Dark Ascension pulls us in a lot of directions for Commander, because it has a lot of interesting individual cards that go in weird places. Do I know just yet how I may use Deadly Allure in Commander, or just how vicious enchanting an opponent with Curse of Bloodletting will prove to be? No, not yet. But there are cards like Séance and Feed the Pack to chase, and powerful, expensive sorceries that are pure Commander catnip.
Here, then, is our view of Dark Ascension from the Command Tower!
Archangel’s Light — I have a very well-known position that others find peculiar: I hate lifegain. You could print a Life Burst that gained you ten life, and tuck an Isochron Scepter up your sleeve so you always had it every turn for the rest of the game, and I still wouldn’t be particularly interested. Archangel’s Light, however, is an awful lot of lifegain, and when we are starting to get well past the 20+ life per card spent mark, I start to pay attention. Archangel’s Light also happens to provide a benefit besides ‘just’ a dumb amount of life, as it recurs your graveyard back into your deck, a key resource benefit for decks that otherwise don’t much use their graveyards. For a controlling deck that stocks its graveyard but doesn’t actually use it for anything, over the course of a game, Archangel’s Light is useful enough to get my attention despite the words “gain life” being written on the card, and a large enough life swing that even I have to say “people will find this worth playing.”
Curse of Exhaustion — How useful is a Rule of Law at shutting down combo decks? Pretty useful. How annoying is living beneath the Rule of Law yourself? (Insert Occupy Wall Street joke here, as you see fit.)
Curse of Exhaustion is a single-target Rule of Law — your target must play by different rules than the other three players, and thus is ‘on notice’ — life is going to be harder for them than for everyone else, and they must pick and choose their moments carefully indeed lest their defenses be lowered at an awkward moment. While the first batch of Curse cards didn’t thrill me for Commander, quite a few of the new ones seem intriguing, and this one definitely alters multiplayer politics and can subtly change the balance of power at a table.
Increasing Devotion — Yeah, it’s “just dudes.” Five power for five mana split among five tokens is a decent deal, but you can get better ones if you try, so it’s a solid addition to a deck that already wants to get these sorts of deals but not the most efficient one the first time over. The second time, however, is quite impressive — nine mana to make ten tokens, without having to use a card in your hand to do it! One card being able to make fifteen creatures over the course of a game is a decently powerful piece of cardboard, enough so that I would start to consider adding it as a powerful effect to a non-token deck and exploring my comfort zones with this effect outside of where it would be expected and thematically appropriate. I like card advantage, after all, and something potent that works twice is right up my alley — I have to give this card serious consideration for my Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter deck, in addition to saying it would be an awesome addition to existing token strategies like Rhys the Redeemed.
Lingering Souls — As with Increasing Devotion, flashback on a token creator starts to get me intrigued. This one has a disadvantage in that it is two colors, instead of being a mono-white card — the same theoretical Rhys deck cannot play it, though a token-themed Ghave deck can. It’s not nearly as impressive as Increasing Devotion, since it’s five mana for four tokens split up as you like it, but it’s still solid, and likely to find some play in the right home, narrow though the black/white restriction forces that home to be.
Séance — First you have the obvious and interesting question of “what can I do with this and Sundial of the Infinites?” Then, you can ‘just’ take advantage of cheap reanimation stapled to comes-into-play effects, even if exiling the creature from the graveyard means you cannot reuse the same effect over and over again. Without haste, you don’t get to attack with the token or use a tap effect that it might have, so it’s not an ideal reanimator — it’s short-lived, but not even in a way that works by itself, so it’s crunchy but not ‘the complete package’ in and of itself. That said, it is free to use and cheap to put into play in the first place, so you can’t really complain that you have to use another moving part to get the full power of the resurrected creature out of the deal. I’m curious, and interested to see where it goes, even as I look at it and scratch my head.
Sudden Disappearance — Another trick that immediately begs the question of, “Do I have enough things to play with Sundial of the Infinite yet?” That people are looking at this combo with a straight face for sixty-card formats implies this goofy card might just be powerful enough to consider for 99-carders too, after all, it does quite a few interesting things: exposes one player to being attacked no matter how complex their board state is, kills all token creatures a player controls and resets all their planeswalkers to their starting loyalty, and asks the question ‘when would I want to cast this targeting myself?’
