Streets of New Capenna preview season is in full swing, and they’ve already shown us a bunch of sweet new legends for Commander fans to get excited about. The Commander gang here at StarCityGames.com is going to provide you some great content on a lot of here in the coming weeks, so check back early and often!
Today, I want to talk about a sweet new Dragon, leader of the Riveteers gang: Ziatora, the Incinerator!
It’s very cool that Ziatora’s power is a built-in Fling spell that triggers at the beginning of your end step. The ability has “haste” in that you can use it the turn that Ziatora enters the battlefield, and I love the flavor of it in that Ziatora grabs another one of your own creatures and throws it at any target, and then makes three Treasure tokens. The Riveteers appreciate your sacrifice for the greater good of the family business.
It’s also nice that it’s a “may” ability, so if you don’t have a suitable creature you’re ready and willing to throw at something, you don’t have to.
While the ability seems fairly straightforward, there are a lot of things to consider when building a deck around Ziatora’s ability, so let’s dig in!
High-Power Creatures
First, we want to consider creatures that can get large enough to make Ziatora’s ability into a huge threat. Lord of Extinction can get insanely huge, but because it doesn’t have any sort of evasion, it’s usually stopped easily enough by a chump blocker. But Ziatora can sacrifice Lord of Extinction and send it right at someone’s face, and depending on how long the game as gone on, that might take a person right out of the game. Malignus is another card that can potentially be massive in a format where everyone starts at 40 life and where lifegain strategies are fairly popular. The Jund color combination certainly provides tons of choices for creatures with high power that can be good targets to Ziatora’s ability, like Grothama, All-Devouring and Yargle, Glutton of Urborg.
Any deck that’s looking for high-power creatures is a great home for Mossbridge Troll, which should pretty easily be able to give itself +20/+20 to really dome someone with Ziatora.
Underworld Cerberus is a little smaller than some of the other choices, though six power for five mana is ahead of the curve. But I like it dying as a way to recover all the creatures that you’ve tossed with Ziatora or have otherwise died, and if you time it right with graveyard removal, you can ensure that your opponents don’t get as much benefit from it.
Power Boost
We can lean even harder into making our sacrifice target as large as possible by looking for other ways to boost power. Xenagos, God of Revels is great since it’s reusable and potentially gives haste to a huge creature you just cast this turn so that you can get in a big attack first before sacrificing it. Hatred is a potential game-ender if you have enough life to pay into it, and there are other great one-shot pump spells like Berserk and Become Immense.
Blackblade Reforged is a card you’re probably going to want to play to equip to Ziatora, but it becomes even better if you’re playing other large legendary creatures. If you’ve got a lot of artifacts in the deck, Cranial Plating makes for a good way to boost a creature’s power before sacrificing it.
Dies Triggers
Ziatora’s ability involves sacrificing a creature, and there are plenty of ways in Jund to take advantage of a creature dying. The legendary Spirit Dragons from Kamigawa spring to mind, such as Kokusho, the Evening Star and Atsushi, the Blazing Sky, and are great things to sacrifice for benefits. Lifeblood Hydra is a fun late-game card that can really be leveraged by other cards in the deck—boosting its power, attacking with trample, and then sacrificing it to Ziatora for even more damage dealt, and then you gain life and draw cards equal to its power, which should let you gas up your hand considerably.
I’m always looking for a place to slide in Deathrender, and this seems to be a great place for it. Six is a little expensive to cast and then equip it to something, but once you do that, the value you get back is going to be awesome! Equip it to the creature you plan to sacrifice, and then you get to put a creature from your hand onto the battlefield for free and equip Deathrender to it. Nim Deathmantle is another old favorite, and lets you bring back your dying creature for just four mana.
Power Matters
Since we’re going to be playing a lot of high-power creatures, we might want to consider cards that care about high power. One card from Streets of New Capenna that leaped out to me for this deck is Ob Nixilis, the Adversary! Its casualty X ability lets you sacrifice a creature when you cast it to make a nonlegendary copy of Ob Nixilis with loyalty X, so if you’ve got a creature with seven or more power, you’ll be able to use the ultimate ability to draw a whopping seven cards! Assuming you have that life to spare, of course.
