Hello folks and welcome to the new year! I know it’s been a while, but this is the first time I can tell you that. Yay for new things! Roughly six months ago, something very unusual happened. We saw a group of cards hit the street that had not been released through the typical pack distribution method. Instead, they saw print as part of a product designed for multiplayer, casual play, and the Commander format in general. Most of these legendary creatures did things that were new and exciting. We were looking forward to a long term ruled by our new Commanders and Generals. Many of these have been great additions to our deck stock.
Six months later, we have a much better handle on them. Some are great; some have disappointed; and a few have been better than we thought. After the first release of the planeswalkers, it took a while to figure out what the power levels of these were actually like at a five-person chaos multiplayer game or in a deck with 100 Highlander cards. It took a while, but we worked it out. These fourteen legendary gold creatures had such unusual abilities that it may have required some time, but everything is good now.
Today I want to rank those fourteen cards. Which of those guys has been the best? Who has disappointed? I want to start with the lowest and work our way to the true star of stars. Understand that none of these cards truly suck. In any deck with the right cards, they increase in value significantly. Please don’t take these comments personally if your favorite guy is #12 on my list.
14. Ruhan of the Fomori — While a four-mana 7/7 body is a great start for a creature that can really swing, it’s a bit light on abilities. I wonder why it was in the Political Puppets deck. Was it a sneaky way to attack without receiving retribution? “Hey, I rolled you, so now I have to attack. It’s not me, it’s the card!” It seems a bit transparent. Not being able to attack the one you want, or to hold back at all, prevents Ruhan from being anywhere near the power level of most of his cohorts. I’ve played with him lots, and he’s toothless in any multiplayer game.
13. Nin, the Pain Artist — At first, Nin looks like a fun person. She’ll kill one of your creatures while also drawing you a ton of cards. That’s a good trade, right? You can use her in response to one of your creatures dying anyway. She also promises painless creature removal. “Hey, I know I killed your Stomper Cub, but here’re three cards!” The problem is that she requires so much mana to be untapped that she has a flaw right there. Then add in various issues (such as not wanting to give your opponent cards or not being able to kill everything because you don’t enough mana or it survives), and she starts to look weaker and weaker all of the time. After playing with her a bit, you realize that she’s really a specialist—playing parts only in decks that are designed around her. In my last multiplayer game, someone had out Sun Titan and played Phantasmal Image, copying it and returning Nin to play. Then on the next turn, he tapped Nin for no damage to kill the Imaged Titan, attacked with the real Sun Titan, then returned the Image to play copying Sun Titan and kept repeating. Sure, there are fun things she can do, but for the most part, she’s not the girl for us.
12. Skullbriar, the Walking Grave * — After Edric, this was the card that I felt had the most Constructed potential. What happened? Well, like many, we didn’t take the environment into account when assessing Skullbriar’s power. This is a time ripe with infect and -1/-1 counters. A 1/1 creature that keeps its counters in any zone just dies and can’t ever be brought back. The first time you play him as your Commander, only to see it bite a counter from Contagion Clasp before it goes and grows is rough. After all of these cards start subsiding into the great morass of history, Skullbriar’s place in the sun may yet come. Therefore I gave it an asterisk. This is not its era.
11. Zedruu the Greathearted — Of all of the legendary creatures from Commander, this is the one I was most disappointed in. I expected Zedruu to really rock the block with its subtle but powerful ability. Its built-in Donate works well with combo cards like Bronze Bombshell or just appears meek and humble. Look, I’m not a problem; I swear! I’ll give you stuff, and if you kill me, then you’ll lose it. The problem is that the tricks die quickly, and everyone is more aware of the game that Zedruu allows. I’m a big fan of subtlety in multiplayer, but he doesn’t work. Either his ability is so subtle it sucks, or I’m drawing four or five a turn and about to die because that’s not subtle at all. He just hasn’t had the power to stand in there with some of the great choices that others have.
10. Kaalia of the Vast — I love her, and it’s tough to drop her this much, but I have to do what I honestly think is the right call. I adore turning her sideways with five or seven cards in hand. Anything can appear out of thin aether. It could be Dragon Tyrant, either Akroma, or Demon of Death’s Gate. Pain is en route. However, she’s so fragile and so scattered. If she was red and hybrid white/black, or white with hybrid black/red or whatever, then I’d like her a lot more, but forcing me to play three colors to use her ability is harsh. Outside of her own specific deck, it’s rough to abuse her, and you always have to build around her as a result. That drops her value significantly. I’m never building an Oros color deck and then realizing that she goes in. Because of how hard you have to work to find space for her in a deck, she drops in power and usefulness like others with similar restrictions.
