Lord of the Rings fan or not, the two Commanders seem pretty good. Aragorn might be the first Jeskai commander I am interested in, and I do love the Monarch mechanic as it adds a pretty simple but powerful effect to the game. For four mana, you get a 4/4 vigilance lifelink with Monarch AND some powerful monarch synergies? Yeah. Eowyn is also pretty good in a humans deck as well, which is what I am assuming this deck is themed around.
I am just not sure they would go back to Infect, but I suppose you never know. If that's the case, however, I would really want to see Phyrexian Swarmlord and Phyrexian Vatmother.
Now that we know the face commanders and the colors for the ONE Commander decks, it's time to break down and do some speculation.
WBG
- Well we can immediately say that the phyrexian deck will likely involve a lot of poison counter strategy. Toxic will likely make a big appearance in the new cards in order to maximize the value from the Commander (Ixhel), as well as support from older cards that care about poison counters. With that being said, I would be very surprised if true "Infect" cards like Putrefax and Phyrexian Vatmother get reprinted, however I could be wrong. I do however imagine something like Decimator Web and Caress of Phyrexia are good candidates for reprints. While not Infect or Toxic, I imagine we will be seeing a lot of proliferation effects in the deck as well to grow those counters in other ways outside of combat damage from Toxic. Evolution Sage, Karn's Bastion, Spread the Sickness, Smell Fear, and Plaguemaw Beast all stand out as some potentially solid proliferators in these colors. With proliferate seeming like a given, I imagine there will be plenty of other counter based cards in the deck. Depending on what types of counters they want to go with (either +1/+1 which seems the more likely route, but they could go -1/-1 counters as well), we could see Contagion Clasp and Contagion Engine. Things like Necroskitter would also be quite valuable here, but I am imagining they will not go with -1/-1 counters unless they also add Infect cards to the deck, which is still unlikely to me. A +1/+1 counter strategy seems more likely, and especially if we see both elements of going tall and wide with creatures to get around threats and blockers to add more poison counters to your opponents. Gavony Township, Forgotten Ancient, Polukranos, Unchained, just touch the surface of what kinds of +1/+1 counter strategies we would see here.
As for new cards, here are my predictions (and wishes):
- The "Alternate Commander" will either focus on Proliferating or making 1/1 Phyrexian Mite tokens that have toxic. It will be a phyrexian
- There will be a new enchantment or artifact that lets you poison people through an activated ability.
- There will be a new Corrupt permanent card that lets you reanimate cards from your opponents graveyards as long as they are "Corrupted".
- There will be an equipment that gives a creature some significant benefits alongside "Toxic 1".
- There will be a new board wipe that additionally poisons players.
- There will be a new creature that has toxic, but whenever it deals traditional combat damage it will make that many 1/1 phyrexian mites with toxic.
- There will be a new proliferating enchantment or artifact that might be a chase card for the decks.
RW
- Boros doing Boros things! And pretty well, by the looks of it. The face Commander can do some serious damage with things like Krenko and Cathar's Crusade. I would like to hope we get some old rebel reprints like [card]Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero
[/card], but I think it will be more focused on making those creature tokens and going really wide. Assemble the Legion, Deploy to the Front, Hero of Bladehold, Entrapment Maneuver, [[Flamerush Rider]], and all of those juicy token cards seem like a slam dunk. I imagine we could see a lot of "mass pump" enchantments as well, like Commander's Insignia and even Angel of Invention would work.
I am still working on my predictions for this deck, stay tuned!
I think this would have been a better card if you got to choose the direction, making it at least viable and not a dead card if the person to your left has an empty board. This seems like it would have been easy to implement...
Love this set so far; my biggest beef though is that they should have saved the Tarrasque for this set so they didn't have to make it so weak for Standard. Bleh.
I am very excited for these decks. They all sound very interesting. I am particularly looking forward to the Mind Flayaaars deck, hoping that it is some Horror/Pirate themes with stealing your opponent's cards and making some big scary monsters! It fits with the Crab Ooze Horror as well as the "Whenever a nonland permanent an opponent owns enters the battlefield under your control,..." effect.
I imagine the card that gives your cards Undying is like a White/Black Enchantment that makes all of your Wizards, Warriors, Rogues, and Clerics have undying. It will give the Party Mechanic some resilience. I wish it was a legendary creature, however
Delayed Blast Fireball sounds like a Suspend card, where maybe the longer it sits in exile, the bigger it gets? and you can add or remove time counters from it? That would be cool!
