It seems like we waited forever for Commander 2015 to come around. I’m happy to say it was worth it. Returning to the vision of the original
Commander set, it features decks playable right out of the box with plenty of room for personalizing. The development team did a great job in making the
equally powerful and playable with each other. It features spectacular new cards, great reprints, and lots of stuff for players both old and new.
What interests me most is cherry-picking from the new cards. I’m thoroughly excited and already wondering where I’m going to find room in existing decks
for all this goodness. Since this is a Commander-specific set, I’ll simply take a look at all the new cards (as opposed to breaking them down into
playability categories). Under normal circumstances, I’d start with the apex of the color wheel; since this set is about commanders, let’s start with them
instead. Some of them are quite tasty. I’m happy to report none of them seem as problematic as some of those from recent Commander sets.
Gold
R/W frequently gets short shrift, so I’m pleased to see both of the potential commanders in the colors. Anya simply gets better as you lay down the smacks.
The obvious combo card is Heartless Hidetsugu. Building Anya as a commander means you’ll want to have a pretty aggressive curve so that by the first time
you attack with her, you’ll have done a good deal of work on at least one opponent’s life total.
Arjun is the last word in library-sculpting. If you can avoid shuffling, at some point you should know without looking exactly what’s next. I’m not sure
Arjun is that great of a commander; it seems like more of a support card for Melek, Izzet Paragon. Or Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind. Jeebus.
I’m telling you right now that experience counters are dangerous. They won’t lead you to getting killed with commander damage from Daxos, but they’re going
to lead to a number of disproportionately huge tokens. Fortunately, Daxos isn’t also an enchantment, because Extinguish All Hope might then be a serious
thing. Perhaps there’s now a cool black/white Zombie Cleric build to be brewed.
I previewed this beauty a few weeks ago
and in the intervening time, I’ve gotten even more excited about it. There are conservatively a jillion different ways to set off Ezuri’s trigger. Like
with Daxos, it might not be commander damage that gets you, but an enormous something else sure will.
Holy Hannah! With Kalemne as your commander and Anya in the deck, you’re going to race to see which one is going to kill you. The possible saving grace is
that Kalemne requires you casting some relatively large spells, which is the opposite of what Anya wants to do. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending
whether you’re swinging with or getting battled by Kalemne), double strike means that he only has to work half as hard.
A little more adept than deckmate Daxos in killing with commander damage. Karlov starts getting in the beats relatively early and keeps bringing them. By
the time other players start mounting a defense, he gets bigger. The ability to remove counters seems like an attractive distractor. The only time you’re
going to want to use it is if Karlov is preposterously large or someone Wraths and you want to keep them from reanimating a creature down the road (or
right now, in the case of things like Puppeteer Clique or Woodfall Primus).
Perhaps the least interesting of all the potential commanders in the set, the only deck I see it leading is Snake tribal. That’s already a thing, but this
adds the new dimension of blue to it. Seems like a fine support card in an Ezuri deck.
Wait, what? You cracking a fetchland gets +1/+1 counters on all my creatures? Can I donate all my fetches to you? You activating Greater Good makes my team
bigger? And it’s in black, the color of sacrifice. First card that comes to mind is Tainted Aether, but you have a broad swath of design space. Green has
plenty of +1/+1 counters creatures, like Spike Feeder and Spike Weaver, not to mention the ability to get rid of the -1/-1 counters from persist, leading
to some complete silliness. With Mazirek and Woodfall Primus on the battlefield with an available sacrifice outlet, sacrifice Woodfall Primus. Persist and
Mazirek both trigger. Put Mazirek’s ability on the stack first, then the persist trigger. It resolves first, putting our noncreature permanent-destroying
friend onto the battlefield with a -1/-1 counter on it. After you resolve the “blow up something” trigger, Mazirek’s trigger resolves, giving everyone a
counter (to include itself, more on this in a second), importantly negating the bad one. Repeat, blowing up all the noncreatures on the board (well,
probably not your own). As if that’s not enough, Mazirek now becomes murderously large, easily one-shotting someone. Don’t like the Woodfall Primus option
(I don’t blame you; seems a little cheesy)? Try it with Puppeteer Clique for a little Rise of the Dark Realms action (except for your own creatures). And
they all have haste. The card isn’t inherently dangerous, but it’s going to lead to some absurd games.