9. Damia, Sage of Stone — Quick, how often have you seen Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur dominate a table before he’s killed? My answer is a disappointing zero. He costs so much mana and mandates an immediate answer that I’ve never seen one last longer than a turn. That’s my issue with Damia, Sage of Stone. She requires seven mana (for nothing but a 4/4 deathtouch creature) in three different colors to play. If she hits play, Damia is immediately killed. I traded a seven-mana card for a two-mana Go for the Throat. If she’s my Commander, she will quickly be so expensive I won’t be able to play her. If she’s not, I just lost tempo. It’s a rare board state where she is not immediately the strongest creature on the board. She’s targeted faster than Bringer of the Blue Dawn.
8. Tariel, Reckoner of Souls — I think Tariel is designed really well. Fligilance has been a popular mechanic combination all the way back to Serra Angel. The simple tap ability on it is enhanced by vigilance. Netting a free creature back every turn is hot. There are only two reasons why Tariel is not in the top five. First, the triple color lowers the decks you can toss this angel into. Secondly, the random recursion can be a bit unreliable. As a representation of red, random is a beautiful thing. As a true powerhouse, it falls behind some better cards.
7. Animar, Soul of Elements — I like the flavor of Animar a lot. It grows very fast into a real threat, and as it grows, the ability to grow it more drops. An Animar with just three counters on it is dangerous. Add any more and you are lethal. Because it’s cheap, you can play Animar and drop a few creatures, changing the math on each subsequent one, and suddenly you are facing a 3/3 Animar and two other creatures with someone at just six or seven mana. The ability for the Lord of Elements to kick your butt is double nasty when combined with cards like, say, Forgotten Ancient and graft (if all you do is drop Llanowar Reborn on the first or second turn and Animar on the third and hop the counter to it, you’ve already broken Animar). Because of this power, you always have to respect one. However, its early fragility and the usually slower speed at which is begins allows anything from a Singe to a Terror to kill this thing. It’s more dangerous than Damia, Sage of Stone because it costs less and is more easily abused, but it is every bit the target Damia is.
6. Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter — Vish Kal is the most inconsistent card in this list. There are times when his manaless sacrifice of creatures creates an uber-powerful platform of 30/30 love that kills very easily. There are times when you can sac a creature and then pull the counters off to kill something else instead. That makes him an odd Attrition, which works fine. Still, there are a lot of times when all he does is suck, with his high casting cost and weak combat abilities. No one wants to pay seven mana for a 5/5 flink creature. He comes down and sucks up the table. You don’t want to sacrifice better creatures to make an 11/11 flinker. You don’t want to mess up the joint, so you have your weak 5/5 dude just sitting there. Or he comes down after a Wrath of God all by himself. He needs to bring a lot of friends to the party to have any value at all, and that can often be a real downfall to the card. As such he just slides outside of the top five because his great potential is often stymied.
5. The Mimeoplasm — Welcome to the top five! It’s all great stuff from here. There are exactly two creatures that are so special-tastic that every single deck that plays the colors will want a copy. #5 is one, and #1 is the other. If you are playing blue/black/green, then you’d better have an amazingly good reason why you aren’t playing The Mimeoplasm if you have spare copies. It fits into virtually any deck, and that is a powerful and flexible tool. Copying any card in any graveyard at giant-size is great. Exiling both cards is sometimes better because you can play a minor role against recursion or things like Glory. Despite the massive value The Mimeoplasm has, it does have a few reasons why it’s just top five value, and not top three (or more). First of all, at the end of the day, it’s just an unusual Body Double or Clone effect. Because it exiles the cards, it can hurt your own recursion strategies or limit any broken things (such as copying a creature with an etb trigger and then playing Momentary Blink and getting another trigger from the same creature). Exiling the cards both hurts others and yourself at the same time and thus drops the value. It’s still a great card and one you should always play in those colors!