Since it says ‘target player’ rather than ‘target opponent,’ you can actually consider using this as a means to set your permanents aside before casting Akroma’s Vengeance or, worse yet, Obliterate… and even just reuse your own comes-into-play effects on permanents like Spine of Ish Shah, Exclusion Ritual, Reveillark and anything that looks like it. That there are multiple perfectly valid and very powerful ways to consider using it makes a compelling argument for playing the card somewhere, whether it’s saving your stuff from a crippling blow you intend to deliver to the table or making sure a haymaker can land no matter what the opponent tries to protect themselves with.
Thraben Doomsayer — Yes, I know, it does say “Thraben” on it. Very good. Custom alters will not let this one go anytime soon, I fear. That said, it’s a token generator at a cheap cost and thus perfectly at home in token-themed decks, that happens to accidentally have some additional text stapled to it that should not come up terribly often in a format where you start at 40 life.
Beguiler of Wills — Yes, this is a strange world, because I see a five-mana 1/1 and think it might be playable. Sure, it’s underpowered on stats alone, and dies in a stiff breeze — but it also doesn’t say anything like ‘until end of turn,’ ‘so long as Beguiler of Wills remains tapped,’ or even that if this number changes for the worse that you have to give it back. Nope. Just “tap, mine!” so long as the initial conditions are met.
Plus, I like the picture. So sue me.
Counterlash — Yes, a six-mana counterspell is entirely playable in Commander. While this one is an oddball, given the high mana cost nature of the format and the potency of tempo swings within a short time, being able to counter the best play someone has and get to add a rider clause that your own spell is free and cast immediately is actually pretty sweet. I still prefer Spelljack, because that’s actual card advantage rather than just tempo advantage, but a little bit of time applied correctly goes a long way.
Curse of Echoes — Another oddball Curse that gets my attention because of what it does to a commander game. Does the guy who likes to cast Tooth and Nail appreciate that spell quite so much if everyone else gets to do it too? What about Time Stretches, are they quite as useful when everyone else gets to share, or just too dangerous to cast when you can’t even guarantee your copy will resolve? Radiate gets a lot of affection for the strange plays it enables, and Curse of Echoes does a lot of similarly interesting things. If only it didn’t say ‘may,’ you could look at it as a second copy of Hive Mind for the purposes of playing weird stuff that makes people lose the game, but instead you can never convince someone to kill themselves with a Pact of the Titan. Sad, but still perfectly interesting — the fact that it alters whether a player can cast their haymakers that are the big swings in the format makes me want to explore its use.
Geralf’s Mindcrusher — Not that interesting for its milling effect, it is nonetheless a member of a beneficial tribe and possessed of an interesting ability. As a roleplayer in a Zombie deck, I’m curious and interested, especially since in a deck like that the person I’d likely want to mill is myself and thus the ability is not a throw-away clause. Other than that, it’s a big dumb guy in a color that doesn’t get a lot of big dumb guys, and happens to have its own built-in reanimation effect that is likewise unusual for that color.
Havengul Runebinder — While not a Zombie itself, the Runebinder makes a steady stream of 3/3 (or larger!) Zombies out of whatever happens to be lying around in the graveyard. Excellent in a Zombie deck despite the natural-born flaw of ‘still having a pulse,’ Havengul Runebinder is also efficient enough to consider just in a generic blue-based creature deck regardless of the tribal synergy not fitting anything else you’re doing. By the second usage you’ve gotten a considerable board presence thanks to thoughtful recycling of resources, and if your deck is built around zombies enough to share the love (or at least the love of spare parts) then the rider clause of pumping Zombies is almost the more valuable part of the card itself.
Increasing Confusion — Milling is an unusual love of some in Commander, who want to start Traumatizing their opponent early and whittling the remainder away via Keening Stone with a quickness. Increasing Confusion does the job inefficiently at first, then quite efficiently after that, and again since it targets any player (rather than just opponents) you can fit this into a spell-based self-milling theme quite adequately. Suddenly creatures like Ertai’s Familiar are playable and worth including, and the allure of Increasing Confusion comes not from the fact that you can cast it the first time but from the fact that you may mill it in your first efforts and get to use it for free in order to further advance your goals of flipping your deck into your graveyard for fun and profit.
