New Phyrexia has hit the streets, and players get to explore it in all its peculiar goodness in a variety of deck sizes from 40 and 60 all the way up
to 99 with equal aplomb. While I have heard little enough about New Phyrexia from a Limited standpoint in recent weeks, the internet has been awash in
Constructed articles applying New Phyrexia to Standard all the way through to Vintage. Commander is a more casual and forgiving format than, say,
Vintage, though it has a similarly broad cardpool, and because of this, a significant percentage of cards in the set is bound to make waves; our
rose-colored glasses suggest plentiful applications for decks new and old, as we peruse the new options before us.
In this most forgiving of formats, it’s more important that the cards fit the idea than that they fit an ideal; the concept and strategy that you
build towards must fit together cohesively if you are to actively achieve what you pursue, and the de-facto limitation of ‘only playing good
cards’ would tamp down quickly on a large number of cards routinely played in the format. The ideal of a lean, mean piece of cardboard cuts to
the quick when considering New Phyrexia cards for Standard but mostly just gets in the way of what could turn out to be a good time when considering
this set’s many gems for inclusion in Commander.
With a new set before us, then, I’m going to start by looking at all of the newly minted Commanders and measure them in comparison to what was
already possible and then have a broader look at the set in order to figure out what’s worth including or suggests new possibilities.
New Phyrexia’s Commanders
Elesh Norn has a similar look at least on the surface to another Commander—Crovax, Ascendant Evincar. The ability to return to your hand is a
little less important in a Commander, as you will have the ability to cast him repeatedly even in the case of death, and this ability ultimately saves
you mana (or saves your Commander from a tuck effect such as Spin into Myth) but not necessarily a card’s worth of advantage. To make up for
that, Elesh Norn is a larger animal and easier to keep around with a plentiful seven toughness, and with vigilance, he’s always up for blocking
even after he attacks. What’s so drastically different about this Commander is the scale of his abilities: +2/+2 for all of your creatures and
-2/-2 for everyone else’s. No color requirements to be met, nor any exceptions as to which creatures an opponent might control that are suffered
to stick around, just an always-active Massacre Wurm tamping down on each enemy creature that previously considered themselves to be sizable threats.
More than any other mono-White Commander, then, Elesh Norn wants to be used building token armies, be they Kithkin tokens from Cloudgoat Ranger or the
more modern Myr tokens made plentiful by a number of cards in Scars of Mirrodin block like Myr Battlesphere.
I expect Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite to have an immediate impact on Commander decks, inspiring new builds all over the place to try him on for size, and
finding that size has a considerable impact on the board. Part hoser and part double Anthem, he’s all awesome.
I believe we have a new candidate for most-hated Blue Commander, surpassing even Teferi in the threat of vile effectiveness. A Commander that comes
with seven fresh cards every turn is absurdly powerful, and that would be enough by himself to warrant a severe level of danger when considering
Jin-Gitaxias as a potential Commander. That he also comes with flash to play him at your leisure plus reduces the hand size of any opponent who does
not control Reliquary Tower to zero and forces them to discard anything as-yet unused at the end of their turn pushes this guy into the absurd-threat
category. Yes, ten mana is a lot, but Commander is the ten-mana-bomb format almost by definition, and this is certainly something you can work towards
simply by including cards like Mana Vault and Tolarian Academy in your Blue decks to help build towards his hefty price tag. And the ability to play
him multiple times in the case of his death is just bonkers, as a little careful planning and preparation can give you a turn with Jin-Gitaxias in play
and the fresh hand that goes with it and maybe even a little forced-discard mayhem while you’re at it. You only need him to stick once to close
out a game, and as your Commander, you’ll have multiple tries at that.
Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur is very, very playable, and choosing him as your Commander is a powerful way to flip everyone else the bird and tell
them you don’t care what heat they try to bring; you’ll beat them with him anyway.
I have a fond spot in my heart for mono-Black Commanders to begin with, and that heart nearly stopped when I saw Sheoldred. One of my biggest losses
when I narrowed down from multicolor to just Black was that I couldn’t add the very, very black Debtors’ Knell because of the
color restrictions on hybrid-mana cards, and Sheoldred takes those lamentations and turns that frown upside down by not just being a mighty,
swampwalking Reya Dawnbringer but also pointing a Diabolic Edict at each opponent when their turn comes around. Swampwalk on a 6/6 in a deck that will
routinely have Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth in play is a filthy thing to have, making this an unblockable Commander a fair share of the time, and at an
affordable price for what is clearly just pure upsides. Like Debtor’s Knell, Sheoldred costs seven, though unfortunately she only concerns
herself with your graveyard instead of giving you open access to every single player’s stuff. Unlike Debtors’ Knell, she can be played in
mono-Black, or even as a Commander… and I have to assume she is a frightening Commander indeed, jumping her very high up my list of mono-Black
Commanders, very potentially even to the top of the list.
Efficiency, recursion, and board control all wrapped up in one tight little package? Sheoldred astounds right off the bat, all while still
ultimately being fair (unlike Jin-Gitaxias) and thus not earning you the instant-death ire that can come with flipping a highly naughty Commander.
Sheoldred just plays Magic, but she plays it very, very well.
I’m not as convinced about Urabrask as I am about the other Praetors, for as potent as Urabrask is as a tempo play time after time, he’s
more of a cheerleader than a quarterback, enabling your own plays just a little bit faster and tripping up the opponent’s plays just that extra
little bit. Granting haste is powerful, as is the half-turn delay on opposing blockers, but unlike the other Praetors, he doesn’t stand up quite
as favorably against the other monocolor options. Even with his nearby mana cost, I think Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker neatly outclasses him and Godo,
Bandit Warlord is considerably more mighty as a beatdown plan, since he brings the tools to the party and gets to use them twice, which can be crazy
indeed when you get stuff like Sword of Feast and Famine or live the dream that is Argentum Armor. Urabrask does just one thing, and that one thing
isn’t even something that can provably demonstrate itself to be worthwhile; Godo getting Lightning Greaves provides every bit as much as
Urabrask’s haste grants, while Kiki-Jiki making copies also grants an equal flavor of haste… and both of these have far more interesting
modalities to use besides these simple and straightforward uses.
I just don’t see Urabrask the Hidden getting much Commander love anytime soon, though the more forgiving seem to be giving him a try in
sixty-card decks to attempt to live the dream of Urabrask into Inferno Titan for full-on shenanigans.
