really asking them to be). Crash of Rhino Beetles which is really just a new scute mob(also in the deck). And Reality Scramble, another that only does lip service to the theme. And excusing Gyrus here as lands matters because he's an x spell is like saying you should play Grapeshot in a beatdown deck because the deck has lands to cast spells.
Don't get me wrong, I dig Gyrus and may well build him, but if nothing else support the theme you put forth.
People claiming that an X spell is a lands matters spell make me eyeroll for ages. I mean now Grenzo is a lands matters general, come on people. They just didn't deliver. Lets hope the other decks do.
People claiming that an X spell is a lands matters spell make me eyeroll for ages. I mean now Grenzo is a lands matters general, come on people. They just didn't deliver. Lets hope the other decks do.
People claiming that an X spell is a lands matters spell make me eyeroll for ages. I mean now Grenzo is a lands matters general, come on people. They just didn't deliver. Lets hope the other decks do.
Why is it that some shard commanders hit the mark (Oloro, Thraximundar, Shattergang Bros) and others don't? Ideally, you want a shard commander to have 1 relevant ability that comes from each of its three colors. I'd even be willing to settle for two abilities from the three colors, preferably with an evergreen keyword thrown in for good measure. I'm pretty sure the only reason they put Red into the casting cost was because of the color of its eyes - this would make a great Golgari commander but it just doesn't do enough for me.
Just to note -- I think that Thantis The Warweaver is a pretty awesome general and was a good example of something that hasn't been done too much in the past.
.. "but it's in Jund and it gets +X/+X counters, not just +X/+X for that combat, so it's totally totally different."
Oh yeah, slow clap and pat on the back for the original and unique card designs WotC, really putting in the midnight hours to come up with something new.
Just to note -- I think that Thantis The Warweaver is a pretty awesome general and was a good example of something that hasn't been done too much in the past.
.. "but it's in Jund and it gets +X/+X counters, not just +X/+X for that combat, so it's totally totally different."
Oh yeah, slow clap and pat on the back for the original and unique card designs WotC, really putting in the midnight hours to come up with something new.
To be fair, I did say it hasn't been done too much.
And the 1/1 counters do make a difference in enabling for it to be a voltron general. It's certainly a superior Fumiko.
Just to note -- I think that Thantis The Warweaver is a pretty awesome general and was a good example of something that hasn't been done too much in the past.
.. "but it's in Jund and it gets +X/+X counters, not just +X/+X for that combat, so it's totally totally different."
Oh yeah, slow clap and pat on the back for the original and unique card designs WotC, really putting in the midnight hours to come up with something new.
At the very least they did improve upon it, giving it Vigilance to be able to attack and block and while I definitely agree they misled us with the theme, the number of people who certainly sound like they didn't mind a Commander that's literally just Omnath and Gitrog combined shows it's more of the color-access being on-theme being more important than creativity.
The hydra, on the other hand, feels like a downgrade from the likes of Karador, Teneb and maybe even Alesha.
Warweaver may be just an improved Fumiko, but that improvement and the addition of 2 colors opened a world of possibility (and arguably made what was basically unplayable into a plausibly playable strategy now), while Gyrus here is just the slower, less-combo, more-battlecruiser version of all the other reanimator Commanders we already have and the color-advantages he provides aren't really critical since almost all 3-color combos can cover anything.
Talking about battlecruiser, I'm convinced they thought ramp-into-fatties (or lands=fatties) battlecruiser was the type of lands-matters deck we wanted, which well, is obvious as day, is not.
Would it have been completely broken if you got to keep your reanimated token? I mean for this to pull massive fatties/Eldrazi out of the yard you've either put counters on it via another route or paid 10+ mana to do so pretty much, for that investment I'd have thought it could stick around. Or at least it wouldn't exile the creature card from your graveyard so you could re-animate things more than once.
Like the Command Zone pointed out in their unveiling of the card; Doubling Season, Parallel Lives, and Primal Vigor will all make an extra token of the thing you exile, and because of the wording of the Hydra, since doubling season or parallel lives made those tokens, the second token stays. Sundial of the Infinite also helps to keep the tokens because you can end your turn before combat ends and then the token stays around. There's ways around it which is why I think this commander is actually very good. There's a lot of commanders where if you build a deck around them they're still just okay no matter how much synergy you put into them, but I think since this commander is in the right colors for removal, card draw, and mana ramp (which is why sultai and jund are probably the best shards for commander in my opinion) I think putting the right pieces around this thing can actually make it very good and even get it into an optimized range where you can win with it consistently and have a lot of fun doing it.