Secrets of the Dead — Cards being played from the graveyard happens all the time in Commander, and adding a rider clause of ‘draw a card’ to each and every single one of them can get pretty ridiculous with Retrace as a mechanic and flashback just being high-quality in general. Since creature spells count as spells, too, suddenly things like Haakon, Stromgald Scourge and Gravecrawler start to do things you didn’t expect, like turn into card draw engines.
Deadly Allure — Mostly I find this intriguing because of how inexpensive it is. Forcing the opponent to block usually requires a fair bit of mana or a permanent to stay in play, and in the case of this card all it requires is that the creature you target not die before getting to attack. Some board states will be overfull and so complex that this does nothing useful, while others will have very few meaningful defenses and suddenly this can be used multiple times to kill exactly the creature you want it to. I’m hesitant to say it makes an impact, except that it does so so inexpensively that I consider it worth speculating on.
Geralf’s Messenger — The bizarro Kitchen Finks, but even on Bizarro World, Kitchen Finks is pretty awesome. Restrictive, difficult mana cost? Yes, indeed. Good creature type and solid stats for its cost? Much more important. Undying zombies are dangerous things to have, and the little bit of extra life-loss tacked on is just a bonus while you maintain a threat past board wipes or just find a way to profit via repeated sacrifice.
Gravecrawler — Much like the Messenger, this gets my attention first for having a creature type that I like, but then demands that I stay focused on the card because of how readily it abuses sacrifice functions and how steadily you can play it from your graveyard. Bloodghast comes back only on successful landfall triggers, and is certainly good enough for Commander in a deck that is sacrifice-happy. Gravecrawler can be sacrificed an absurdly large number of times a turn if you want to do it that way, and can be part of either a combo or a recursion engine as you see fit.
Increasing Ambition — I am a fan of tutors in general in this format, and have far more copies of Diabolic Tutor and Beseech the Queen than I ever cast in 60-card formats now that I play Commander as my main source of enjoyment and relaxation with Magic cards in my hand. Increasing Ambition is an inefficient tutor once, but patently ridiculous when flashed back, and in the color of Urborg/Coffers it’s pretty reasonable to think that drawing Increasing Ambition in the middle of the game is just a triple Tutor and things are about to go horribly, horribly wrong. Add to that the fact that you can Demonic Tutor for Increasing Ambition with a straight face, and every Tutor you add to your deck gets stronger because this is present, a scary fact indeed — they’re already pretty amazing.
Ravenous Demon — 9/9 for 5 with just a little bit of work is impressive, and who doesn’t want to try and make a Pit Lord work every once in a while? It might not be good — after all, sacrifice a Human is considerably more restrictive than sacrifice a creature — but the new breed of Pit Lords have all been interesting enough to explore in Commander and this one makes me want to give it a spin sometime too.
Tragic Slip — Small removal effects aren’t what Commander is about, but the Morbid side of a Tragic Slip is an absurdly efficient creature removal spell. White gets Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile where Black gets Vendetta, and while Tragic Slip won’t keep a Blightsteel Colossus from coming back at some future date to make your life uncomfortable, it will kill an indestructible 11/11 creature so long as something meaningless to you has had the good sense to die recently.
Zombie Apocalypse — Okay, you had me at the name, “Zombie Apocalypse.”
Zombie tribal decks tend to want things like Patriarch’s Bidding, and Zombie Apocalypse covers the side of things you want to do without giving your opponent the opportunity to get some benefit out of the card — in fact, it has a bonus clause of potentially killing things in play thanks to murdering any stray Humans that may be around. That said, a true Zombie Apocalypse would destroy all Humans, resurrect all Zombies, and resurrect all the Humans that just died as Zombies under your control. Please errata this card accordingly, Wizards of the Coast.
Alpha Brawl — I like the big, splashy effect of making all the creatures on exactly one side of the playing field disappear, and Alpha Brawl should in the average Commander game read: 6RR, destroy all creatures target player controls, flip a coin: something hilarious happens. After all, once in a while a strange corner case situation might come up, especially if weird drawbacks or special abilities are involved.