4. Karador, Ghost Chieftain — Despite clocking in at #4, Karador, Ghost Chieftain is the most broken engine of these Commander cards. At first, I’d say it was breaking in at #8 on this list. Then Innistrad happened, and it’s all history. In a set full of self-milling, he has become a reliable third or fourth turn play and can cause all of those milled creatures to suddenly become eligible for casting. His abilities initially looked like they were made just for Commander, since he’d be easier to replay later in the game after dying a few times and bumping up future costs by four or six mana. However, after seeing Innistrad, this guy is a whirling dervish of power. It’s in the color of Boneyard Wurm, Spider Spawning, Army of the Damned, Creeping Renaissance, and Unburial Rites. When you combine some of those greats with the many established cards from years past, you can see how a Karador deck can acquire a lot of juice very quickly. What keeps it juuuust outside of the top three is the inconsistency of its combo. There are times when you just don’t find the right cards early, and you are sitting with the flashback cards but not the mill. Then, much later you draw stuff like Mesmeric Orb. Whoopsie. Ah well. Its power cannot be denied.
3. Ghave, Guru of Spores — Ghave is not usually a combo engine like Karador is. What he does bring is a consistency to the table. He normally requires some cards in the deck with him, like creatures that have +1/+1 counters or make tokens. Frankly, Ghave often feels like a mono-green legendary creature that was forced into other colors against his will. While he requires some work, it’s not hard to find guys like Spike Weaver, Fertilid, Triskelion, Simic Basilisk, and more. It’s also not too hard to discover heavies like Decree of Justice, Orochi Hatchery, and Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder. With these guys, Ghave really shines. I like him pumping my infect guys. I think choices like Inkmoth Nexus and Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon are great friends of Ghave. Ghave is both fun and a powerful guy, whether he’s a Commander or just a rider. Because he requires some serious deck support to truly rock, he hits number three, but he is the highest charting card that wants support.
2. Riku of Two Reflections — I am pleasantly surprised to tell you that Riku is my winner for biggest underdog. Riku was never a top three card from this set to my eyes. I wouldn’t have put him in my top half. The number one card was always my #1 and has played like it, and Ruhan was always the worst of the lot. Others moved to various places, but Riku? As disappointed as I was with Zedruu, I was equally astonished by how Riku has played. He’s certainly a star, no question. He fits into any deck that has a roughly even mixture of spells and creatures of sufficient merit in the right colors. (That’s a lot of decks.) He is massively targeted these days because we know his power, but he still works. Play Damia or Animar, and watch as the removal arrives to take them out. Nothing changes. Play Riku, and then before you give priority to someone, cast a spell and Fork it with him. Force a creature into play and Clone it. Then Riku dies, but you got a few cards out of him. Wait a few turns and do it again when you have a bit more mana. Then rinse and repeat. This cumulative card advantage over the course of the game has an impact. Those times when Riku manages to stick, you have someone equally dangerous as Animar or Damia out. Riku wins games one way or the other.
1. Edric, Spymaster of Trest — Anyone can have a pet card. My favorite card in these fourteen is Tariel. But I have to separate my personal fondness for a card from my evaluation of how good it is. Edric is unquestionably the strongest of the lot. No matter what your favorite pet card is among these fourteen, I’d be surprised if you didn’t objectively agree. He’s not sexy. He’s not going to kill creatures, recur stars, destroy artifacts, break life totals, or abuse any engines. What he will do is subtly point people to attack your foes without being something annoying like a Moat or even a Ghostly Prison. “Hey, draw some cards by attacking Joe instead of me!” You aren’t lying; it’s true. It’s not a transparent ruse like Ruhan; it’s true. It’s an amazing tool to kill others, subtly, over time. And everyone draws cards, yay! If all Edric had was a 2/2 body for three mana with a Coastal Piracy attached, then he would rock the block all up and down (which is what he is in duels). Adding the political angle for multiplayer is just amazing. I would say that at least 90% of all blue/green decks in casual land could be made better by the addition of Edric. (All made up statistics are my own!) With the power of Edric on your side, your chances of winning any game of Magic are much better. (He’s also an Elf, by the way, which just makes him even more valuable for all of you elf-lovers out there.)
Fourteen legendary creatures were made for the Commander set, and we’ve looked at them after six months and assessed where they fall now. Some have always been stars, like Ghave and Edric. Some have always been the weaker members of the lot, like Ruhan and Nin. We have disappointments and surprises. We have removal and combo engines and more. You can still find a lot of untapped power here, so rock out with these guys at your next game.
Until Later,