I can see a devoid permission deck coming. Use control spells that exile things, use processors to make use of said exiled things to create more control.
"Good in commander" depends on your meta. In mine, it is okay, not great... yet. Hopefully, this can fill in some of the gaps I have for my deck and lead me to a better footing.
A decent set of abilities on an ally with the growth '+1/+1 counter' mechanic is definitely a must, colorshifted would be gravy!
What abilities are people hoping for that would keep them distinct from slivers, but still powerful?
The main distinction between allies and slivers was always that slivers rely on static abilities to boost their army, whereas allies relied on ETB abilities to do things. There's a lot more design space to work with on that front. Just some examples:
A black ally that lets you return a creature card from your own graveyard to hand with CC equal or less to the number of allies you control when it or another ally ETB.
A white ally that kills enchantments when it or another ally ETB (either cheap or with lifegain equal to CC stapled to it to mirror Tuktuk Scrapper).
A blue ally that returns opponent creatures to hand if it's CC is equal or less than the number of allies you control.
A red ally that whenever it or another ally ETB, you exile the top card of your library and may play it this turn.
A green ally that lets you search for a basic land and put it in hand when it or another ally ETB. It wouldn't even have to be that expensive, since Karametra barely saw play at 5 mana.
Last time around, I think they only scratched the surface of what they could do. It seems nowadays that a lot of keywords are just "when trigger X happens, do Y", where Y is the usual gamut of draw card, discard card, deal damage, create token, gain life, etc. In recent years, however, they have done a lot of work to flesh out the identities of each color and should put that to use on their actual block mechanics, rather than just individual cards.
Eyeblight Massacre: Wrath Of Elves! The elves sure are unpleasant in this set.
The elves of Lorywn aren't your average nice Tolkien elves from Middle Earth. They think it's their duty to make their world prettier by killing everything that doesn't fit within their standard of beauty. In a way, they are the elves that the really old fairy tales talk about. The ones that stole babies and led people astray in the woods.
I would just like to point out that the "nice elves" thing is mostly the fault of bad Tolkien imitators who only read the parts that portray the hobbits' wonder at seeing an innately more magical species. Tolkienian elves could be vicious. The history of Middle Earth is full of tales of elvish treachery, rape, murder and genocide.
Having said that, Eyeblight Massacre is indeed a good sideboard card for when elves get into an aggro mirror match. Thornbow Archer is also a nice addition. It's almost a 2/2 for B with partial evasion.
I just realized that the red offering has absolutely no downsides to the caster. Sure, the opponent gets to choose the other targets, but she can't choose anything you control anyway.
I also love Comeuppance and Domineering Will. Nothing like turning the whole tide of a battle at instant speed. Incite Rebellion is amazing against token decks or other decks that use plenty of small creatures.
I'm not sure if I'm happy about Containment Priest. It's a good card, don't get me wrong. But I fear it might be the TNN of this set. That is to say, the card that pushes the deck into "Legacy player hoards every deck on the shelf at store opening time for months and LGS crank up prices to $60-70+ levels" territory.
Remember, Sphinx's Revelation was an absolutely terrible card. Cards with X costs that have a lot of preceding mana are always bad. After all, you had to pay four mana to even get the card to just cycle itself and for six mana, you only get a Concentration. It's pointless to talk about costs greater than 6, because any game will be over by then. And as we all know, a few points of life, up or down, are completely irrelevant. This is why Mind Rot is a much better card than Blightning, because it only requires one color to cast and those few points of damage that can't even hit a creature are irrelevant anyway.
I guess people are really, really scared of someone drafting a god if they P1P1 Deicide. Feast of Dreams is better single-target removal and Consign to Dust hits the same things and can potentially hit multiple targets. Given that there are other cards in THS and BNG that deal with gods, I would hold off for now. Cockatrice is what I would pick, but I can see the arguments for Feast of Dreams.
Not taking signalling into account, I would probably go for the Iconoclast. It's a body with three power and it's repeatable removal.
Personally, I think that Launch the Fleets is a win-more card. If you're in a position where you can attack with more than two creatures and not get blown out by the opponent's defenders, then you're probably winning already anyway and a few extra 1/1's are not going to make the difference. If you're only attacking with one or two creatures, then the spell is barely worth the card you're using the play it, since the block as a whole doesn't have much token support.