Commanders that mess with mana are dangerous animals to begin with. Vorinclex messes with mana not once but twice: doubling yours—making him a
dangerous Commander indeed, as it’s like having a Mana Reflection you can always cast (and which happens to include a sizable trampling body as
well)—and halving each and every single opponent’s mana access, turning their Badlands into Lava Tubes and Savannahs into Veldts.
Commanders like Hokori, Dust Drinker and Grand Arbiter Augustin IV are reviled and revered for their ability to turn a fair and balanced game into one
where the opponents fall behind and can never again quite catch up, and Vorinclex is bigger and badder than those two even if he doesn’t lock the
opponent down as hard.
Vorinclex effectively quadruples your mana production in comparison to the opponent when he comes into play, and “quadruple” is a
dangerous number when it comes to mana in a mana-hungry format like Commander. He’s very, very good indeed, making four out of five of the
Praetor cycle excellent choices to command your forces.
Another mighty Commander, this one coming with a powerful, aggressive boost with only a little work-up required. Jor Kadeen is only the second-best
White power-pumping Commander in New Phyrexia, but as is abundantly clear, a R/W Commander is a very different animal from a mono-White Commander, and
this gives new options for R/W besides Brion Stoutarm, Razia, Boros Archangel, and Argus Koj, Wojek Veteran… though not without the suspiciously
placed J’s and K’s that Argus Koj carried amongst his alphabet soup. Jor Kadeen provides the front-end of an Overrun as a static effect,
only lacking the trample, making him considerably more potent for a token-based strategy than his J-and-K-heavy predecessor, both for not having to
attack to provide the bonus and for the sheer size that a lowly Goblin token can achieve by having the right friends.
I expect Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer will Prevail at many a Commander table, giving a powerful new option to a color combination that receives only
infrequent attention and likewise advancing a token-based strategy that is already a popular line of approach for Commander decks everywhere.
He’s interesting and exciting and downright cheap for the effect he provides, and Metalcraft is easy enough to build towards when the artifacts
you can consider for inclusion count Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Great Furnace and Ancient Den among their numbers.
Melira, the misunderstood. At first glance, Melira disappoints as a Commander, existing mostly to counteract Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon as a
Commander of choice, saving you and your creatures from Infect in a world that only infrequently has to concern itself with these things. Of course,
that said, Melira does considerably more than just interact with Infect (and to a lesser degree Wither): just put a Cauldron of Souls into play
alongside a Melira, and it will be clear just what sort of interesting corner cases you can build into with her abilities in mind, and what interesting
questions need to be asked. Melira and Devoted Druid sounds like it could be infinite mana and also sounds like it could be ‘you cannot use the
ability to untap Devoted Druid, your Commander forbids it’ with equal aplomb. Combine Melira with Woodfall Primus and Ashnod’s Altar to
make a lot of mana and a lot of people unhappy, and suddenly this underwhelming Commander is actually a major problem, having gone right from laughable
to broken without any stops in between.
The applications for Melira’s talents are peculiar and hard to see, but a little building to take advantage of her talents proactively will make
a world of difference to turn her around from reactive stinker of a Commander to a bizarre bomb in a world that is unprepared for what’s about to
go down. And it is exactly these sort of challenges that some thrive on; we can’t even laugh at Norin the Wary as a ‘serious’
Commander anymore; surely there are legitimate applications for Melira, Sylvok Outcast even though at first glance little comes to mind.
Neil Patrick Harris’s Spellbook
New Phyrexia is chock-full of interesting cards to put to use in 99-card decks and blurs the lines on what colors are allowed to do, as well as what
you can accomplish while tapped out thanks to the benefits of Phyrexian mana. The color-matching requirements of Commander prevent everyone from having
access to Dismember in their decks, unlike in Standard where it is poised to appear in every deck across the color spectrum, so the rules don’t
break too far because of Phyrexian mana… it’s just really, really good at giving you something for a lot less than you usually can get
it for, thanks to your doubled life total. Thus the impact is halved when you decide to splurge for something Phyrexian-style.
White:
There is of course the question of whether Due Respect is, well, due respect. Costed and templated somewhat like Abeyance, people are trying to put it
to much the same use, as a tempo spell you can use to slow one player down without really getting in the way of your own ambitions. Not spending an
actual card for this is a requirement in Commander, since you don’t expect to be facing anyone one-on-one till perhaps the very end of the game,
so your cards have to have significant weight in order to be considered playable or at the very least be invisible and replace themselves. The question
then is whether such a slight effect is beneficial enough to be worth the slot—and for that the answer is ‘definitely maybe.’ Due
Respect is an excellent response to Living Death, for example, and can always at the very worst be played in response to someone’s Commander just
to tap it and draw a card. Its power scales based on the power of what everyone else is doing, and the impact it can have is thus very high in a few
key applications.
That said, I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen someone cast Abeyance either, though I’d like to think that is more because
people don’t remember it as we used to think about it back in the dinosaur days when Weatherlight was new and we called it “the Time Walk
you take on other people’s turns” because it worked slightly differently than it was intended to, based on the rules back then. More people
probably should be playing Abeyance, and thus with similarly rose-colored glasses, I expect Due Respect to start showing up in Commander and unhinging
a massively swingy turn or two while it’s at it.
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite we discussed above, and he’s just as good in play as one of your starting 99 as he is set aside in the Command Zone.
Like any potent threat, you’ll have to pick your moment carefully for him when you won’t just have the option to replay him for two more
mana, but there’s no reason at all he won’t start migrating into basically every White deck around because of the high impact he has on
enemy creatures even before getting into what he does for your own. Either as your Commander or alongside him, Elesh Norn is one of the new format
staples, so grab one and hold onto it before prices start to reflect that fact.
Norn’s Annex is an interesting Propaganda. Some people will get the half-price discount and only have to pay one, not two, in order to attack
you. Others will have no recourse save their life totals in order to declare attacks, and unlike your mana each turn life totals don’t replenish
themselves during your untap step. This isn’t so much a slow-down card as it is a stop sign; yes, you can run past it if you want to, but bad
things might just happen if you try and press your luck. Coming soon to a Commander table near you!