As if Mazirek isn’t enough in black/green to get your pulse racing, there is Meren. Quite a bit grindier than Mazirek, Meren will keep (short of some
excellent graveyard hate) your creatures coming back, either to your hand or the battlefield. Early on, you’ll have a choice of whether you want the
creature on the battlefield or in your hand. Later, you’ll simply have too many experience counters. In the colors you’re playing, you’ll likely want them
on the battlefield instead of your hand anyway (it’s not like you can run Draining Whelk or Mystic Snake). When someone wipes out your team, it simply
ensures that you’re going to have something huge coming back. If you want to next level things, play both Meren and Daxos in your Abzan deck. Absolutely my
favorite card in the set (although its black/green teammate is a close second).
Who likes giant X spells? Who likes them for one cheaper? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Cost reducers can always get out of hand. This one might not get
with any regularity more than five or six counters, but that is easily enough to do all the broken things you want to do, especially drawing cards for very
little mana (Fact or Fiction for U? Jace’s Ingenuity for UU? Come on).
White
The way I see Bastion Protector is that it’s little like Totem Armor. Even if dies to mass destruction, it saves the thing it’s attached to. Making your
commander bigger is a side benefit. If your commander happens to be the double-striking Kalemne, then even better. A fine card.
The cool thing about this card is that there are no targets. You simply choose when it resolves. And you get to wait to see what the opponent chooses to
decide if you want to put them both back onto the battlefield. A great political card, although be warned that you choose first, which means the
possibility exists of you getting screwed over by the opponent not choosing the creature you agreed on (although I don’t expect that to happen all that
often). Of course, you know to never make deals with that person again.
Feels like this wants to be a fixed Parallax Wave. It’s not particularly exciting, although I imagine you could run it in your Zedruu the Greathearted
deck, have it do its thing and then donate it. Or have it wipe out giant tokens created by someone else’s Daxos the Returned.
Nothing exciting, but fits in with the theme. Play it in your Trostani, Selesnya’s Voice deck, however, and it gets kind of saucy. Gain eight or twelve
life, populate one of the tokens (and gain some more life), and you’re in business. In fact, Trostani will want to play as many myriad cards as it can.
Just whoa. Sure, the ability is a little pricey, but you’ve heard me say it lots of times-exile is the way to go in this format, especially when there are
indestructible Gods running around. This is perhaps the card in the set with the biggest blowout potential. I’m sure Sharuum the Hegemon does not want to
see this coming.
This would be a little broken if you put them onto the battlefield. Still, it’s decent deck-thinning and insurance that you’ll hit the land drops. I don’t
expect it’ll see too much play outside the Cat tribal decks.
The Confluences are clever design, so kudos to the design team. Righteous Confluence will find a home in decks that want to do each of the three things,
but I don’t see too much crossover. Most of the time, it’s going to be get six Knights, exile three enchantments, or gain fifteen life.
I’d like it more if Shielded by Faith were also indestructible. The idea of moving it around, however, is pretty cool.
Blue
So does your list of targets for this spell start with Genesis Wave or Rise of the Dark Realms? Unlike Commandeer, you can snatch a creature as well, which
might just be life-saving (although folks don’t hard cast Craterhoof Behemoth too often, I suppose).
My main problem with the myriad mechanic is keeping the original alive. Of course, if you can make it unblockable with Kaseto, you’re better off. Also,
remember the tokens go away at the end of combat, not the end of turn. They’re not around for you to do stuff with during your second main phase.
Holy cow! Clone just got better at the same cost. The best things to copy are creatures which are natively 0/0s and enter the battlefield with +1/+1
counters on them. The way layers work, the counters apply after the power/toughness change. But wait, there’s more! The change doesn’t go away at end of
turn (note that there is no duration on the effect). This means that whenever you have more mana at the end of turn of the player to your right than the
card’s current base power/toughness, you can make it bigger (well, you can do it at any time, but you get my point).
Cool art. Just remember to count your library before you throw it in front of Lord of Extinction. Also, remember to flash it in when someone casts
Blasphemous Act.