Blood Feud — This is my favorite card from Vampire: the Eternal Struggle brought to life as a Magic card, and thus I can’t wait to add it to all sorts of decks and see what comes of it. After all, it’s not something that has to do with a creature you control — Opponent 1’s Damia, Sage of Stone versus Opponent 2’s Kozilek, Butcher of Truth is a perfectly fair fight as far as blood feuds are concerned.
Curse of Bloodletting — This set’s Curses are eeeeeevil, and Curse of Bloodletting does all sorts of mean things — suddenly the magic number for Commander damage is halved, since everything is doubled, Infect is a measly five damage for death and a select individual’s starting life total might as well be 20, rather than 40. Double-damage effects are dangerous because they tend to double damage to you as well as everyone else — Curse of Bloodletting gets around that by pinpointing the increased sphere of destruction very neatly. A “thinking mage’s” red card, contradictory though those two things tend to be.
Faithless Looting — Careful Study as a red card by itself would be good enough to consider playing, because red gets so little card advantage that just the ability to filter your draw even at a disadvantage would be good enough to consider. You can definitely find a way to profit by discarding a specific card — Anger is a good place to start — and a spare land turning into a real card is pure upside in the middle or later stages of the game. However, add Flashback to your Careful Study and Faithless Looting is something that fits splendidly into red decks — moderating your draw is not something red gets to do very often, and the ability to do so later in the game without having to invest another card in the effort should help keep live cards streaming through your hand and make up easily for the fact that it is technically card disadvantage to do it the first time. Spending one card to filter four draws is much better than just spending one card to filter two, and it does so at low cost and while split up into two distinct packages, so you can use it only as much as you need to given what is presently in your hand. One of my favorite cards in the set, and that’s just with the intention to use it fairly!
Increasing Vengeance — Probably the weakest of the Increasing cards, it’s still solid just for how downright affordable it is at the task it is set. Two mana to get another copy of the spell is something we already have access to with some frequency and use reasonably often, though unlike Fork or Twincast this can’t hijack an opponent’s spell. Also unlike either of those, this has flashback and doubles the effect the second time, and five mana to do so is still an awesome deal when you get to double down on major effects of your choosing.
Moonveil Dragon — A little bit of a goofy Dragon, but I like goofy dragons sometimes. This one sits astride a vast army and creates damage for fractions of a mana each, giving an amazing exchange rate on just how lethal your forces can be if used correctly. A pile of tokens and a few mountains equals a dead opponent thanks to Moonveil Dragon, because he does a lot with a little help from his friends. I haven’t seen any other notes about this card yet, but I suspect it’s one of the key cards you can successfully speculate on the foil copy and come out nicely ahead with a fairly short wait time, as I anticipate Moonveil Dragon breaking into Commander in a big way once everyone gives it a try.
Crushing Vines — A little versatility is a good thing to have, and green’s removal suite is sadly very slim pickings. Crushing Vines is weak-but-playable creature removal, tied to a piece of decent artifact removal, and I would not be surprised to learn that a very large percentage of creatures actually played in Commander had flying — yes, you have your Titans that can take over the game if left unchecked, but you also have your Angels, your Dragons, your Vampires and Demons and Faeries and more. Quite a few Commanders fly, at that…
Deranged Outcast — Maybe it’s my fondness for odd effects, but Deranged Outcast plucks at my heartstrings somehow. “Sacrifice a Human” is much more flavorful than “Sacrifice Deranged Outcast,” after all, and can totally be part of an engine to pump a commander instead of ‘just’ an efficient two-drop that comes with a combat trick attached. Permanent pump effects are where it’s at if you want to alter combat math in Commander, and putting counters on a creature of your choice is a weird politically-relevant trick in your arsenal since it can save an opponent’s creature or threaten an opponent’s life to boot. Additionally, this with Mimic Vat or Nim Deathmantle is nothing to laugh at, so I see a lot to work with on this particular two-drop and it takes a lot to get my attention that early in the mana curve.