Tyranid as temur makes little sense to me, i think sultai or even abzan fit better.
Other choices are good, can't wait to see the cards
I can see the like, Simic Bioengineered side of it, with mutations and synapses, as well as a Gruul side to it, like big scary monsters and brutal attacks. Together that makes sense to me at least. I would have expected more of a Sultai deck though as well.
Kind of wish we didn't get so many Cat creatures in this set! There was a ton of other creature types in this world that I would have loved to see instead.
WBG
- Well we can immediately say that the phyrexian deck will likely involve a lot of poison counter strategy. Toxic will likely make a big appearance in the new cards in order to maximize the value from the Commander (Ixhel), as well as support from older cards that care about poison counters. With that being said, I would be very surprised if true "Infect" cards like Putrefax and Phyrexian Vatmother get reprinted, however I could be wrong. I do however imagine something like Decimator Web and Caress of Phyrexia are good candidates for reprints. While not Infect or Toxic, I imagine we will be seeing a lot of proliferation effects in the deck as well to grow those counters in other ways outside of combat damage from Toxic. Evolution Sage, Karn's Bastion, Spread the Sickness, Smell Fear, and Plaguemaw Beast all stand out as some potentially solid proliferators in these colors. With proliferate seeming like a given, I imagine there will be plenty of other counter based cards in the deck. Depending on what types of counters they want to go with (either +1/+1 which seems the more likely route, but they could go -1/-1 counters as well), we could see Contagion Clasp and Contagion Engine. Things like Necroskitter would also be quite valuable here, but I am imagining they will not go with -1/-1 counters unless they also add Infect cards to the deck, which is still unlikely to me. A +1/+1 counter strategy seems more likely, and especially if we see both elements of going tall and wide with creatures to get around threats and blockers to add more poison counters to your opponents. Gavony Township, Forgotten Ancient, Polukranos, Unchained, just touch the surface of what kinds of +1/+1 counter strategies we would see here.
As for new cards, here are my predictions (and wishes):
- The "Alternate Commander" will either focus on Proliferating or making 1/1 Phyrexian Mite tokens that have toxic. It will be a phyrexian
- There will be a new enchantment or artifact that lets you poison people through an activated ability.
- There will be a new Corrupt permanent card that lets you reanimate cards from your opponents graveyards as long as they are "Corrupted".
- There will be an equipment that gives a creature some significant benefits alongside "Toxic 1".
- There will be a new board wipe that additionally poisons players.
- There will be a new creature that has toxic, but whenever it deals traditional combat damage it will make that many 1/1 phyrexian mites with toxic.
- There will be a new proliferating enchantment or artifact that might be a chase card for the decks.
RW
- Boros doing Boros things! And pretty well, by the looks of it. The face Commander can do some serious damage with things like Krenko and Cathar's Crusade. I would like to hope we get some old rebel reprints like [card]Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero
[/card], but I think it will be more focused on making those creature tokens and going really wide. Assemble the Legion, Deploy to the Front, Hero of Bladehold, Entrapment Maneuver, [[Flamerush Rider]], and all of those juicy token cards seem like a slam dunk. I imagine we could see a lot of "mass pump" enchantments as well, like Commander's Insignia and even Angel of Invention would work.
I am still working on my predictions for this deck, stay tuned!
I just know that Scrap Trawler is likely an allstar in the 99!
I imagine the card that gives your cards Undying is like a White/Black Enchantment that makes all of your Wizards, Warriors, Rogues, and Clerics have undying. It will give the Party Mechanic some resilience. I wish it was a legendary creature, however
Delayed Blast Fireball sounds like a Suspend card, where maybe the longer it sits in exile, the bigger it gets? and you can add or remove time counters from it? That would be cool!
I can see the like, Simic Bioengineered side of it, with mutations and synapses, as well as a Gruul side to it, like big scary monsters and brutal attacks. Together that makes sense to me at least. I would have expected more of a Sultai deck though as well.
Because they're being big mad children and if they can't like it, neither can we!
Especially now when creature type isn't as tied to function as it used to be.
Love the deck though. Looks pretty powerful.
You can still do it on other people's turns though, making instant speed sacrifice abilities and spells pretty neat!