Finally, a card that represents the well-worn fantasy trope of the hero having to battle his or her doppelganger. Except fantasy tropes don’t also come
with a bunch of cool enters-the-battlefield effects! I love this card and I love the amazing turns it’s going to create.
So…goodbye to Jace’s Ingenuity? So much flexibility in a single card. My favorite play with it will be “counter Genesis Wave, draw two.”
Unless you’re playing it alongside Reins of Power (maybe now is a time to look at the set’s reprints), this seems better than it is. To get great value out
of it, you’ll have to create a large number of tokens (unless you don’t care about your creatures getting exiled). If you have few enough creatures in your
deck, you might be able to use this to pull off some combo, but that seems like too much effort. I suppose this is a fine response to Final Judgment.
Black
Sort of the obvious myriad card for black. Nothing special here.
My first thought was to shrug a little and suggest it’s okay for a Zombie deck but not much else. Then it occurred to me that it’s pretty good with board
wipes. Fine card, likely to most times bring home the bacon.
To play this, I’d want it to do an additional thing. Sure, it’s a hasty 5/5 flyer when you cast (or reanimate) it, but the rest of the time it just sits
there.
Card is nuts and another reason why you should have sacrifice outlets ready. This set should really be called “Commander 2015: The Blowouts.” In
fact, look closely at the flavor text. It knows what’s going on.
Straight up, this isn’t a replacement for Army of the Damned as your Zombie creator of choice. Assuming 30ish creatures in each deck, at the same amount of
mana (meaning X=6), you’ll get about eight tokens. That said, those creature cards are now in various graveyards for you to do stuff with. Alone, it
doesn’t cut the mustard, but as part of a 1-2 punch of mill and reanimate, it has some value.
I wonder if I could ever (*cough* Grave Pact *cough*) get any value out of sacrificing two creatures (*cough* Corpse Auger *wheeze*).
Spike Cannibal’s big brother is coming for you! One of these days, someone is going to do a meme: “Thief of Blood-killing planeswalkers and laying sick
beats since 2015.”
The weakest of the Confluence cards. I don’t really see too many people playing Necrologia or Reaping the Graves.
Red
Great name, flavorful idea for a card, but in the end nothing to write home about.
Part of the continued move toward red doing this kind of thing, which I find a good mechanic, this one seems too situational. I’m just not a fan of exiling
my own stuff.
I’m curious why this is a sorcery (like some of the others are). I wonder if it started as an instant and the development team found it too good.
Oh, joy. More fuel for Nekusar, the Mindrazer. I mean “hooray, red is getting better!”
With so many better options, I can’t see this getting much work outside of the deck being played in its original form. Otherwise, I choose you, Comet
Storm.
This has to be able to fuel some kind of combo, although the fact that you exile the card and make a copy (otherwise, it would return to the graveyard once
the spell resolves) keeps it in check. The nicely-costed single version could be fun based on the colors you’re in. The overloaded version might get kind
of bonkers. Remember if you overload it, you exile all the cards even if you don’t want to cast them.
Another well-designed card from a thematic standpoint, it might not have enough bang for the five-mana buck to see very much play.
Meh. Would have liked to see something more aggressive from the red creature with myriad.
Green
Play your Fog, get a swarm of Spiders. This is good for everyone. And by everyone, I mean you. Just remember that Changelings are Spiders.
It doesn’t matter how the +1/+1 counters got on Bloodspore Thrinax (Forgotten Ancient, anyone? Verdant Confluence, perhaps?), your creatures get the bonus.
With very little effort, this card could get out of hand very quickly. I don’t even want to think about Doubling Season.
Even if it’s pretty straightforward, that is a big pile of damage for seven mana. And you know you want to play Warstorm Surge with it. Faces will get
smashed.
The difference between this and Terravore is that people can’t kill it by wiping out the graveyards. Of course, it also can’t get bigger every time someone
cracks a fetchland. The activated ability steps it up a notch by building in some recursion. I don’t even think this needs mass land destruction to be
pretty good.
People have been calling this the green Wrath of God. I’m not sure I agree with that since there are plenty of creatures in the format which have toughness
greater than 4. Of course, you can just play it alongside Archetype of Finality, which then makes that accurate. The good news here is that every one of
your Beasts which survives the fight will be around to battle later.