Would it have been completely broken if you got to keep your reanimated token? I mean for this to pull massive fatties/Eldrazi out of the yard you've either put counters on it via another route or paid 10+ mana to do so pretty much, for that investment I'd have thought it could stick around. Or at least it wouldn't exile the creature card from your graveyard so you could re-animate things more than once.
Like the Command Zone pointed out in their unveiling of the card; Doubling Season, Parallel Lives, and Primal Vigor will all make an extra token of the thing you exile, and because of the wording of the Hydra, since doubling season or parallel lives made those tokens, the second token stays. Sundial of the Infinite also helps to keep the tokens because you can end your turn before combat ends and then the token stays around. There's ways around it which is why I think this commander is actually very good. There's a lot of commanders where if you build a deck around them they're still just okay no matter how much synergy you put into them, but I think since this commander is in the right colors for removal, card draw, and mana ramp (which is why sultai and jund are probably the best shards for commander in my opinion) I think putting the right pieces around this thing can actually make it very good and even get it into an optimized range where you can win with it consistently and have a lot of fun doing it.
Doubling Season and the like don't make the extra tokens. They have the original creator make more. So if you have Doubling Season out, when Gyrus creates a token, it'll create two and both are equally doomed. But Sundial can save them.
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Not hating the card is one thing but you started going at us for been disapointed with the product and going all defensive on it. Idon't mind if you liked the cards but went alll defensive and even quoting some us, showing quite alot of hostiltiy for us to dare to be disapointed by a product.
Its frustrating because its the clear the designers didn't care to follow their own themes. Take this hydra, suppose that it costed 4-6 mana, and instead of entereing the battlefield with counters equal to the casting cost, it entered the battlefield with counters equal to the number of lands you have. Then that would have been a nice desgin. Or even better, it could have costed 3 mana and have a landfall trigger making it bigger with time. But no they made this unrelated legend.
Totally agree... Where is the land matters in this deck? Being an X spell doesn’t really fit what I think most people had in mind when they heard the announcement... seems lazy.
Great comment, had a good chuckle.
This is a great Commander, with a lot of open-ended possibilities.
Jund has a lot of toolsy creatures that can affect the battlefield, other creatures, player's hands and planeswalkers. This allows them to serve double duty and gives you a fairly sturdy body as well.
On top of that, it's an underused tribal type in Hydra, and the art is freaking fantastic on it, really menacing and so on. This is a good design which will create some nice builds. B+/A- here.
Currently focusing on Pre-Modern (Mono-Black Discard Control) and Modern (Azorious Control, Temur Rhinos).
Find me at the Wizard's Tower in Ottawa every second Saturday afternoons.
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
As much as the deck's theme is Lands matter (and Windgrace does care about lands in two out of three effects), the set's purpose is to give out things that Wizard's hasn't done yet. So we get a Commander that is a Spider (in all three relevant colors), and a Commander that is a Hydra (in... the colors to put it in). The incomplete colors set (Xantcha and Varchild) seem to heavily favor giving Vorthos things they wanted. Single cards that help do stuff for decks (Enchanter's Bane and Treasure Nabber) that Wizard's has noticed EDH commanders are worried about (Enchantments vs. Red and Mana rock abuse).
Actually, no. I went at you, personally, and your broken record of “doesn’t care about lands” on pretty much every card spoiled today. It’s obnoxious, and quite frankly, unwarranted.
8 cards spoiled yesterday specifically interacted with artifacts within their deck, and the sub-commanders are arguably just Izzet-things, and not specifically artifact things. 3 such cards have been spoiled that specifically interact with lands, plus another 3 reprints. The f****** day isn’t even over yet. Like I said, it’s just ignorant hate because it’s not what you want.
Ignore my comments then, don't be so defensive about it. Only Varchild din't interact wih artifacts, while the othe cards, specially the legendaries, did. They aren't izzet things, izzet's thing is spell based, while the legendaries have interactions with artifacts and have a sub theme of tokens that did meld with the artifact theme. Tawnos copies triggers and activated abilities of artifacts, Sahelli reduce the cost of spells using artifacts and Brudiclad creates artifacts and is an artifact creature in itself so it has synergy with artifacts like treasure tokens for example. Don't give me this BS, I'm not the only one that doesn't think this deck is land themed wich alot of epople expected to be. It even turned into a meme in reddit. So get out of your high horse because at this points is too late since the other 3 genrals were already spoiled and have 0 relations to lands. Hell most of the new cards have 0 relations with land matters.
If you ahve a problem with my negativity just ignore it, because thats whats im about to do with your comments since they don't contribute nothing either sicne you sound like your personally insulted by me. You ignored my positive comments so you should also do it my negative ones.
