MTGNexus

Looks like some interesting things to start us off.

Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer - a little generic (makes morphs cheaper + draw cards), but morphs are varied enough in effect that I don't mind it that much. Slightly sad to see the morph theme in Sultai instead of Temur for Animar, Soul of Elements, but meh.

Sevinne, the Chronoclasm - that is a very, very strong payoff for flashback. On the other hand, you're limited in your card choices. Preventing damage is also pretty sweet. Interesting to see flashback synergy in White, which traditionally doesn't do a lot of graveyard stuff. I won't complain though - nice to expand the color pie a bit.

Anje Falkenrath - nothing particularly revolutionary about a legendary Mad Prophet, but having access in the command zone makes access to discard a lot more consistent.

Ghired, Conclave Exile - 6/9 points of stats for 5 mana is quite respectable. Provides a meaty token worth populating, and the ability to do so. Naya means you don't have access to blue's token clones though (Rite of Replication, etc)

Overall verdict on commanders: I like them all a lot. None of them are exploring particularly new space, but they all act as fantastic support + payoffs to make building around their respective mechanics worth it.


Individual cards:

Seedborn Muse reprint - it's on my shortlist of cards I've wanted reprinted, so this definitely pleases me. I'm currently sharing my only copy between two decks, so will be nice to have another. On the other hand, reprint means I'll run into it more often across the tables, so....

Kadena's Silencer - looks very interesting. Stifle is a little narrow, but I've generally been happy with Stratus Dancer, so may be worth testing.

Sevinne's Reclamation - Sun Titan on a spell! I like it a lot - there aren't really any other similar effects in White, so having a bit of redundancy makes it easier to build around. Obviously not particularly efficient if you're just grabbing back lands, but being able to grab back cheap artifacts/enchantments isn't irrelevant.

Anje's Ravager - that's a lot of card draw, potentially. Steep downside, but powerful if supported.

Ghired's Belligerence - one of the coolest lines of text I've seen recently - "Whenever a creature dealt damage this way dies this turn, populate". Does require a bit of setup. I sort of want to copy it with a token copy of Dualcaster Mage.

Red/Green/White Populate- Was betting on populate going into bant so this was a surprise but cool. Looks like it gonna play into aggro-go wide. Ghired, Conclave Exile is cool since he dose open up red to populate and has a fun twist of having the creature attacking when he does and by himself (and his abilities) he hits with 10 damage first time with 8 of it being trample. Not sure any of the deck will foreshadow things for Eldraine with the mechanic picked but this deck does work well with the recent Ravnica guilds and Rhythm of the Wild combos oh so nicely. Ghired's Belligerence looks like a new tool for any red deck and I certainly wanna try it in my Feather deck and try and get some more token generation.

Red/Black Madness- Figured Madness would be in the grixis range and one of the ally decks people have been wanting. Anje Falkenrath (and we got all but one of the head of Innistrad vampire families) is nice and I'm guessing the sub theme will be vampire tribal (SoI) thought kinda boring if not a power combo-chainer. Rotting Register also found his new home as well.

Blue/Red/White Flashback- Was a surprise to me since I didn't think we'd see Flashback go into white as a deck but hopefully this means Feather will get some treats, even thought I wish this color combo would get more than instant and sorcery matters theme (Kykar, Wind's Fury get a tiny pass for being somewhat flying matters as well). Sevinne, the Chronoclasm just looks powerful, double casting and can only be killed by kill/exile spells. I wonder if the sub theme will be voltron since she a perfect attacker (and block if you can get vigilance). Sevinne's Reclamation looks nice for reanimated decks that run white and combos very nicely with Sevinne.

Black/Green/Blue Morph- This is the deck that got my attention theme-wise and while I was excepting femur Sultai morph also looks interesting. Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer however looks kinda boring. She gives you free morph which is nice but then the card draw is kinda meh especially when Secret Plans already fill the space. Personal I also dislike that nothing about her is black and really she could be mono green or mono blue. Hopefully the side legends are more interesting for this deck. Kadena's Silencer makes me wonder if we will see naga tribal as a sub theme,

Seedborn Muse is noted to be an example of a response to wanting more higher reprint. I'm guessing populate since it would tend to go wide.