Puresteel Paladin is a curious card for Commander, but then any wacky little card-draw engine is automatically playable in Commander and if you want
some help chasing a theme then Puresteel Paladin can help. One of the flaws of equipment-heavy decks is that, well, they’re equipment heavy…
you can draw a lot of equipment and not a lot of action. Puresteel Paladin helps two ways with that plan: draw a card to replace your equipment, then
get some mana back as you invest in all these swords and shields by not having to pay in order to equip them.
In Standard this means trying to cheat with Argentum Armor, but in Commander this can just mean getting a little bit of help putting the Sword, Shield
and Helm of Kaldra onto Kemba, Kha Regent for fun and profit, and Puresteel Paladin then only becomes ‘bad’ when you have to start worrying
about what happens in the games where you don’t draw him. A high power card with clear build-around-me abilities, he sets the mind to
spinning, and I don’t know what I would want to do with him but he definitely sticks out and asks what it would take to make him worth playing,
and I like those kinds of cards trying to get my attention.
Shattered Angel is not something I’ve heard anyone else talking about, but reverse-Landfall is even better in Commander than Landfall itself is,
since you will presumably have three people to help play lands for the effect as opposed to just the one of you. As a 3/3 for five her stats are anemic
by today’s high standards of living, where you can have a Baneslayer Angel instead and rely on that for all your life-gaining needs. But as a
cheap-ish creature able to give you nine or more life per turn, I think Shattered Angel deserves some attention, and does so all without being an
innocuous lightning rod that demands the opponent either stop playing lands or point some removal at her first before things get out of hand. A little
life can go a long way, but who’s going to point their first Doom Blade at your 3/3 for 5 just because you might gain some life?
No one. There’s a school of thought in Commander that suggests it might be the best to be the guy with the second-best pieces of cardboard, that
looking as if you are inherently playing with bad cards makes the removal go somewhere else and leaves you alone. You could have a Baneslayer, sure,
but who isn’t going to kill a Baneslayer when they see it coming their way? Shattered Angel doesn’t even have to attack anyone to gain you
the life, making no enemies and allowing you to continue flying under the radar if you so choose, and just because a card’s not good enough for
Standard doesn’t mean it’s trash in Commander. The veneer of unplayability if anything might just make the card better than those excellent
cards well-regarded as powerhouses in their own rights, because powerhouses die to Doom Blade and that which is not a threat does not get a Doom Blade
pointed its way. So Shattered Angel might just be a stealth bomber… yeah, it flies, but it flies under the radar.
Suture Priest, on the other hand, I’ve had a few months to get used to ever since the Mirrodin Besieged release events where they were giving
them away, and I still find it very hard to believe that White gets to have Blood Seeker with an additional upside. Blood Seeker is right at the edge
of playability in Commander—it’s definitely good enough for some applications, or against certain players as a mild hoser card to tax them
for their token-generating ways—and adding half of a Soul Warden to the card very easily tips it over from ‘maybe’ to
‘yeah!’ in my book. Especially given the sheer weirdness of White decks making you lose life directly, I think Suture Priest is a
critter you can expect to see a lot of in coming weeks, as people try to figure out just how good it is and give it a try even in a few places it might
not really fit. I for one really like it, but then I tend to hate Soul Warden effects and can only be convinced to play them when they do something
else as well, and that means this is the sort of card that was meant for me to help me get over my naturally pessimistic views on cards a lot of other
players have long since embraced.
The final White card I want to discuss is War Report, a ‘safer’ Congregate that doesn’t generate the incredibly large amount of life
that the old-fashioned Congregate does but does always give you something for your troubles. Congregate is either awesome or terrible
depending on how recently someone has Wrathed, and while it won’t be as bonkers as a Congregate left unchecked because no one has played any mass
removal, it should always be good for a decent chunk of something, thanks to the fact that it counts two plentiful types of permanents instead of just
the one. I’m hard-pressed to ever include either in a deck I’m building, since I have firm rules on the robustness of a card I am putting
to this effect, and thus I would sooner reach for a Shattered Angel to get a dose of life back than one-shot effects that serve only that purpose, but
Congregate is well-loved by some and I expect War Report to appeal to those same people.
Blue:
Chancellor of the Spires is an odd duck. If you have it in your opening hand, congratulations, each of your opponents gains Threshold! More
impressively though is what he does when he comes into play, the real reason to play the card rather than the ‘cute’ reason, and as anyone
who has ever cast a Cruel Ultimatum, Insurrection, or Time Stretch can tell you, sometimes the instants and sorceries than an opponent just happens to
have in their graveyard can be pretty ridiculous things. So a seven-mana flier with a decent body to it is a relatively worthwhile consideration
anyway, just as a reasonable threat, and the free cast of your pick of each opponent’s graveyards has to be a pretty ridiculous ability. Combine
this with your own bounce effects, such as Crystal Shard, and hilarity ensues. A dangerous creature that hasn’t generated a lot of buzz yet,
because most people are laughing at the beginning-of-game trigger instead of realizing its ending-the-game potential is much more important.
Deceiver Exarch is not an impressive card. Twiddle isn’t exactly playable, and so it is quite surprising that just stapling a Twiddle to a
creature makes a world of difference. Kiki-Jiki/Pestermite is a potent combination to close out a game no matter how many opponents are still alive,
and it’s not because Pestermite has two power and flying. Deceiver Exarch is the more robust version of Pestermite, a 1/4 ground-pounder instead
of a 2/1 flier, and four toughness is much more relevant in closing out these sorts of tricks than an extra power and flying… a stiff breeze can kill
a one-toughness creature, but you actually need something spell-like to break up the combo when everyone has two or more toughness.
Fair uses of the card probably don’t exist, just ones that allow you to go infinite or enough like infinite that it doesn’t matter, and the
extra resilience of the creature as well as the ability to play defense a little bit better probably makes it a strict upgrade to anyone who
wasn’t using Pestermite for its Faerie creature type.
Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur is, like Elesh Norn, still unfair when not used as your Commander, and in fact ‘not as your Commander’ is probably
the better place for him (unlike Norn, who was pure upsides as a Commander). The best ways to bring this card to bear tend to involve not showing him
to everybody first, and to me that means playing him alongside another color besides Blue in order to improve your resilience by pairing him with at
least one other color. Green for Survival of the Fittest, Fauna Shaman, and Chord of Calling gives you all of the ability to find Jin without
the downside of telegraphing that he is coming, and given that the best way to play Commander is to play it fair, also doesn’t leave you
with a lame-duck Commander that causes you either to be judiciously attacked or entirely unused. Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur is exactly the kind of
Commander card I love when I need to take those kid gloves off but hate when I’m just playing a good game, so I expect I will like him much
better inside of the deck than at the helm of it.
