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Commander Single Card Strategy #2

Commander Single Card Strategy is back! Bennie Smith tells you why you should try out Dark Ascension card Sudden Disappearance in your Commander deck.

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Welcome to another addition of Commander Single Card Strategy! Last time I wrote about the awesome yet subtle card Distorting Lens; make sure to read all about it here. This time around, I’m going to write about the awesome yet incredible non-subtle card Sudden Disappearance from Dark Ascension. I’m still chewing over the card for Standard—I swear there’s gotta be a cool and possibly great Sudden Disappearance deck to be had in the Standard card pool—but for now I want to focus on its applications in Commander. I wrote a quick paragraph about it in my Dark Ascension review for Commander a couple weeks ago, but there’s so much this card can do I wanted to really dig deep into its applications.

So…what does Sudden Disappearance do? Here’s the card text:

Exile all nonland permanents target player controls. Return the exiled cards to the battlefield under their owner’s control at the beginning of the next end step.

Basically it’s a mass "blink" effect for everything but lands that a player controls. The blink lasts for the rest of the turn, which opens up a window of opportunity to do stuff for profit.

Blink Me

Magic has a long history of cards that temporarily wink cards out of existence before coming back into play. It reminds me of playing old school pro player Donnie Gallitz round 4 of Virginia State Champs in 2000. I was the reigning champ from 1999 and off to a decent 3-0-1 start with a funky G/W/R deck (I wrote about it here and here). It featured tons of mana creatures, Blastoderms, burn, and four Armageddons + two Tectonic Break. My "tech" card was Aura Mutation, which I used to great effect against a field filled with a fair number of potent enchantments like Saproling Burst and Parallax Wave.

Donnie was playing G/W Rebels with Parallax Wave and Saproling Burst. The six ‘geddons were my way of throwing a monkey-wrench into the Rebel plan of churning out dudes each turn. When we had a creature standoff, he played Parallax Wave to remove my blockers and attacked me. I played my Aura Mutation to destroy his enchantment, brought back my blockers, and made a bunch of dudes to ambush his attackers. However, Donnie was a pro for a reason, and he responded by using the last Wave counters on his attackers so that they were removed from combat (and they came back into play when my Mutation resolved).

I was impressed with Donnie’s play, and it goes to show how powerful being able to remove your own permanents can be in addition to removing your opponent’s permanents. The reasons you’d want to blink your own permanents fall into three categories:

  1. Avoiding trouble. Similar to Donnie’s play above, you can use Sudden Disappearance to protect your creatures (and other permanents) from trouble, albeit at sorcery speed. What comes to mind is floating a bunch of mana, casting Sudden Disappearance, then Wrath of God. Or maybe you’ve got someone’s Akroma’s Vengeance hanging around from a Spelljack. Or you cast Sudden Disappearance and after it resolves go ahead and Naturalize an opponent’s Nevinyrral’s Disk that he’s had at the ready.
  2. Resetting permanents. Planeswalkers come to mind, especially ones whose best ability quickly dwindles their loyalty down precariously low… Chandra, the Firebrand; Sorin, Lord of Innistrad; Garruk, Primal Hunter; Liliana Vess; Tezzeret the Seeker; and Sorin Markov are all Planeswalkers I can see getting played in Commander and having dwindling loyalty. Cards with cumulative upkeep can be handy to reset, particularly ones that don’t need mana for the upkeep cost such as Wall of Shards, Dystopia, and Inner Sanctum. Remember that auras you control (say, Corrupted Conscious) come back into play and can now be attached to opponent’s creatures with hexproof or shroud. Voidstone Gargoyle or Exclusion Ritual might no longer be relevant. Colfenor’s Plans may need to be rejuiced. Day of the Dragons looks pretty sad when all your Dragons have been killed, so bring them all back again (as well as possibly use some of the creatures that come back when the enchantment leaves play). Bring back the germs for your living weapons. Reuse your imprint cards like Duplicant. The player targeted by your Stuffy Doll may be dead so retarget. Persist creatures like Kitchen Finks or Glen Elendra Archmage can stick around a bit longer. Set Pentarch Paladin to a color for another mother. Creatures that come into play with set counters like Spike Weaver and Mindless Automaton can be quite handy to reset. Remove the charge counter from Ice Cauldron! The mother lode of course would be creatures that have enters the battlefield and leaves the battlefield triggers like Sundering Titan and Deadwood Treefolk.
  3. Reusing enters the battlefield abilities. Creatures spring to mind; there are so many that I’d be silly to list them all here but some Commander goodness that springs to mind include Soul Warden, Reaper King (especially if you’ve got a bunch of Scarecrow), Stoneforge Mystic, Woodfall Primus, Sunblast Angel, Sharuum the Hegemon, Bone Shredder, Magister Sphinx, Acidic Slime, Suture Priest, Primeval Titan, Hamletback Goliath, Hazezon Tamar (when you need more Sand Warriors), and Stonehorn Dignitary. But not just creatures, think about things like Contagion Engine, Where Ancients Tread, and Warstorm Surge for a big haymaker finish, Necromancer’s Covenant to nuke another graveyard, Angelic Chorus for tons of life, Mana Echoes for tons of mana, Aura Shards for tons of targeted Naturalize effects, Genesis Chamber to give you tons of Myr, Spine of Ish Sah for permanent destruction, and Dual Nature for lots of copied creatures.
  4. Bonus untap! Consequence-free alpha strike! Sometimes what you really need is pseudo-vigilance.