Gerrard will either be in the Populate or Flashback deck. My gut thinks populate since I'd think he'd work with creature but maybe he will be in the deign space of feather (since he might be red/white).

Outside of Naya all the color combos have only been done once before as commander deck and the wedge ones certainly could use more archetypes. Seem to be a pattern now that one deck will be two colors and the other three 3+ (which make sense since we don't see those in typical magic sets all the time). Overall nothing has excited me but honesty my big wish for these decks (besides being worth the cost) is them either fixing probable in the format or opening new deck types and so far it looks positive in that way with the 3+ getting new deck types and Rakdos hopefully getting love.

EDIT: Also a reprint walker in each deck is nice, walker I notice always been scarce in the commander decks outside the ones that use them for commanders.

That White Sorcery is Legit incredible and may just be broken, also another nail in the keeping Gifts Ungiven Banned

Permanent, HELL YEAH

I love the seedborn reprint and the white flashback spell seems really good.

The commanders seem fair, nothing broken. I feel like the Jeskai one best supports it's deck though, with the damage prevention. It's a blocker AND spellsling enabler.

I also like how they are "generic" keyword commanders, not immediately building themselves to a certain style.

A rules question: if the first spell you cast from your graveyard is one that copies itself when cast from the graveyard and you control the Jeskai one, will you end up with 3 or 4 copies of the spell. In other words, is the, "when cast from a graveyard, copy..." part also copied or not?

Ertai Planeswalker wrote: ↑

4 years ago

A rules question: if the first spell you cast from your graveyard is one that copies itself when cast from the graveyard and you control the Jeskai one, will you end up with 3 or 4 copies of the spell. In other words, is the, "when cast from a graveyard, copy..." part also copied or not?

To my knowledge, there aren't any spells that copy themselves when cast from a graveyard. The closest card is probably Increasing Vengeance - if you cast another spell, then cast IV targeting it, you'll get two copies of the spell. If you have Sevinne out, you'll get a second copy of IV, and thus four copies of the original spell that you're copying.

Speaking more broadly, Sevinne's ability is a triggered ability, similar to storm, cascade, and effects like Swarm Intelligence. If you somehow cast a storm card from your graveyard with Sevinne and Swarm Intelligence out, with a storm count of 2, you would end up with 5 copies of that card - the original, two storm copies, and two copies from Sevinne and Swarm Intelligence. Neither Sevinne nor Swarm Intelligence will copy the storm trigger, or the trigger from cascade, or something like Malicious Affliction, or any card with conspire.

You can, however, copy any of these triggers with Strionic Resonator.

Edit: assuming that this question was referring to the new card, Sevinne's Reclamation, slightly different answer. You'll still get a total of three copies of the spell (original that was flashback'd, the copy it produces, and Sevinne's copy). In this case though, it's because a copy of a spell isn't cast - it's just put directly onto the stack. Thus, when Sevinne's copy resolves, it will check the 'if this was cast from a graveyard' clause, not satisfy it, and stop. Notably, this is also why the spell won't go infinite by itself (otherwise the copy produced by the flashback would copy the spell again).

Ertai Planeswalker wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I love the seedborn reprint and the white flashback spell seems really good.

The commanders seem fair, nothing broken. I feel like the Jeskai one best supports it's deck though, with the damage prevention. It's a blocker AND spellsling enabler.

I also like how they are "generic" keyword commanders, not immediately building themselves to a certain style.

A rules question: if the first spell you cast from your graveyard is one that copies itself when cast from the graveyard and you control the Jeskai one, will you end up with 3 or 4 copies of the spell. In other words, is the, "when cast from a graveyard, copy..." part also copied or not?

You got 3 because the copy created by Sevinne is not cast

I'd far rather see weirdly-themed commanders promoting morph and madness than ones like the recently spoiled Eldraine legend which is pure, grade-A good-stuff laziness. Give people the impetus to break out different cards from their collection for once and you've made a decent commander set!

Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer screams Leyline of Anticipation, Vedalken Orrery. Alchemist's Refuge, Winding Canyons.

Sevinne, the Chronoclasm - much harder to use Riku of Two Reflections, but puts you into Jeskai rather than Temur. All the planeswalkers that allow you to cast cast from graveyard I'd assume will be all-stars for a build, You can check out my Will & Rowan Kenrith primer for a section I do on "Planeswalkers that suggest graveyard as a resource (with instant and sorcery)" for an idea of planeswalkers and graveyard synergies for Izzet.
But here are some cards to consider.. Anje's Ravager surprisingly powerful, should definitely be tested for Legacy as a breakthrough into other formats, even though it's "commander". Ancestral Recall every turn, sure. Fills up graveyard, sounds good.

Ghired, Conclave Exile - wouldn't expect anything less than jank for Naya.

I've noticed the lazy design of casting cost for legendary 3 colors lately is mostly 5. Seems like the designers for lack of wanting to figure out unique cost (or proper) are just bundling a generic cost to save themselves effort (and thus money).

Cyberium wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Just a reminder, Anje's ability doesn't require you to pay/cast the madness card you discarded. Long as you discard a card with madness, you can untap her. There might actually be a combo involving this untapping?

Huh, good catch. Ram your deck full of Weirded Vampires and secretly bring a brawl-sized heap to an EDH table! Having 40+ cards that effectively cycle for 0 with your commander out seems like a good starting base to rustle something dumb up with.

Rumpy5897 wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Cyberium wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Just a reminder, Anje's ability doesn't require you to pay/cast the madness card you discarded. Long as you discard a card with madness, you can untap her. There might actually be a combo involving this untapping?

Huh, good catch. Ram your deck full of Weirded Vampires and secretly bring a brawl-sized heap to an EDH table! Having 40+ cards that effectively cycle for 0 with your commander out seems like a good starting base to rustle something dumb up with.

Skirge Familiar, Garna, the Bloodflame, Shadow of the Grave, and Living Death? Songs of the Damned also seems relevant, as does Mortal Combat. There are a lot of payoffs for being able to dump a very large number of creature cards into your graveyard.

Don't forget Falkenrath Gorger. Might this be an Alhammarret's Archive deck?

Weird combo, but anje is cool with mindslicer. She untapped before you draw, so you can stack up a bunch of draws by discarding a bunch of madness stuff, then sac mindslicer while they're on the stack and be the only one with a hand.

Kadena <3
There go my plans of not buying any of the decks...
With Ugin, the Ineffable, Dream Chisel, the Seedborn Muse reprint and Vedalken Orrery this deck could become very unfair very fast.

I admit I am somewhat tempted to build Ghired, just a big dumb stompy proactive deck that locates the silliest biggest creature tokens across Magic's history (looking at you, Ajani Goldmane). Since my current Naya deck (Gahiji, Honored One rattlesnakes) has a mild problem of being up the creek without a paddle against creatureless control decks.

Ok, I figured out a good "and now what?" for Anje - Worldgorger Dragon/Animate Dead combo, with Anje rummaging for a Comet Storm or something during the board flickers. I was immediately forbidden from pursuing this by my playgroup. The fact I presented this in the context of a turn one nut draw didn't help. Aww I guess Naya populate improvement quest it shall be then.

It's extremely disappointing that the madness commander is neither U nor G.

Overall these look pretty solid but not terribly exciting. A bit pigeonholed.

I like the power level of these cards, I think. Maybe they'll get gross with other cards in the deck, but from what I see now it seems pretty fair.

I think it's weird how many people are going "wtf, flashback has great cards and madness has garbage". Flashback in jeskai has...some ok cards. Tbh I don't think I've played any of them in commander. Obviously snapcastering a time warp is annoying, but there's really nothing terribly OP with natural flashback imo.