Phyrexian Ingester is a powerful new take on the ever-popular Duplicant, with the additional one mana spent going to give you +3/+3 on your
Duplicant’s size. Sure, it lacks the ‘any-deck’ versatility of the original, but once you’ve added blue mana anyway you get to
play two of them instead of one and the second is even bigger than the first. An easy format staple, if not with the same cross-deck availability of
the original.
Phyrexian Metamorph, however, that’s an interesting new take on a few things we hadn’t previously associated with each other. The little
bit of added flexibility in its casting cost is not the most interesting part of it, at least in Commander where you still can’t add the
Metamorph to a deck that isn’t able to cast it unless you want to get wacky and have Oona, Queen of the Fae lead your mono-black deck and
technically get to include the Metamorph even though you can’t generate blue mana. (Stranger things happen every day in Commander, though, so why
not?)
Part Sculpting Steel, part Clone, the Metamorph has a surprisingly high level of flexibility to turn into whatever seems best to copy right away. As
Sculpting Steel you’ll frequently find it to be a second copy of Mind’s Eye or maybe even just Sensei’s Divining Top, putting it at
worst at the same utility as Trinket Mage since someone always has a Top. As a Clone, it’s just a Clone that happens to retain the
artifact supertype, which can lead to some interesting interactions if you want to take advantage of things like Modular creatures to put counters onto
something that wouldn’t normally be able to receive them. It’s also able to take advantage of some peculiar interactions, such as the
infinite-flicker combo with Leonin Relic-Warder, since the Relic-Warder doesn’t happen to say ‘other artifact’ and thus a copy that
happens to be an artifact is able to target itself and blink in and out of existence until you or someone else gets bored.
Phyrexian Metamorph, then, has a whole lot of untapped applications that have not yet even begun to be looked into, because weird crossover exists when
you port something new and interesting like this into ten thousand other cards and wait to see what happens. It’s easily one of my favorite cards
in the set for Commander, and that’s just because I keep finding peculiar new things to do with it… like be a Commander-killer that you can buy
back for free with Hanna, Ship’s Navigator or Argivian Archaeologist, a card I haven’t seen anyone dust off in literally years now.
Psychic Surgery is another odd little card, easy to overlook in sixty-card formats but providing a very powerful level of selectivity across multiple
opponents and a very long game. Played on turn two, you can expect to have a say in what each opponent is going to draw ten or more times in a game,
and use this selectivity to extract specific problem cards like pulling their Living Death or Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir that just happened to float to
the top and now will no longer be a problem for the rest of the game. It’s a small little effect, but I’ve seen lesser effects put to very
good use, and think that Psychic Surgery will have a solid effect on a game that bears trying out in the format.
Spellskite, however, is Standard’s new darling, and everything that applies to the card in that format still applies to Commander as well:
it’s a selective-use Flagbearer that pulls creature removal (or artifact removal!) away from your most important cards while also preventing
opponents from assembling all sorts of unusual combinations since it works not just on spells but on abilities as well. Part protection and part hoser,
Spellskite is basically a proactive counterspell, and if there is anything Commander players like to be, it’s proactive rather than reactive.
Spend two mana once and never have to keep mana aside again to put it to work, thanks to the Phyrexian mana requirement to activate the ability, and
Spellskite will help keep your more potent threats alive, making it a clever little support card that plenty of people are going to want to try out.
Tezzeret’s Gambit is one of those invisible little card-drawers that I seem to like in this format and very few others do; I haven’t seen
nearly enough black mages casting Night’s Whisper, or blue mages playing draw manipulation like Brainstorm, so with Divination not exactly being
a core Commander card you’ll see Tezzeret’s Gambit used with the hope of proliferating rather than exclusively as a card drawer.
Proliferate is able to do about as much as you’re able to imagine, from the uses we see in Standard to power up Ascensions, bloat Everflowing
Chalices, and increase loyalty on Planeswalkers, but can lead to unusual things indeed when you add all of Magic to the mix. In Blue alone that can put
another turn on a waiting spell thanks to Delay or Ertai’s Meddling, another mana every turn thanks to City of Shadows, or a sea change in where
the tide stands for your army of Homarids. Proliferate is well-loved in Commander, and not hard to find a good home for attached to a reasonable card
drawing spell.
Speaking of Proliferate, Viral Drake offers proliferate without boundaries, letting you dump however much mana you have lying around into the effort of
reaching Planeswalker ultimates or even just the mundane use of poisoning opponents out thanks to its infect ability. One scratch is all you need,
after all, to Proliferate away; one hit with a Viral Drake and the opponent is just a mere thirty-six mana from death, which can be spent incrementally
over any number of turns while reaping other rewards and profits as well. Mostly we’ll look at it as a fun way to ramp up silly things like Lux
Cannon or Magistrate’s Scepter, but it’s adequately capable of killing opponents just by itself even from infinite life, so it has a bit of
power in its own right before reaching for other cards to make use of the power of proliferation.
Lastly for Blue we have Xenograft, the Blue Conspiracy. Changing around creature types is an interesting ability with odd uses, though unlike
Conspiracy this doesn’t alter creature types in other zones so you will never see Lin-Sivvi recruit a Leviathan thanks to Xenograft’s
abilities… it only mucks around with what’s in play, which is still good enough to go infinite with Turntimber Ranger to generate infinite
power and infinite Wolves, and to use your Xenograft on an opponent’s tribe and put Peer Pressure to good use stealing all of their creatures.
It’s another card with potential as far as the mind can imagine, and frequently has thanks to going there with Conspiracy already, but unlike
Conspiracy it’s a different color and leaves the creatures with their original creature type as well in case there is any cross-pollination going
on as you build your own Merfolk-Wizard army or just want to have a team of Ninja Turtles.
Black:
Chancellor of the Dross is the most exciting of the Chancellors for Commander, since a three-point Syphon Soul sounds like a good way to start off the
game. Never mind how infrequently that will actually happen in a singleton format, it’s the excitement that gets your attention, and the
idea of starting at 49 instead of 40 sounds like a lot of value without even costing you a card to get it. What about when you don’t get that
effect, drawing the card after the fact?
After the fact, Chancellor of the Dross is still a big beefy flier with lifelink. Not as resilient as Wurmcoil Engine, but then so few things are; not
as impressively powerful as Baneslayer Angel who weighs in at two mana lighter, plus two occasionally-relevant protection abilities, and the first
strike that helps her own the skies. Once you’re past the anemic turns of the game it doesn’t really matter if it’s five or seven
mana to play your monster, as either way you’re talking about the sweet spot of Commander, and a dragon-sized creature with lifelink will make a
big dent in their life total while putting a buffer back on yours. I wouldn’t reach for Chancellor of the Dross before I reached for Wurmcoil
Engine, but I’d certainly be happy to consider him alongside it, and hey every 7% of the time or so that whole Chancellor thing will actually
happen. I like it on its own merits drawn after the first turn enough to give it a fair shake in a deck or two, and thankfully that means that the
people who were so enthralled by the start-of-game ability will not be disappointed by what is (after the fact) still quite a reasonable card.
Dismember isn’t as impressive in Commander as it is bound to be in formats that don’t have the color alignment rules we have to work with,
such as allowing you to play Dismember in your mono-Green Elf deck or blue-white Caw-Blade as the removal of choice. Instead it’s best compared
to Sudden Death or Snuff Out as those are the two cards it most resembles, and Snuff Out is not a card I have seen terribly often make Commander decks
(Slaughter Pact tends to be the ‘free Terror’ of first choice) though it’s perfectly valid as a mana-saving removal spell. Dismember
gives you an additional toughness off compared to Sudden Death, and the option to be cast for anywhere from one to three mana instead of always three.
The question then is whether Sudden Death’s split second ability is enough to warrant its continued use instead of this new kid on the block, and
I am looking forward to answering that question in my Ob Nixilis deck in coming
weeks. I’m leaning towards yes given how much easier it is to keep one mana spare on another player’s turn than it is to keep up three, and
how infrequently that card has had to have split second to do what I wanted it to. I’m a split-second addict as my first few articles
here showed, but I’m also a hardcore fan of paying less than full retail value for powerful spells, and the Phyrexian mana on this particular
spell greatly attracts me to it.
Glistening Oil is an odd duck. If you wanted to try and use it as removal alone, it’s a re-envisioning of Takkelmaggot as an enchant creature
card that slowly erodes enemy creatures drip by drip. But if you wanted to try and do something considerably more dangerous, you can use it as a potent
means of upgrading a creature to ‘kills in one swing’ status. Like Rancor, it comes back if the creature it is on dies after it lands, but
is still a pure two-for-one whenever its target is killed in response. Unlike Rancor, it can kill an opponent at infinite life, as Infect is frequently
a lot more than a two-power bonus in Commander. There’s just enough upside on this to get me wondering, and that’s a sure sign someone
somewhere is already playing this after trading for it at the prerelease.
Hex Parasite, though, has an unusual niche to fill in the format, just as good against the same kinds of permanents that were so good alongside
proliferate effects. Proliferate is becoming more prevalent as we get more good cards that work with it, and planeswalkers are enough justification by
themselves to consider Hex Parasite. It will most likely find a home somewhere that can find it on demand for free, which means to me either Trinket
Mage or Ranger of Eos, though it is presumably perfectly fine alongside Survival of the Fittest even if it’s not put in your hand for free at no
cost. It makes me wonder what cards besides Dark Depths are profitable to take counters off of, opening up all sorts of cumulative upkeep cards that
are seeing only infrequent play, and so long as I was thinking Trinket Mage for Hex Parasite that makes me want to dig out Dreams for the Dead and see
what if anything comes of it.
Next we have another card I am longing to put in my Ob Nixilis deck, a
re-envisioning of Korlash, Heir to Blackblade that trades regeneration for life as a living weapon. Any Black commander would be happy to get +1/+1 for
each land you control in order to speed up the TKO, and when attached to another creature it effectively has haste if you don’t feel like keeping
the germ token around as its own separate creature thanks to the affordable pricing system of Phyrexian mana. Easily one of my favorite cards in the
set, both for this and for sixty-card constructed formats, and one I look forward to pairing with the inevitable Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth that I and
others tend to ensure is on the table (if not under our control) whenever we play.
Life’s Finale is another Damnation for black decks that want more mass removal, though like Day of Judgment you need to note that it allows
regeneration to save creatures from death. Perhaps this is a downside, but it of course can also be a feature instead of a bug, allowing you to plan
for regeneration on your own team instead of worrying about it from others. The most peculiar thing to me is the fact that it’s a spell that
targets a player and which just happens to kill every creature in play, making it a Wrath that can be countered by Dawn Charm, a utility spell I have
seen quietly getting new life at least around my area playgroup. If anything, I find it a shame that it doesn’t allow you the option of targeting
yourself, since as cool as it is to wrath and take away an opponent’s three best creatures I’d definitely find plenty of games where I
targeted myself and dug out two creatures to reanimate and Undead Gladiator to help me churn through my library. More often than not, then, I expect
I’ll target a player who controls Genesis and hope he has at least one Eldrazi to solve that problem, which on second thought is an awesome and
interesting interaction I look forward to seeing happen and cackling with glee as it makes Mr. Graveyard Recursion unhappy.
Phyrexian Obliterator is one hell of a defensive card. Sure, it looks offensive, Juzam Djinn in size and mana cost plus trample besides… but the
‘hit me and you get hurt’ side of his ability puts up a nasty wall between the opponent’s ground-pounders and your life total, making
you want to keep it untapped instead of attacking. I opened one in the last pack I cracked the day of the prerelease and immediately jammed it into the
deck with a smile on my face, and eagerly await the first time I get to flash it into play with Winding Canyons to block something like an Ulamog that
had the presumptuousness to attack me.
Praetor’s Grasp is an odd one. It’s a tutor, sort of, since with one player that shares a color with you it’s reasonable to think
they’ll have at least a few power cards you want to find for your own use. It’s also a hoser, sort of, if one player happens to rely very
heavily on one specific card, and at its worst it lets you borrow half a Sensei’s Divining Top or a very powerful land, making it at the worst
still a very decent tutor even if it’s one that excludes a large subsection of the cards you’ve put into your deck in order to work out of
an opponent’s. I like cards that work with the opponent’s stuff as a resource instead of an obstacle and see this as an interesting little
oddity, and one that should be worth trying out in order to figure out just how good it is.