Blink You

Of course, the beauty of Sudden Disappearance is its flexibility, and while you can certainly abuse it better by including a fair number of cards that benefit from the blink in your own deck, it’s also nice to occasionally turn it on your opponents.

  1. Clearing the path of attack. For when you absolutely, positively, can’t get in there and kill your opponent any other way. Sometimes he’s got infinite blockers, sometimes he’s got Teferi’s Moat that’s stifling you, sometimes it’s a darn Forcefield. Doesn’t matter what’s stopping you, if it’s a permanent you can get rid of it for the rest of the turn.
  2. Resetting permanents. Sometimes your opponent has cards that he really doesn’t want reset. Like his huge Kresh the Bloodbraided, or Orochi Hatchery, or all the trouble he went through to transform Elbrus, the Binding Blade into Withengar Unbound. Feral Hydra (along with most Hydras) looks pretty silly when it blinks out and back in. Some Quest cards are really annoying, like Luminarch Ascension—reset the quest counters and get rid of all the Angel tokens. Getting rid of the Sun Droplet while you make that massive attack is pretty sweet. Cut that planeswalker who’s about to ultimate back to size—hello, Karn Liberated! How about making your opponent’s Mikaeus, the Lunarch or Maga, Traitor to Mortals sad to be Mr. X? If your opponent has problematic token creatures—either a horde of Saprolings or one really big one, say Marit Lage—Sudden Disappearance to the rescue. Kavu Predators can get out of hand, so it’s nice to set him back down to a 2/2. How about all those equip costs he’s paid over the course of the game—sorry, they’re all now unequipped! Everflowing Chalice and Sunburst artifacts like Clearwater Goblet can be fun to wipe out. You can take great joy in resetting all the time invested in making Door of Destinies and Braid of Fire scary.
  3. Playing politics! For all the reasons I listed in "Blink Me" above, you might find it politically advantageous to bestow a temporary ally with all those benefits in order to better fight against a common foe.

Casting Cost

One thing that’s particularly nice about Sudden Disappearance is that it costs just a single white mana to cast, making it super-easy to splash into all sorts of decks, even five-color decks. Of course, its total mana cost is rather hefty—six mana isn’t a joke, so you could play things like Cloud Key, Helm of Awakening, Pearl Medallion, Stormscape Familiar, Grand Arbiter Augustin IV, and Stone Calendar to help out. Rasputin Dreamweaver can provide mana to cast the spell, and come back into play reset with more dream counters.

Keep in mind too all the artifacts you use to accelerate your mana like Sol Ring and Fellwar Stone now come back into play untapped and ready to use again, in effect giving you a discount on cost to play Sudden Disappearance.

Sorcery

Sorcery speed certainly limits the potential and utility of the card, but there are certainly ways around it. You can always rock a Vedalken Orrery, and there are also cards that can get around that like Djinn of Wishes—and hey, you can reset his wish counters too!

So tell me—what ways are you looking forward to using and abusing Sudden Disappearance in Commander…or any format?

From the Vault:  Realms!

Before I go, I wanted to talk a little bit about a new From the Vault series announced this week. I’m not one to get overly excited about From the Vault releases, but something about a bunch of land reprints has me very intrigued. I guess it’s because lands are such a great resource in Commander, being much more resilient than other permanents in the game because of the understanding by most players that mass land destruction is extremely uncool. Unless you’re playing a deck that’s very colored-mana intensive, your deck can usually afford to run a handful of good utility lands.

Unfortunately, there’s been an overlap between cards that are great in Commander and cards that have become chase cards in Eternal formats, pushing their value far beyond what many people are willing to pay for their casual decks. Reprinting a significant number of these cards in a set that will be at least moderately available for purchase should help get some of these great cards into their hands. I’m thinking of cards like Maze of Ith, Dark Depths, Vesuva, Tower of the Magistrate, Mutavault, and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. All of these are great cards in competitive duel decks, but they’re also awesome to have available for your casual decks.

Another card I’d like to see more in circulation would be Wasteland. For an old-schooler like me, it kinda blows my mind that Strip Mine is readily available for 3-4 dollars, while the strictly inferior "fixed Strip Mine" Wasteland is a $40 card thanks to it being available to Legacy players while Strip Mine is banned. While mass land destruction is frowned upon, it makes good sense to have some pinpoint land destruction for powerful lands. Wasteland is a lot less abusable with Crucible of Worlds in Commander, and I’d like to see more of them available for Commander players.

I suspect some strictly Commander staples to make an appearance in the set with new artwork:  Reliquary Tower strikes me as a near certainty… Would they give us a shiny new Command Tower?

The sample artwork in the announcement strongly suggests Glacial Chasm, a great card that I always seem to forget about despite having a long history of playing it in my old multiplayer decks. Perhaps having a shiny new foil available will spur players to give this sweet card another look for their Commander decks.

So, what cards do you think we’ll see in From the Vault: Realms?

That’s it for this week!

Take care,

Bennie

starcitygeezer AT gmail DOT com

I’m still looking for a roommate, so if you know anyone looking for a place to live in the Richmond, Virginia area please get in touch!

Make sure to follow my Twitter feed (@blairwitchgreen). I check it often so feel free to send me feedback, ideas, and random thoughts. I’ve also created a Facebook page where I’ll be posting up deck ideas and will happily discuss Magic, life, or anything else you want to talk about!

New to Commander?
If you’re just curious about the format, building your first deck, or trying to take your Commander deck up a notch, here are some handy links:

My current Commander decks (and links to decklists):

Previous Commander decks currently on hiatus: