Prerelease weekend for Modern Horizons 3 is upon us, and soon we’ll be getting our hands on new cards from that set along with the companion Commander decks. I’ve gone over the new cards from Modern Horizons 3 I’m most excited about, and today I’d like to do the same for Modern Horizons 3 Commander. I touched on a few of them already in early May when we got our first look at the sets, and I won’t rehash them here.
If you’re curious of my thoughts on those, be sure to check out my review below:
For today, I’m just going to look at the new cards that are not legendary creatures; I’ll do deep dives on a few of them and/or build new decks that I’ll feature in an upcoming Deck of the Week.
Let’s dive in!
Eldrazi Confluence
I have mixed feelings about a bunch of new Eldrazi cards so quick on the heels of the Eldrazi Commander precon deck last year, especially Eldrazi featuring the incredibly unfun annihilator mechanic. But I do really like some of these powerful colorless cards that can slot into mono-color decks featuring easier access to colorless mana lands, with Eldrazi Confluence being at the top of my list!
All three modes are quite useful. The first mode can kill a smaller creature, or pump up a sufficiently large attacker, which you could even use on an opponent’s creature to ensure both attacker and blocker die in the exchange. The second mode can save a creature from a targeted removal effect, remove an attacking creature from combat, tap down a potential blocker, or exile forever a token nonland permanent. You could even blink an Aura and have it enter attached to another legal target, which could be a sweet combat trick!
Then there’s the last mode, which can create an Eldrazi Scion token creature to act as a chump blocker or provide some Treasure-like mana acceleration.
Eldrazi Confluence lets you make three choices, and you can choose the same option more than once, so this is an incredibly flexible and cool card I can’t wait to put into some of my decks!
Spawnbed Protector
Spawnbed Protector is a must for any Eldrazi-heavy deck! Seven mana is a hefty investment, but if it lives to your end step, you get two powerful triggers – a Raise Dead for an Eldrazi creature card in your graveyard, and two Eldrazi Scion token creatures you can use to help cast your Eldrazi spell later.
Ulamog’s Dreadsire
This is a nice call-back to Godsire, another large creature that can tap to create a monstrously large token creature. Ulamog’s Dreadsire is quite expensive at ten mana, but if you can get it onto the battlefield and start attacking with it and – thanks to vigilance – tapping it to make 10/10 Eldrazi token creatures, things are going to get out of hand in a hurry. Seems like a fun reanimation target, and a great target for any populate or token doubling shenanigans you’ve got going on.
Hourglass of the Lost
I love that Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has been making three-mana rocks better and better these days, since so many players obsessed with efficiency tend to fill their decks with two-mana rocks instead. Use it early on for mana, and then later, after there has been a battlefield sweeper, you can cash it in to bring back nonland permanents from your graveyard directly to the battlefield. It gets even better if you’ve got ways to untap artifacts, or things that can proliferate the time counter!
Salvation Colossus
I guess not all gigantic monsters have to be Eldrazi! You can cheat Salvation Colossus in with reanimation strategies, and the fact that this is an artifact creature means there are ways you can cheat this in with Master Transmuter or bring it back from the graveyard with Goblin Welder. If you’re playing energy, the unearth ability can enter the chat as well.
Silverquill Lecturer
Silverquill Lecturer is good, clean Commander fun! Cast a sweet creature, and you can copy it so long as you also give a copy to an opponent. Which opponent? Now that’s the fun part. Let the wheeling and dealing begin!
Benthic Anomaly
Such a great Clone variant for multiplayer Magic! Assuming each of your opponents has a creature, you get to copy the best one, but then make it bigger depending on the power and toughness of the targets not specifically being copied. Plus, you get the huge 7/8 Benthic Anomaly itself, so this will potentially put a ton of power and toughness on the battlefield for seven mana. Note that you can’t copy your own creature, but that shouldn’t be a problem in most Commander games.
Copy Land
On the heels of the blue enchantments Copy Artifact and Copy Enchantment, we now have Copy Land! Is your opponent stirring up a ton of black mana with Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth? Cast Copy Land targeting Cabal Coffers and you can join in the fun! One subtle thing here is that Copy Land counts as land acceleration even if you’re just copying a basic Island, and I imagine lots of blue Commander decks will love running this for that reason alone.
Wonderscape Sage
Most of the Moonfolk required a mana investment to return a land from the battlefield to your hand for a special effect, such as Meloku the Clouded Mirror. Wonderscape Sage requires just a tap, which is a slight drawback in that you have to wait for summoning sickness to wear off to start using it, and you ostensibly can only use it once per turn, barring untapping shenanigans.
If you’re missing a land drop, this is a sneaky way to get an extra mana during your turn assuming the land you bounce enters the battlefield untapped when you replay it, such as good ol’ Command Tower. Or you could bounce and replay a land with an enters ability, like Temple of Mystery or Undercity Sewers. Wonderscape Sage will be awesome for decks that want landfall triggers when paired with ways to play multiple lands in a turn, like Exploration, Wayward Swordtooth, or the just-reprinted Dryad of the Ilysian Grove.
Bismuth Mindrender
Bismuth Mindrender is another fun card for multiplayer Magic. Deal damage to an opponent, and you get to spin the wheel and see what nifty nonland card from the top of their deck you get to cast by paying life equal to its mana cost. Importantly, this is a “may” ability, so you won’t have to cast it if it would wreck your plans, or take you too low in life. Notably, you might exile a land card or two in the process, which can feed into some of the Eldrazi Processor cards that target cards in exile, like Blight Herder or Ulamog’s Nullifier. Oblivion Sower loves to steal those exiled land cards too!