Okay, be honest. How often will you target someone other than yourself? Only in the biggest blowout scenario. This is an offensive card in a
defensive-looking package.
Here come the Goats! Sure, it’s a win more card with Craterhoof Behemoth, but then again, who doesn’t love dealing hundreds of points of damage? Play with
Xenagos, God of Revels for maximum skull-kicking.
Skullwinder is Eternal Witness’ weird cousin. What’s weird is the card you choose is targeted and the one the opponent chooses isn’t. The good news about
this is that if someone gets rid of the card you targeted, the ability is countered and the opponent doesn’t get anything. You’ll have to be careful how
you use this, but there should always be someone who doesn’t have anything saucy in the graveyard to choose.
I keep hearing how dangerous of a ramp spell this is. I’m not sure I understand, since at six mana, you’re not really ramping anymore. Sure, it could be
great for landfall, and it might be super-spicy in some sort of convoluted Turnabout/Recall deck, but it’s nowhere near dangerous.
Artifact and Land
I said everything I wanted to say about Blade of Selves last week. It’s one of the wildest cards I’ve seen in a long time.
I can’t see this getting much play besides in Sharuum, the Hegemon decks, where it will be strong. I suppose also in Animar, Soul of Elements it’s okay
since you might be able to cast it for nothing. Otherwise, the mana cost is slightly prohibitive.
I’m not sure we needed another Quietus Spike. The cost to cast it is a little high, but the equip cost makes it attractive.
I don’t see too many players running out the Medallions, so I’m not confident in Seal of the Guildpact. I wonder what asserting the primacy of the Izzet
guild is all about. I’m always skeptical about expensive mana rocks (even if they provide mana for every spell you cast).
Spellbook attached to a mana rock isn’t spectacular, but it’s something that I’ll probably play in a fair number of decks.
I had hoped for a cool card to interact with the command zone. This exceeds expectations. A well-crafted card all around. I suspect that you’ll be putting
it into as many decks as you can find copies of it. I sure will.
Just like Command Beacon, the entire Commander 2015 set exceeded my hopes. The decks themselves are a great jumping-off point for players just
getting into the format, the reprints are excellent, and, as a whole, the new cards are outstanding without being broken. This will be a high impact set
for those of us who embrace the format. It does all things that we love to do.
The Deck Without Comment feature will return next week.
Check out our awesome Deck List Database for the last versions of all my decks:
ADUN’S TOOLBOX;
ANIMAR’S SWARM;
AURELIA GOES TO WAR;
CHILDREN of a LESSER GOD;
DEMONS OF KAALIA;
EREBOS and the HALLS OF THE DEAD;
GLISSA, GLISSA;
HELIOD, GOD OF ENCHANTMENTS;
DREAMING OF INTET;
FORGE OF PURPHOROS;
KARN, BEATDOWN GOLEM;
HALLOWEEN WITH KARADOR;
KARRTHUS, WHO RAINS FIRE FROM THE SKY;
KRESH INTO THE RED ZONE;
LAVINIA BLINKS;
LAZAV, SHAPESHIFTING MASTERMIND;
ZOMBIES OF TRESSERHORN;
MELEK’S MOLTEN MIND GRIND;
MERIEKE’S ESPER CONTROL;
THE MILL-MEOPLASM;
MIMEOPLASM DO-OVER;
NATH of the VALUE LEAF;
NYLEA OF THE WOODLAND REALM;
OBZEDAT, GHOST KILLER;
PURPLE HIPPOS and MARO SORCERERS;
ZEGANA and a DICE BAG;
RITH’S TOKENS;
YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF;
RURIC THAR AND HIS BEASTLY FIGHT CLUB;
THASSA, GOD OF MERFOLK;
THE ALTAR of THRAXIMUNDAR;
TROSTANI and HER ANGELS;
THE THREAT OF YASOVA;
RUHAN DO-OVER;
KARADOR DO-OVER;
KARRTHUS DO-OVER
If you’d like to follow the adventures of my Monday Night RPG group (in a campaign that’s been alive since 1987 and is just now getting started with a new saga called “The Lost Cities of Nevinor”), ask for an invitation to the Facebook group “Sheldon Menery’s Monday Night Gamers.”