Rishkar’s Expertise, Greater Good, and Return of the Wildspeaker are other ways to turn a high-powered creature into a bunch of fresh new cards. Stalking Vengeance and Terror of the Peaks can turn that high power into extra damage, and Ram Through can act as a surprise burn spell if you target a high-power creature with trample.
Brash Taunter is a favorite of mine, and while it doesn’t have high power, it does like fighting with creatures that have high power and is another way to throw around extra damage to an opponent.
Lifelink
Ziatora’s ability is worded in such a way that it’s not the sacrificed creature that’s dealing the damage, it’s Ziatora itself, so if you give your commander lifelink, you can benefit from the damage dealt with an infusion of life. Shadowspear and Loxodon Warhammer are great for this since they provide both lifelink and trample, so your commander can fly in and trample over any small blockers. Mask of Griselbrand is another good one, providing lifelink and some insurance against an opponent destroying Ziatora somewhere along the way, providing some new cards if you want them.
Infect
Another way to take advantage of Ziatora’s ability is to give it infect for the turn. Triumph of the Hordes gives all your creatures infect until end of turn, so you can swing in to kill off one opponent with enough damage to infect, then sacrifice your largest creature to Ziatora’s ability to potentially deal enough infect damage to kill them too. Tainted Strike is a more surgical strike but is flexible, since you can potentially cast it on one of your opponent’s large creatures that might be attacking someone else.
Damage to Opponent
Since Ziatora is potentially dealing damage directly to your opponent, you can take advantage of that. Snake Umbra or Keen Sense enchanting your commander will let you draw a card each time you damage your opponent with it. Chandra’s Incinerator can leverage extra damage by letting you damage your opponent with Ziatora and then letting the Incinerator deal that much damage to one of their creatures or planeswalkers. Jeska, Thrice Reborn can really make things scary by letting Ziatora deal triple damage until your next turn!
Recursion
It’s probably a good idea to add creatures that can come back from being sacrificed. Weatherseed Treefolk and Gigapede are some classic creatures that keep coming back, and each has a sizeable power. Creatures with undying like Vorapede and Endling are particularly good since they come back bigger; you can even give all your nonhuman creatures undying with Mikaeus, the Unhallowed! Creatures with persist are a little worse since they come back smaller, but I’d make an exception for Puppeteer Clique since it can potentially steal something huge from an opponent’s graveyard that you can sacrifice to Ziatora for extra damage.
Ebondeath, Dracolich is a newer card with potential here. If you sacrifice it to Ziatora to deal five damage to an opponent’s creature and it dies, you can cast Ebondeath from your graveyard to do it all over again.
Copy Creatures
Another thing you can do is take advantage of some of the ways you can copy creatures in the Jund colors, particularly red. Like older cards and effects, the new card Jaxis, the Troublemaker lets you make a copy of a creature that sticks around until the beginning of your end step, and since that’s also when Ziatora’s ability happens, you can stack the triggers in such a way that you can sacrifice the copy to Ziatora first.
Steal Creatures
This won’t win you friends, but another thing that red is pretty good at is temporarily stealing one or more creatures from your opponents such as Captivating Crew and Mass Mutiny. Since “until end of turn” effects resolve during the cleanup step, that’s plenty of time to sacrifice one of them to Ziatora’s ability.
Other “Fling” Effects
While Ziatora’s ability is a built-in reusable Fling, you might consider adding some other effects that can squeeze in extra damage and surprise your opponents. My good friend Chris Shipper (known as @thromoking on Twitter) has a deck built around Thromok the Insatiable that’s capable of growing Thromok to a huge size and then dealing damage to an opponent equal to its power, and I’ve been on the lethal receiving end on more than one occasion. I reached out to him when Ziatora was previewed because I knew the card was right up his alley, and he was gracious enough to share his initial workup for a decklist. He pointed out that, while Fling itself is a classic, there are some other cards that do something similar without actually sacrificing the creature. Cards like Soul’s Fire and Essence Harvest, which seem like great inclusions to the deck.
If you’re interested in seeing Chris’s deck, be sure to check it out here: Burninating the Countryside (Ziatora).
So, what did you think? Are there other cards or angles that you’d take when building your Ziatora deck that I didn’t cover here? Let me know!
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And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.
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