Feed the Pack — Welcome to Goofy Enchantment-land. Suddenly the large butts you’d find in the typical Doran deck is no laughing matter without their Commander at the helm; Indomitable Ancients may only have two power, but that’s twenty when fed to the wolves.
Ghoultree — As a 10/10, this is just a vanilla big dumb guy. However, this is a vanilla big dumb guy that can cost as little as one mana with fair regularity, making it an awesome mid-game threat in Commander and extra awesome in a green deck mixed with blue countermagic. Decks that stock their graveyard are as common as can be in commander, so the retail price of Ghoultree should start at ‘very little indeed’ and falls to one green mana very rapidly. Is a vanilla 10/10 ‘good enough’ in a format with token creatures to block all the time? The counter to tokens blocking is Loxodon Warhammer, which Ghoultree wears especially well and very cheaply.
Grim Flowering — I have a quiet love for Nature’s Resurgence. The problem with that spell, in the context of Commander, is how many cards it gives your opponents to work with as you increase the number of cards you have to play with: even if you’re starting very far ahead in the tally, they’ll still tend to come up somewhere near even, and rushing far ahead of every individual player while giving them resources to hurt you with is not a winning strategy. Grim Flowering solves this problem by increasing the price of admission for your green card draw spell, but also making sure its benefits only apply to you — one Grim Flowering should be nearly as deadly as a Praetor’s Counsel and at a considerably lower cost as well.
Increasing Savagery — Sorcery-speed pump is not exactly ‘where it’s at’ in this format, but the ability to jump any creature by fifteen power with one card still perks up my ears and gets my attention. Viewed as a creature enchantment, it’s surprisingly solid; it is no more vulnerable the first time through and in fact is less likely to go awry, as it does not have to remain in play in order to have its effect and thus a stray Disenchant does not cut off the bonus. The second time is not something most creature enchantments even offer as an option, and the second time is both reasonably affordable and a free (doubled) benefit stapled to a card that is otherwise within an acceptable range of playability. +15/+15 is nothing to laugh off in a format where 21 from a single creature is a technical knockout, so even this far-from-awesome Increasing spell is quite savage indeed.
Predator Ooze — Indestructible makes me happy, but this is probably a bad card with a good mechanic. Predator Ooze takes a very long time to turn into a creature worth fearing, and the indestructible are still quite vulnerable to farming and sinking ships. I am still quietly waiting for enough playable Oozes to make an Ooze tribal deck, and Predator Ooze is on the list.
Tracker’s Instincts — Small card advantage effects are worth it in Commander, and for a U/G deck this is a creature-finding Impulse that can be used a second time. I look forward to giving it a try, even if it won’t ever break the bank, and putting the rest of the cards into the graveyard gives this the ability to fill up the yard with resources surprisingly quickly.
Vorapede — I read ‘Vigilance’ as ‘Haste’ the first time and got super duper excited, but even as ‘just’ a trampling, hard-to-kill bug, I’m interested in trying it out in a Commander deck at some point and seeing how it plays out. Durable threats are one of the things you need the most in Commander, and this is hyper-efficient for the mana cost AND bounces back from its first death with a new spring in its step and fresh anger at the outrage.
Wild Hunger — Pump spells are low on the class of playable cards in Commander, while flashback spells are pretty high on that list. Again the words ‘you control’ are expected but thankfully absent, so Wild Hunger can get involved in a fight you’re not even a part of, especially relevant (and threatening) thanks to the fact that it lends out trample. Being able to split it up over two different turns makes me willing to give it a try and see how I like it, and it especially suggests itself to a large commander like Kresh the Bloodbraided or the ever-increasing Animar, Soul of Elements.
Drogskol Captain — ‘Spirit Tribal’ is not something I expect to play anytime soon in commander, but passing out not just a +1/+1 bonus but also free Hexproof is interesting to me and makes me wonder just how close Spirits are to a functioning tribe. Anything gets ‘close’ in these colors thanks to Adaptive Automaton and Mirror Entity, but there may just be enough good spirits to pursue this line of thought, and Moorland Haunt a powerful land once you do chase it.