Mutated Cultist
Mutated Cultist is going to ruin so many energy players’ hopes and dreams! Notably, it can cure an opponent who might otherwise be dying to poison if you need their help in the immediate future. Then, of course, there are your own shenanigans; I’ve heard chatter about using it to remove ten counters from Dark Depths, and then casting Blightsteel Colossus for just two mana to fight alongside your Marit Lage token. Boom!
Pyrogoyf
I love the Lhurgoyf theme of the Graveyard Overdrive precon deck with Disa the Restless at the helm, and while I’m sad it doesn’t include an actual Tarmogoyf card, I do love the handful of new Lhurgoyfs, with Pyrogoyf the fiery best of the bunch. Once there are enough different card types in graveyards, each time a Lhurgoyf enters, Pyrogoyf will shoot a sizeable amount of damage to any target – creature, planeswalker, battle, or an opponent’s life total!
Tempt with Mayhem
Adding the tempting offer mechanic to a red copy spell is multiplayer gold! Each Commander pod you play in is going to offer something different for Tempt with Mayhem to pop off with, and the trick will be to target something that’s too tempting to resist for one or more of your opponents!
Chittering Dispatcher
When I first read Chittering Dispatcher, I missed the keyword “myriad” since there’s no reminder text, and I was confused by it – is this here for me to try to blink with like Conjurer’s Closet to get that one single Scion token? The myriad ability makes it make sense. In theory, you could get up to two Scion tokens from the myriad copies when they exile at the end of combat, and since Chittering Dispatcher is just a 2/3, it might very well die in combat, giving you another Scion. This feels a tad underpowered to me, but it might play much better than it looks, especially since it helps you cast higher-cost spells faster than normal.
Rampant Frogantua
My first thought was something like this: attack one player with Rampant Frogantua, and when it’s blocked, send a Lightning Bolt at another opponent who’s at three life and suddenly your Frogantua gets +10/+10! And if that’s enough to kill your first opponent and you have Ram Through, you could potentially “burn out” your last opponent with your 23/23 Rampant Frogantua! Magical Christmas Land aside, Rampant Frogantua is perfectly fine without that boost; since it has trample, there are plenty of ordinary ways to boost its power – I’m thinking Bloodsoaked Battle-Axe – to ramp more and more lands from what you self-mill.
Aggressive Biomancy
I love this spin on a mass copy spell. Since it’s got a fight ability attached, you can both expand your battlefield presence and interact with other creatures, which is helpful, since you’ll likely be tapping out to cast Aggressive Biomancy. It obviously gets better the bigger your creatures are, so make sure you’re deploying monsters as well as ramping.
Gluttonous Hellkite
I’m not the biggest fan of “everyone sacrifices” effects in Commander, but I’ll make an exception for Gluttonous Hellkite, since it will leave behind a gigantic Dragon for your troubles. I love that this is a call-back to Jund’s devour mechanic, but this Dragon doesn’t just want to chow down on your own creatures! This thing scales in size very quickly: assuming everyone has creatures, where X=1, for five mana you’ll get a 9/9 flyer with trample; where X=2, for seven mana you’ll get a 15/15 flyer with trample. If Anger is one of the creatures you sacrifice, you can even attack right away!
Stone Idol Generator
I love this call-back as well! First we got Stone Idol Trap, which made a 6/12 Construct token with trample; then we got Ancient Stone Idol, which was a huge 12/12 Golem that, when it died, it left behind a 6/12 Construct with trample. Now we’ve got Stone Idol Generator, which can crank out 6/12 Construct tokens with trample each time you tap it and pay six energy. It also generates an energy whenever a creature you control attacks, so it’s pretty easy to crank up your energy production even if your deck isn’t heavy on the energy theme.
Horizon of Progress
Horizon of Progress is wild, calling back to Horizon Canopy, but with a cool activated ability of putting a land onto the battlefield tapped for some land acceleration if you wish. I’m a huge, huge fan of utility lands, and this is quite good, especially in decks where you can bring lands back from the graveyard to the battlefield.
Lazotep Quarry
Here we have another fantastic utility land, a Desert we can run in our Desert-themed decks, but Lazotep Quarry works just fine in a deck where you don’t mind sacrificing creatures and your creatures have awesome enters-the-battlefield effects you may want to “embalm” them to copy.
Talon Gates of Madara
Lastly, yet another utility land, a Gate this time and with a powerful enters ability to phase out one target creature. You can phase out a blocker or phase out your best creature before casting a battlefield sweeper. If you’ve got a way to put lands onto the battlefield at instant speed, you can use Talon Gates of Madara to save your creature from removal, or to phase out a lethal attacker coming your way. It even has its own ability to put itself onto the battlefield for four mana if you have it in your hand. What an awesome collection of abilities!
Honorable Mentions
I could go on praising these cards too, but for the sake of my editor’s valuable time, I’ll just group them here under a collective thumbs-up and encourage you to take a second look!
Which cards from Modern Horizons 3 Commander are you most excited to put in your Commander decks?
Talk to Me
Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter! I run polls and start conversations about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun! You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.
I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl, and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can. If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel. You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews.
And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.
Visit my Decklist Database to see my decklists and the articles where they appeared!
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