With signalling taken into account, I might however go for the black removal instead. Taking a white card but then passing a white rare that a lot of people seem to think it playable might cause you and your neighbor to fight for white and in my experience, white gets spread thin too often as it is. In fact, I might even risk the spider. B/G is not a popular combination. I've seen people pass Pharika's Mender or Graverobber Spider as the twelfth pick, despite them being very solid cards.
Well, it was definitely better than the previous two, but all in all, still a somewhat mediocre set. It didn't provide the same level of salvation that New Phyrexia gave to the Scars block.
Having said that, though, Strength from the Fallen is the card that caught my eye the post amongst the cards that we hadn't yet seen.
Obviously, the enchantment cycle exists to trigger Constellation and other enchantment-based interactions. Naturally, they won't be as good as their sorcery equivalents. See for example the Capsule cycle from Alara for the same idea. Those still get run in casual artifact-based decks despite being strictly worse than their sorcery counterparts in terms of cost.
Disciple of Deceit is amazing, though. If you can manage to get him tapped, he gives every card free transmute. EDH staple for sure. Also, I wonder if disciples are going to be a cycle.
I like it but do you think that the opponent will care, that the creature he/she just killed will return to the hand of his/her opponent? I mean 3 life is a lot so why not just let them?
Or a bunch of weenies. It's not unlikely that you'll have 3 or 4 creatures of 1 to 2 mana out along with him when your opponent manages to play a Wrath. Normally, that would be the blowout needed for your opponent to stabilize and take over the game. However, in this circumstance, it would come down to either giving you your army back, in which case it all drops again when the turn is passed, or paying 9-12 life, which they probably can't afford, given that they were probably already slapped around a bit.
And if they don't wrath, then you can just keep swinging and probably bring along an indestructible 5/4 for three mana. Even if they block and your creatures die, it's the same conundrum.
Auto-include in my Phenax EDH deck. Every turn, mill some and get a free exile to boot. Possibly more than one exile if I also have one of my many untap mechanisms out.
And there's our obligatory money card planeswalker. From the way things are looking, he'll probably have to carry the value of the set by himself anyway. I suppose he fails the "provides his own defense" test, but he is in the colors most likely to have lots of beefy creatures out anyway and he'll fetch more of them if needed. On a sidenote, it's good that they finally completed the two-color planeswalker set.
The rest is just bad. Seriously, how many semi-vanilla creatures with bestow do we need?
P.S. Sage of Hours just makes me sad. Even if my deck was stacked with heroic enablers, I still wouldn't run it. Even if my deck also ran all the proliferate cards and graft cards ever, I still wouldn't run it. That's how bad it is.
The mass exile clause is indeed not all that relevant, but the sword is still very good in Commander for decks that defend/stall. When put on a blocker, it's still basically a First Strike/Deathtouch that exiles and gets past any form of protection, since it doesn't target. Given the kinds of creatures that you'll see attacking in Commander on a regular basis, that's pretty good value.
The coinsmith is an uncommon. And at the very worst, it's a bear that gains you one life by itself. It can potentially get more life if you deck is build around it and can, in a stalled game, drain your opponent for those final few points. Would definitely run in limited.
Dictate is fun for decks that like Howling Mine, of which there are always some around.
The thing doesn't have haste, so even if he lands with devotion active, he still has to sit there for a turn. In the meantime, your creatures are harder to block (just harder, not unblockable) and they don't actually hit for more damage in the process. So he's a four mana card in aggro that does not actually contribute to damage unless he attacks himself and therefore basically encourages overextending. You tap out to drop him on turn four and basically say: "please blow me out with a wrath". Sure, if the opponent does not have a wrath, does not have removal to get rid of the creatures that are actually dealing damage and are needed to turn on devotion and also does not have counterspells, bounce, control, etc. to deal with it, then sure, he hits for a lot and you will win.
...but then, that statement is also true for a deck entirely composed of Grizzly Bears.
I can see a devoid permission deck coming. Use control spells that exile things, use processors to make use of said exiled things to create more control.
The main distinction between allies and slivers was always that slivers rely on static abilities to boost their army, whereas allies relied on ETB abilities to do things. There's a lot more design space to work with on that front. Just some examples:
A black ally that lets you return a creature card from your own graveyard to hand with CC equal or less to the number of allies you control when it or another ally ETB.