Drogskol Reaver — I thought this was lame at first, because it ‘just’ hit twice and drew you two cards. Then I kept reading and realized the card-draw was not bounded to actually attacking and triggered whenever you gain life, and suddenly my disdain for lifegain needs reconsidering. Lifelink creatures are Ophidians whenever they attack, Sejiri Refuge is a cantrip land and Absorb a cantrip counterspell. Soul Warden gets obnoxious squared instead of just its usual level of obnoxiousness, possibly cubed depending on how long it sticks around unmolested. As a creature with an unique effect rather than just some goofy double-Ophidian flier like I thought it was, Drogskol Reaver is actually quite awesome and begs to be explored, even by lifegain-haters like myself.
Sorin, Lord of Innistrad — Good planeswalker is good. Black/White planeswalker is hard to squeeze into most decks, after all, it’s not the most popular color combination out there. As yet another solid token generator I’m impressed, and being able to gain multiple power-bonus emblems that last the remainder of the game gets my interest piqued right away — one free token, then +2/+0 for the rest of the game for anything I play is a compelling use of four mana and a card.
And then there’s the Ultimate. I’m glad he says “other Planeswalkers” because otherwise with Doubling Season he would be the most obnoxious piece of cardboard in existence, and as it is pulling this trick off once is still going to be very swingy. Killing, and then owning, the three best creatures in play is a nice job if you can get it, especially since persist and undying both create triggered abilities and thus do not fire off until the creatures are safely on your side of the board, since murder and resurrection are both included in the same eyeblink of time.
Diregraf Captain — Zombie tribal is gonna get ya, that’s what Dark Ascension reminds us again and again. As a tribal lord, Diregraf Captain is more neat than awe-inspiring, but with the added triggered ability making this a Zombie Disciple of the Vault it is yet another card that feeds neatly into the zombie death-and-resurrection engine theme that our first look at Mikaeus, Zombie Badass showcased so neatly. All the Zombies want to do is die, die, die and kill, kill, kill!
Havengul Lich — This creature just sounds like a mistake, since it lets you cast spells out of your opponents’ graveyards, and the strange situations this makes possible will probably be more painful than giggle-worthy in Commander. This very easily makes for unbounded combos and ridiculous situations, and I anticipate being unhappy for the next several months while this creature goes off in my face.
Falkenrath Aristocrat — Efficient and sometimes-indestructible, but unfortunately only sometimes. Plowshares don’t care, and even an awkward trip can send this vampire to an early grave. Efficient creatures that are also sacrifice outlets are still highly playable, however, and worth remembering — four power of flying haste is actually still awesome, and indestructibility a useful skill to have against most sweepers even if pinpoint removal can handily circumvent this life-saving ability.
Stromkirk Captain — Generic vampire tribal lord is generic. Just what first strike offers to the average vampire is not clear here, and I wish instead of a guaranteed bonus it granted the first strike plus the Sengir Vampire ability — then I’d be dripping with the flavorful juices of the Stromkirk Captain and grokking just what was going on. As a Vampire tribal lord, he sits with just Adaptive Automaton, Captivating Vampire and Vampire Nocturnus on a very short list, still enough to build a quite reputable tribal army around.
… The first strike still feels weird, though.
Huntmaster of the Fells — Four mana for a pair of 2/2’s is not spectacular, but Huntmaster has more potential benefit than that. Presuming opponents occasionally don’t play spells and occasionally someone plays several, Huntmaster should flip back and forth all the time, giving you bonus Shocks and extra wolves at a surprising clip. The problem with Werewolves in four-player formats is fairly obvious: when it comes time to attack it will almost never be transformed at a convenient moment, as you have so little control over that fact. Huntmaster of the Fells likes switching back and forth, though, so the thing that makes me saddest about the Huntmaster is his lack of Legendary status — I’d love the ability to chase this as a Commander, but there are no legendary creatures that transform and thus I shall just have to hope that maybe that option will still appear before the mechanic is lost for a very long time.
Immerwolf — This is the set for making lost tribes have Lords, after all, and here your Wolf / Werewolf tribal lord is hard at work. Considering how few werewolves there were prior to this set, it comes as no news that Immerwolf is the first non-Adaptive Automaton Werewolf tribal lord, but there is an extra bonus alongside the +1/+1 that makes Immerwolf interesting — the solution to werewolf transformation problems when he’s around is simple, transformations are now one-way only.