And then we return to Sheoldred, Whispering One. I think she is best utilized as a commander than as a card in your deck, but that’s mostly
because having Sheoldred with built-in recursion is even nuttier than just having Sheoldred. It’s an incredibly strong creature that gets added
to the list of awesome Commander staples, just given her ability to turn around a game by pulling things out of your graveyard for free, and that she
happens to make some room on the opposite sides of the board while she’s at it is pure upsides.
Red:
Act of Aggression is a variable-cost Ray of Command, and though such temporary-control effects are not in common usage outside of Word of Seizing for
red, there have definitely been times where
they are just the kind of card you want to reach for and Act of Aggression is one that does just that without any bells, whistles, or other
odd requirements that get in the way of it and what it’s supposed to do. A minor support card thanks to the fact that it can cost as little as
three colorless mana if you need it to, and without the awkward restriction of Temporary Insanity that stops it from turning a Blightsteel Colossus
against its controller on turn four. It would be far better if not for the color identity rules keeping it out of your mono-Green decks, but
nothing’s perfect.
Chancellor of the Forge excites me not for the Raging Goblin he comes with for free on turn one but instead for the large pile of hasty token creatures
he can put into play when he comes down. Red is a solid color for token army attacks—Hazezon Tamar and Rith the Awakener are both strong
commanders that see frequent play, and Chancellor of the Forge alongside the rest of the cards you’d expect to see in these sorts of strategies
is just an imposing weight of goblin tokens exploding in your general direction when you least expect it. I don’t think I’ll be playing this one, but I do expect to die to it sometime very soon.
Invader Parasite is sort of an awkward casting cost, five mana being a bit steep for a land destruction spell by itself. The hope then would have to be
that you can catch a basic land and get a decent chunk of damage in with it, to really justify its use, but then some people happen to just like a few
free LD spells on reasonably-sized creatures and will see this as an opportunity to upgrade their Avalanche Riders instead of worry about downgrading
it. Cabal Coffers will never come back after Invader Parasite has had its way with it, and a little light land destruction can keep everyone honest and
in check without having to go overboard with the strategy. I do expect to laugh the first time I eat a Cabal Coffers and get to punch that guy for his
opponent playing their own copy, but then I would also be hoping I could find a way to convince it to come back to my hand to get that second Coffers
out of there too so that might not work out so well after all. Not every dream’s great, sometimes you dream about doing the laundry.
Slag Fiend, on the other hand, gets me excited. One-mana creatures are Ranger of Eos fodder after all, and since it counts every player’s
graveyard it can be a prodigious number indeed. Serra Ascendant already shows you want to get six power for your one-drop, and Figure of Destiny raises
that bar to eight, so I would really want to get nine power for one mana out of my Slag Fiend. All that really requires is everyone having two except
for someone having three, and that’s not even an ambitious number to expect over the course of a game, making Slag Fiend quite noteworthy for
Commander. Hint: make the second one-drop you get Gorilla Shaman, Slag Fiend will thank you.
Urabrask the Hidden didn’t impress me as a commander, but as just another card in your library he’s downright fine if not just awesome,
since more ways to get haste are more fun for you and Loxodon Gatekeeper is only not played very frequently because his small stature prevents him from
being taken seriously in the format. A 4/4 for five mana with haste himself is a good body to go alongside a good effect, and causing your opponents to
only be able to summon tapped creatures pushes him right over the edge into comfortably playable, just not better than the options you could choose
instead to lead your army. He makes a fine follower, after all.
Green:
Beast Within is just an instant speed Desert Twister that happens to gift the lucky recipient with a 3/3 in exchange for the game-winning tool you just
took away. Beast Within is just incredible utility, and for once it has the right speed of use to make it worthwhile instead of being leveraged with
the often-green downside of ‘can only be used at sorcery speed because green is supposed to be dumb.’ Coming soon to a Commander table near
you, or possibly a Commander deck already in your hands.
Birthing Pod, now that’s a harder nut to crack, but one that sounds so rewarding. There’s a lot of restrictions… you can only use it in a
green deck even though you can feasibly cast and activate it with only colored mana, you can only use it at sorcery speed, the creature you get has to
be exactly one mana more. But the benefits you can reap by chaining creatures one after the other and benefitting from enters the battlefield abilities
makes it crazy to consider, and can go downright crazy in Commander if you want to try. Want to try? Go for it! All sorts of shenanigans are possible
with Birthing Pod around, especially once you start climbing up the chain and getting multiple uses of Birthing Pod in a single turn.
With the ability to add Deceiver Exarch at three mana and Kiki-Jiki at five mana to your chains of ‘what can I do all in one turn?’ you
don’t have to try very hard to turn a two-drop into a Primeval Titan so long as you’re willing to do the work. Birthing Pod is very narrow
but very profitable, especially for the creative sorts with vivid imaginations that can envision a chain of events that leads to one obscure creature
after another coming into play and advancing your Rube-Goldberg machine one step further on your path to world domination. Here’s a puzzle for
you: the craziest thing I could figure out how to do on turn three was to decide which eight-drop I wanted and whether I could go further from there.
Feel free to consider how I got there, and whether you can keep going further up the chain, in the forums.
Brutalizer Exarch reminds me somewhat of Primal Command, if for no other reason than that it is able to handle any noncreature permanent as long as
really matters in any realistic time-scale, and gives you this ability alongside that of Worldly Tutor to choose whichever benefits you most.
Considering that it is a catch-all answer to pretty much any permanent, Planeswalkers included, that can be found as part of a Survival of the Fittest
chain, it’s worthy of inclusion over Mold Shambler simply for the fact that it has two abilities and tucking something in the library is usually
better than leaving it in the graveyard to be reused. It has a very specific function, and ‘the right tools’ are exactly the kind of cards
some Commander decks want, and I can already think of one deck of mine that really wants to slip him in as a problem-solver with upsides, so I expect
others are similarly inclined.