Thanks for this, that was actually really helpful. I mean I probably should've read the launch article already but I'm glad you reminded me to do so
I can't help but still feel a bit disappointed simply because I was also really excited by the idea of jund commander which crossed between gitrog and rage omnath, simply because I wanted it to be. And I guess we did get some jund-y flavored gitrog variant in Lord Windgrace so maybe they thought they were meeting that need. I have very little interest in any of the PW commanders though but that's just personal choice. With PWs in general I mostly just feel like either your comboing with Doubling Season or you're vastly overpaying for a sorcery (since everyone goes way out of their way to kill it).
But the article definitely clears the situation up. And I actually appreciate the approach. Since the actual decks are just temporary fun that get broken up for parts in a week or two. I'd rather a confusing deck with good parts then the other way around.
This hydra may not have anything to do with lands but I do like him as a part. He seems like an interesting build around. Could be a cool voltron deck where all utility is in the form of small ETB creatures. Although there is already too much graveyard hate in my meta so I'm very resistant to building new GY focused decks. But can't hurt to brew!
I am bummed that there wasn't at least a 2nd new Lands Matter general made for the jund deck.
I also don't think that Gyrus, Waker of Corpses is really worth building for, because Sedris, the Traitor King does the same thing but better as you're not restricted to only one inherent trigger a turn. Otherwise Gyrus is a big fatty that needs trample and can be used as a voltron general, but for Jund I'd rather do Kresh the Bloodbraided for that effect. I like the recasting part of the card to make it bigger, but that's the most interesting thing about the card. Otherwise you're looking at one cheat in creature token a turn that you can abuse etbs or big creatures or something.
Just to note -- I think that Thantis The Warweaver is a pretty awesome general and was a good example of something that hasn't been done too much in the past.
But I guess every commander product deck needs an O-Kagachi, Vengeful Kami
Just to clarify, Commander Tax would be included in the "amount of mana used to cast him", right?
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Myr is only really an artifact matters commander if you squint (in that tokens are often artifact tokens).
Of the four commanders out of this particular deck, I'm here for Xantcha.
And I wouldn't compare Gyrus to O-Kagachi, Gyrus at least passes the playable test.
But I do agree that Xantcha, Sleeper Agent is the most exciting card to come out so far.
Would’ve been more interesting if you could return a creature from your graveyard to play with power less than or equal to the number of lands in your graveyard. Or something along those lines that would appeal to not only the land lovers, but the reanimator fans as well
Don't get me wrong, I dig Gyrus and may well build him, but if nothing else support the theme you put forth.
Blaze is a lands matters spell. /s
-Chandra Nalaar
.. "but it's in Jund and it gets +X/+X counters, not just +X/+X for that combat, so it's totally totally different."
Oh yeah, slow clap and pat on the back for the original and unique card designs WotC, really putting in the midnight hours to come up with something new.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
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-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
To be fair, I did say it hasn't been done too much.
And the 1/1 counters do make a difference in enabling for it to be a voltron general. It's certainly a superior Fumiko.
At the very least they did improve upon it, giving it Vigilance to be able to attack and block and while I definitely agree they misled us with the theme, the number of people who certainly sound like they didn't mind a Commander that's literally just Omnath and Gitrog combined shows it's more of the color-access being on-theme being more important than creativity.
The hydra, on the other hand, feels like a downgrade from the likes of Karador, Teneb and maybe even Alesha.
Warweaver may be just an improved Fumiko, but that improvement and the addition of 2 colors opened a world of possibility (and arguably made what was basically unplayable into a plausibly playable strategy now), while Gyrus here is just the slower, less-combo, more-battlecruiser version of all the other reanimator Commanders we already have and the color-advantages he provides aren't really critical since almost all 3-color combos can cover anything.
Talking about battlecruiser, I'm convinced they thought ramp-into-fatties (or lands=fatties) battlecruiser was the type of lands-matters deck we wanted, which well, is obvious as day, is not.
Like the Command Zone pointed out in their unveiling of the card; Doubling Season, Parallel Lives, and Primal Vigor will all make an extra token of the thing you exile, and because of the wording of the Hydra, since doubling season or parallel lives made those tokens, the second token stays. Sundial of the Infinite also helps to keep the tokens because you can end your turn before combat ends and then the token stays around. There's ways around it which is why I think this commander is actually very good. There's a lot of commanders where if you build a deck around them they're still just okay no matter how much synergy you put into them, but I think since this commander is in the right colors for removal, card draw, and mana ramp (which is why sultai and jund are probably the best shards for commander in my opinion) I think putting the right pieces around this thing can actually make it very good and even get it into an optimized range where you can win with it consistently and have a lot of fun doing it.
Doubling Season and the like don't make the extra tokens. They have the original creator make more. So if you have Doubling Season out, when Gyrus creates a token, it'll create two and both are equally doomed. But Sundial can save them.