Chalice of Life — I hate lifegain, remember? However, Chalice of Life does not care how much life it itself has gained you — just that you’ve gained ten since the game has started. Thus, it can very quickly turn into a Chalice of Death instead, and a Chalice of Death taps at a rapid clip to kill the opponent, knocking off five life at a time outside of the combat phase. Not bad for a three mana card, even if I do hate lifegain.
Elbrus, the Binding Blade — I for one want to use Stoneforge Mystic to hit someone to death with Withengar Unbound, and I suspect it is Commander, not Legacy, that will be the format that allows for this. This is just an oddball card — expensive, awkward, hard to use, and that’s even before adding the color identity problem that since the other side is black it has to go in decks with black-aligned commanders despite looking like a colorless artifact. But the potential of suddenly showing up with a nasty trampler that doubles in size by killing the first opponent is intriguing to me, even if it takes a little work to get it on the board and transformed in the first place.
Grafdigger’s Cage — A solid hoser and Trinket Mage target, able to counteract resurrection effects on both the individual and global scale. The things it prevents from happening are very typical during a Commander game — Chords of Calling, Living Death, or even just flashing back a newly-staple-in-Commander Increasing Ambition that might otherwise make life very unpleasant. As a cheap and high-power hoser, I’d expect this to show up fairly often at first, then self-regulate until it is only the decks that most want it or are best able to find it on the cheap that have it in their 99.
Helvault — I thought this card was much better at first, and nearly speculated on an arbitrarily large number of them based on the reading that the creatures you exile that your opponent controlled came back on your side of the board when Helvault disappeared. That said, even ‘playing fair’ it’s colorless, repeating removal, so you can have answers to sticky situations in your mono-green deck and even be able to make a creature leave play at instant speed if you want to, and when it comes to ‘just’ saving your own stuff from removal it’s still very mana-efficient and worthwhile.
Jar of Eyeballs — Googly eyes non-optional. For any creature deck this is an amazing card advantage machine, since your creatures will die with fair regularity and this can get you an extra card a turn with some selection attached to it so long as the usual fate of creatures in a four-player game of Magic: the Gathering follows the typical short-lived fashion. Yet another card I most want to jam into my mono-red deck to help overcome the lack of card-draw or card-selection, and similarly I have to assume that this is very good indeed in your average green deck, especially with a token theme to work with.
Grim Backwoods — Savra colors plus sacrifice: do something awesome, attached to a land? Sign me up. Repeating card draw at a low price is something I always find interesting, and Grim Backwoods is not exactly cheap but is still cheap enough for my willingness to play it. The ability is quite strong, especially over a drawn-out game, for creatures die all the time and getting something out of it when they do is the best way to make sure you’re still relevant as the game drags inevitably onward. That it is findable by Primeval Titan also makes me especially happy, as I anticipate I will now have to consider this very highly as the second land I find with Primeval Titan (where the first is almost always Mosswort Bridge).
Haunted Fengraf — A simple utility land for decks that can afford it, this fits in nicely with Crucible of Worlds when you might already be playing it and gives free benefits even if you can’t quite control the outcome. Buried Ruin is good enough that I’m not surprised that the creature-based version has to have an uncontrollable element in order to be printed, and Haunted Fengraf is something I would expect to see cropping up more and more as a free addition to the land slot that can help regulate your draw later in the game. I love cycling lands for potentially being spells later in the game, and Haunted Fengraf is not just ‘possibly a spell’ but ‘possibly a very good spell’ later in the game, falling somewhere between the best and the worst creature card stockpiled in your graveyard.
Vault of the Archangel — Abilities for free is nothing to shake a stick at, and passing around Lifelink can make for a lot of swing during the attack phase. That it also can help effectively on defense — passing around deathtouch to blockers doesn’t suck — makes me think that this land is underrated even in my own perception of things, and is more powerful than it first appears.
Dark Ascension offers a lot of diversity to Commander, with new decks and archetypes ready to be pursued and new tools for our favorite old toys just bursting at the seams of the set. Join me next week as we upgrade with Dark Ascension for the first time, and see what change the new set wreaks of its own accord.
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