Fresh Meat is an enticing card to build around, but also just a perfectly fine variant on the ‘Ghostway’ theme and a bigger version of
Caller of the Claw. The creatures are one chunk more sizable than those provided by the Caller, and unlike the Caller of the Claw, Fresh Meat
doesn’t discriminate between real creatures and tokens, meaning it’s excellent in a deck focusing on token creatures to keep them alive in
addition to just being another solid way to provide a number of them when you’ve had to spend a few blocking or throwing them into a dangerous
attack. Very high power compared to previous iterations on this theme, and thus the kind of card that catches the eye.
Melira, Sylvok Outcast could prove to be a broken Commander if you try to build her that way, but as a run of the mill member of your starting 99 she
really is more of a poison/wither ‘hoser’ creature than a combo piece. There is no reason to use her if you’re being fair, and once
you decide to be unfair you want her in your starting hand every time, marking her as a Commander but not a follower and thus not really something you
stick in to tutor for in case you need it.
Phyrexian Swarmlord is a mighty, mighty poison creature, generating a surprising swarm of creatures every turn if you’ve put a little bit of work
into making that happen and thus slowly but surely grinding down a table beneath the weight of stinging insects. At first glance you’d imagine a
reasonable limit on how many creatures per turn you can generate with the Swarmlord, since a player with ten poison counters is a dead player, but
three opponents with nine poison counters each grants you twenty-seven bugs per turn if somehow things have come to that point. Case in point, the
Swarmlord has a powerfully cascading effect: a little bit of poison makes a little bit more which turns into a lot and then a TON as your bugs do their
work. All poison-based cards are a little narrow but this is in the class of card that rewards you for doing all the work in the first place and can
finish the game off from there, so the Swarmlord has to cause us to reconsider whether Infect is a viable Commander strategy or not when it’s
contributing to the end-game. The answer is still only ‘maybe,’ I think, but some games you’ll do this and a bunch of people will
die.
Speaking of infecting people and spontaneous explosions of death, that brings us to Triumph of the Hordes, which makes me wonder which of the set
designers or flavor team was the World of Warcraft addict. Why not just be honest and call it “For the Horde!” exclamation point of course
included and obviously necessary. Unlike Overrun, this grants only a small power bonus, but considering that Infect is like a more powerful version of
double strike when it connects to players in Commander, the downright cheap mana cost that still comes with trample is just fine, it’ll kill well
enough without Overrun’s obscene power bonuses thanks to the innate frailty of players to infection.
Last in Green is its Praetor again, and like we’ve said for many so far it’s better as a Commander than it is as a card in your library
thanks to the fact that as a Commander you can rely on having access to that ability, but as just another spell in your deck it is nowhere near the
most efficient one to reach for. If you’re up for sharing you can double your mana access as early as three mana thanks to Heartbeat of Spring,
can accomplish it readily at four or five mana with things like Gauntlet of Power or Vernal Bloom, and six brings us to Mana Reflection and the
absurdity that goes with the dangerous word ‘double’ whenever it is used in the context of a game of Magic: the Gathering. He’s a big
body with trample that cuts hard into your opponent’s ability to use their mana each turn, but he’s an expensive body when it
comes to adding yet again more mana to your mana pool, so I don’t expect anywhere near universal adoption of Vorinclex. He’s good, for
sure, but eight is a lot of mana for your ‘mana-ramp’ spells to be relied upon, since you’re getting to the eight-mana mark should be when
you start firing off the really powerful spells, not just trying to get from eight to sixteen.
Artifacts and Miscellaneous:
Batterskull impresses me with just how hard you can work it during a game of Commander. As just an Equipment it’s pretty impressive, filling in a
bigger bonus than Loxodon Warhammer and trading trample for vigilance to defend yourself better, but it’s not just an Equipment, it’s a
living weapon… and not just a living weapon but a fricking Terminator. It just keeps coming, and coming, and coming, it doesn’t stop until
you’re dead… whoever decided that Batterskull should be able to return to the hand and come back again to give you yet another 4/4 to work with
clearly had these sorts of games in mind, and hopefully they will still be fun games because we can expect to play them frequently. Batterskull being
colorless of course means anyone and everyone can play it, and Batterskull being great when you have a lot of time on your hands and a lot of mana to
work with means it was almost purpose-driven to find a home in Commander for as long as the format is being played anywhere at all. I for one am
getting a little itchy to get myself a copy of this chase Mythic in order to find out just how good it in fact is in the Godo, Bandit Warlord deck I
have been building, and I have to just assume it is as ridiculously good as it sounds if not better. Good thing Godo wasn’t ever really intended
to make a lot of friends at a table, because everyone’s going to see the Batterskull coming and even if you don’t put it on Godo himself
you’ll still get to attack twice with whoever’s wearing it thanks to Vigilance.
Caged Sun is potentially an improvement over Gauntlet of Power, not being limited to basic lands and never helping an opponent out. It’s
certainly easier to build into your deck, since it can go into multicolor decks with reasonable aplomb and still do some heavy lifting in the
mana-production department so long as you’ve played a few dual lands and aren’t just relying on a smattering of basic lands across two or
three colors to go with it. It’s just a little bit less good than Mana Reflection… double really is just a dirty word in Magic… but
being a little less good than Mana Reflection means you’re a little less likely to be killed or have it destroyed just for the general principle
of the thing, which may actually make it better than the real thing.
Etched Monstrosity unfortunately requires you to be playing all five colors in order to include it in your deck, even if anyone could feasibly cast it
as a 5/5 for 5 and not ever use the ability. Those who are allowed to play it, however, will find it an impressive reward for having stretched to do
so: five mana gets you a 5/5, and another five mana upgrades that to a 10/10 and draws you three cards. It’s a five-color deck’s new
favorite support card, filling the role of efficient fatty and card advantage at the same time, my favorite overlap of uses in Commander.
Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer is another one of this set’s commanders that is better leading the army than working as a lieutenant within it, since
Red and White both clearly work on a token theme if you want them to but metalcraft is a much harder animal to acquire for just one card out of many
within your deck instead of purposefully to support your entire deck. Exciting at the head of the army, but sort of chaff working behind the scenes.