Madness doesn't have anything amazing either, granted, but when you get to assume that you're paying the madness AND that it doesn't cost a card, it's hard to imagine that it won't be strong, even mediocre crap like the aforementioned weirded vampire. 3/3 for 4? eww, gross. 3/3 for 3 that draws a card? Ok that's actually not bad. And that's a pretty mediocre example. Whereas getting double-casts on bash to bits still makes it a pretty overcosted piece of garbage. I think the best cards for Sevinne aren't actually flashback at all - stuff like oona's grace and refuse // cooperate seem spicier than anything with flashback imo.

Despite being pretty pigeonhole-y I actually like the design of these guys, or at least Anje and Sevinne. Ghired is kind of boring, but it's pretty hard to make an aggro token design that wouldn't be boring to me, and he does the thing for the people that want to do that thing. Kadena is maybe the biggest whiff, but I like morphs enough that I might make the deck anyway, despite a somewhat boring payoff.

For all of these, I think one thing that actually helps keep them interesting is a lack of options. You can't build Yarok + 60 etbs or kess + 60 instants/sorceries. There's not enough good morphs, madness, or flashback(/retrace/aftermath) to fill a whole deck. So you can have a morph deck, but you'll have to figure something else out with the remaining slots. So you might have an aggro version, a control version, a combo version, etc for the same commander, instead of stuff like kess and yarok where most 75% versions of them play roughly the same.

Past in Flames is kind of my primary concern with Savinne.

The legends seem fine to me. My issue is that many of these legends feel like they sort of build themselves. I have always enjoyed a little more subtle commander with more open build designs.

The RB filter legend is probably the one I find the most interesting as of right now. It might be sweet to filter and throw out some big fatty and resurrect them to play.

Sevinne's Reclamation does look kind of insane. When is the last time you saw a Sun Titan get three reses in? It looks REALLY powerful to me with fetchlands.

Outside of madness, Anje Falkenrath makes a decent reanimator commander. Not needing to put your target in the yard before you're ready to bring it back narrows the window for interaction considerably.

None of the themes this year are particularly appealing and the face commanders don't move me much. I do like all of the signature spells spoiled alongside of them. Kadena's Silencer and Sevinne's Reclamation both seem very good. Strong but not broken abilities and reasonable costs. There's even a chance that not every morph is Willbender now. Anje's Ravager is more niche but excellent within that niche. I like having payoffs for going hellbent because of how contrary to typical play patterns it is and because it promotes much more proactive gameplans. Ghired's Belligerence is one of the more powerful populate effects to date (which is admittedly not saying much). Even outside of that, splitting damage on an X-costed burn spell with no additional cost is powerful and relatively uncommon. I don't know that the populate is worth not hitting players when compared to Rolling Thunder and both are substantially worse than the more color restrictive Aurelia's Fury. Even if I don't include it often, I'm glad to see some additional exploration of that effect and I'm glad it's not strictly better than existing options.

Lifeless wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Past in Flames is kind of my primary concern with Savinne.

Am I missing something? When you cast it the first time, you get to double-cast one normally-not-flashback card, and when you flash it back it has no extra effect with Savinne since it'll be the first spell. Seems...not amazing? I mean it's fine. I'm sure some versions will include it. Recoup has better synergy tbh.

I'm just glad they didn't print "Obviously broken stupid stuff" or "Goodstuff Valuetown" commanders. The 4 we're seeing right now are nice, have some cute tricks about them but none strike me as a "lol and now I win" kind of commander.

DirkGently wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Am I missing something? When you cast it the first time, you get to double-cast one normally-not-flashback card, and when you flash it back it has no extra effect with Savinne since it'll be the first spell. Seems...not amazing? I mean it's fine. I'm sure some versions will include it. Recoup has better synergy tbh.

Ah yes you only get to copy the first card you play from the yard, so that's not so bad. His ability still feels abusable to me, but I can't think of any specific reason.

Sanctum of Eternity does about 75% of what I'd want to do with Karakas, so this is very welcome. Losing the protection capability is a little sad, but I'm very happy to reuse ETB effects and play around with things like Mangara of Corondor (though I doubt I'll build the deck just for that interaction). Also fun to double up on planeswalker activations.

K'rrick looks fun, and also was not a character I expected to see as a card any time soon.

Dragonlover