A white ally that kills enchantments when it or another ally ETB (either cheap or with lifegain equal to CC stapled to it to mirror Tuktuk Scrapper).
A blue ally that returns opponent creatures to hand if it's CC is equal or less than the number of allies you control.
A red ally that whenever it or another ally ETB, you exile the top card of your library and may play it this turn.
A green ally that lets you search for a basic land and put it in hand when it or another ally ETB. It wouldn't even have to be that expensive, since Karametra barely saw play at 5 mana.
Last time around, I think they only scratched the surface of what they could do. It seems nowadays that a lot of keywords are just "when trigger X happens, do Y", where Y is the usual gamut of draw card, discard card, deal damage, create token, gain life, etc. In recent years, however, they have done a lot of work to flesh out the identities of each color and should put that to use on their actual block mechanics, rather than just individual cards.
I would just like to point out that the "nice elves" thing is mostly the fault of bad Tolkien imitators who only read the parts that portray the hobbits' wonder at seeing an innately more magical species. Tolkienian elves could be vicious. The history of Middle Earth is full of tales of elvish treachery, rape, murder and genocide.
Having said that, Eyeblight Massacre is indeed a good sideboard card for when elves get into an aggro mirror match. Thornbow Archer is also a nice addition. It's almost a 2/2 for B with partial evasion.
I also love Comeuppance and Domineering Will. Nothing like turning the whole tide of a battle at instant speed. Incite Rebellion is amazing against token decks or other decks that use plenty of small creatures.
I'm not sure if I'm happy about Containment Priest. It's a good card, don't get me wrong. But I fear it might be the TNN of this set. That is to say, the card that pushes the deck into "Legacy player hoards every deck on the shelf at store opening time for months and LGS crank up prices to $60-70+ levels" territory.
Personally, I think that Launch the Fleets is a win-more card. If you're in a position where you can attack with more than two creatures and not get blown out by the opponent's defenders, then you're probably winning already anyway and a few extra 1/1's are not going to make the difference. If you're only attacking with one or two creatures, then the spell is barely worth the card you're using the play it, since the block as a whole doesn't have much token support.
With signalling taken into account, I might however go for the black removal instead. Taking a white card but then passing a white rare that a lot of people seem to think it playable might cause you and your neighbor to fight for white and in my experience, white gets spread thin too often as it is. In fact, I might even risk the spider. B/G is not a popular combination. I've seen people pass Pharika's Mender or Graverobber Spider as the twelfth pick, despite them being very solid cards.
Having said that, though, Strength from the Fallen is the card that caught my eye the post amongst the cards that we hadn't yet seen.
Disciple of Deceit is amazing, though. If you can manage to get him tapped, he gives every card free transmute. EDH staple for sure. Also, I wonder if disciples are going to be a cycle.
Or a bunch of weenies. It's not unlikely that you'll have 3 or 4 creatures of 1 to 2 mana out along with him when your opponent manages to play a Wrath. Normally, that would be the blowout needed for your opponent to stabilize and take over the game. However, in this circumstance, it would come down to either giving you your army back, in which case it all drops again when the turn is passed, or paying 9-12 life, which they probably can't afford, given that they were probably already slapped around a bit.
And if they don't wrath, then you can just keep swinging and probably bring along an indestructible 5/4 for three mana. Even if they block and your creatures die, it's the same conundrum.
The rest is just bad. Seriously, how many semi-vanilla creatures with bestow do we need?
P.S. Sage of Hours just makes me sad. Even if my deck was stacked with heroic enablers, I still wouldn't run it. Even if my deck also ran all the proliferate cards and graft cards ever, I still wouldn't run it. That's how bad it is.
Dictate is fun for decks that like Howling Mine, of which there are always some around.
The thing doesn't have haste, so even if he lands with devotion active, he still has to sit there for a turn. In the meantime, your creatures are harder to block (just harder, not unblockable) and they don't actually hit for more damage in the process. So he's a four mana card in aggro that does not actually contribute to damage unless he attacks himself and therefore basically encourages overextending. You tap out to drop him on turn four and basically say: "please blow me out with a wrath". Sure, if the opponent does not have a wrath, does not have removal to get rid of the creatures that are actually dealing damage and are needed to turn on devotion and also does not have counterspells, bounce, control, etc. to deal with it, then sure, he hits for a lot and you will win.
...but then, that statement is also true for a deck entirely composed of Grizzly Bears.