Karn Liberated is just a nutty card. I assumed right off the bat that he was going to get banned just like Shahrazad, but close inspection of the
actual banned list proved that Shahrazad wasn’t on it and thus presumably Karn won’t be either. Ten loyalty to start off with is just a ton
when it comes to defending planeswalkers, and now we even have a planeswalker that we can defend with All is Dust, and the unfairness of firing off his
ultimate too fast is tempered by the fact that he has to do his work getting cards underneath him, you can’t just Doubling Season or Gilder Bairn
him to the high reaches of loyalty and figure just starting over will win the game. Since even when you ‘cheat’ with his ability
you’ll need three or four turns with him to really work it, any table that doesn’t stop you from using a permanent that can be destroyed,
bounced, Stifled or even just attacked gets what they deserve. Karn is a the highest reaches of what you should be able to get away with in Commander,
but it’s still perfectly interactive and thus on the right side of acceptable.
Mindcrank is another one of those cards here templated to say ‘opponent’ when you almost want it to just say player instead, since as-is
you can figure out cool combos with it and cards like Bloodchief Ascension. If it didn’t spare you the rod it could be a means to fuel your own
recursion engines as some sort of a reverse Necropotence that mills you for each life lost in a similarly beneficial exchange of life for resources. As
it is, it’s sure to overlap in strange ways if you want to build around it, since it is a resource-exchange card and those are inherently
dangerous when they brush up against old cards that were never intended to be played alongside each other.
Omen Machine is another chaotic, crazy lock card. You all know who it is in your local playgroup that is going to play it, and you also know it’s
going to be frustrating when they do, since the sort of game it promotes is one in which players are literally incapable of interacting with each other
and stuff only happens at one set time during the turn and then again at the attack phase. It sounds much cooler than it is, especially since attempts
to draw cards don’t result in additional uses of the free-spell effect.
Phyrexia’s Core is an innocuous little land, but there are definitely decks that work hard trying to figure out how they are going to put an
artifact in the graveyard, and just like how High Market has slowly but surely been creeping into a few of my Commander decks lately, Phyrexia’s
Core has a similar usefulness. Its application may be considerably more limited—it’s easier to recur creatures than it is to recur
artifacts—but all you need is one Goblin Welder and this to put artifacts into your graveyard at your behest to remember why it is that Recurring
Nightmare is banned in the format. Phyrexia’s Core won’t be an all-star but it should be an also-ran in a few places.
Pristine Talisman is another quiet also-ran. This one is just a little bit of mana and a little bit of life, a good investment in the start of the game
if you can expect to be able to rely on it sticking around while you still need the mana. Most players will stick to their Darksteel Ingots, or if they
are willing to trade the reliability of it being indestructible for a dash of speed once in a while then they’ll reach for Coalition Relic
instead. After those two, however, the question needs to be asked whether it is not speed or reliability you desire but a little bit of life points
back over the course of the game, and sometimes the answer to that will be yes. Some players will say yes more readily than others, and I am a
pessimist so I expect to say no until proven otherwise, but Pristine Talisman does what it sets out to do very well and very patiently.
Shrine of Loyal Legions is an interesting trick in that you’d have assumed I’d have to put it under White, but since there’s no
colored mana symbol anywhere if you were just patient or willing to proliferate you can make a whole lot of Myr happen. With enough time and left to
its own devices, Shrine of Loyal Legions is a whole lot of power for such a cheap investment in time and mana, since you can easily see it
putting half a dozen or more token creatures into play at instant speed in a very short amount of time. If there is a Jor Kadeen deck this will
inevitably be in it, both as a Metalcraft supporter and as massive horde of creatures to carry his power bonus into combat. The other four Shrines I
can take or I can leave, attempting to motivate me to wait for my Impulse is frankly just poor impulse control in card design, but this is just an army
in a box at a surprisingly low cost and that’s something I respect very easily.
Soul Conduit is love. Someone had to have asked if they could bring back Mirror Universe only make it nuttier in the format, and the answer was yes.
Swapping your worn-down life total for that of a healthy opponent is of course always a delight but even more impressively you can use it to get
involved in a fight you aren’t even in, increasing or decreasing life totals mid-attack to save or doom an opponent of your choice. It’s
expensive for the effect, but it’s also a powerful effect on a repeating tool, you get what you pay for.
Sword of War and Peace completes the well-loved Sword of X and Y cycle, and an active Sword of War and Peace is essentially impossible to race in
Standard and can still be quite difficult to race in Commander even though the swings are less impressive in a forty-life world. Sword of War and Peace
is the dedicated beatdown sword; Sword of Fire and Ice can deal two damage to something, but Sword of War and Peace can do seven extra damage against
an opponent with a full hand and possibly just kill somebody if Praetor’s Council was involved first. Every Sword has a home, and the abilities
on Sword of War and Peace are unique enough that they are bound to find multiple applications.
And lastly for Commander we have a special treat saved for us thanks to Phyrexia, that being Torpor Orb. It seems innocuous, and many say it’s
not worth the card’s investment you put into it when it just does nothing. Don’t believe those people, because Commander is a format ruled
by the best of creatures, and the best of creatures have potent effects and many comes-into-play abilities define the difference between a Commander
playable and a never-was. I can’t even recall the last time I have seen a Tarmogoyf cast in Commander, and that thing can be a vanilla 8/9 for
just two mana. Turning creatures vanilla makes many of the creatures played in a Commander deck bad deals, effectively turning a deck’s contents
into unplayables where a minute ago they were pure action, so I fear the Torpor Orb more than most. I have more than one deck that would absolutely
hate to see a Torpor Orb in play and has two or fewer ways to kill or interact with a Torpor Orb besides the comes-into-play abilities that the Orb
robs me of, and from what I have seen of other decks and players the same is true very broadly across the entire format. It forces a change in my mind
just by existing, because it redefines so broadly what is good when it is in play, and that sort of card demands respect whenever you realize
you’re cutting entire classes of cards out of your deck because of a threat you may not even actually see played in the format in any given game.
And that’s our Commander-eye view of New Phyrexia, full of new toys to play with and interesting new directions to take Commander decks. It is a
set that forces re-evaluation of what we know about the format and gives a lot of high-power tools in addition to puzzling new things like Birthing Pod
and things that have never been done before just casually happening on a regular basis. I look forward to playing with something like a full third of
the set, and considering I am a pretty unforgiving jerk when it comes with letting a card into my decks that’s saying something as far as how
interesting the New Phyrexia cards are compared to what we’ve seen before. It feels almost like Future Sight all over again just because of all
the rules we’re seeing broken, and like with Future Sight I expect we’ll require some time to get oriented with things before we can truly
claim to understand them.