Now that Magic’s upcoming set Assassin’s Creed has been fully previewed, I wanted to go through and look at new cards you might consider for the 99 of your Commander decks. There are a ton of legendary creatures that I’m sure will get heavy coverage from Commander content creators, and I will be doing deep dives on the ones I find most exciting.
I’m not at all familiar with the Assassin’s Creed video game series, though from what I’ve heard it seems like a really cool concept. My thoughts on these cards are therefore purely as a Magic: The Gathering and Commander format fan. Let’s dig in!
Freerunning
There were grumblings online about the freerunning mechanic keying off commanders dealing combat damage to a player in addition to Assassins. I actually think it was smart to broaden its appeal outside of Assassin typal decks, because otherwise these cards would not see much play at all.
The grumblers are complaining that freerunning cards are going to go in every Commander deck, which is just silly—not every Commander deck is helmed by a commander that is interested in attacking, capable of living through combat, and connecting with an opponent’s life totals. And I think it’s actually awesome that these cards reward more aggressive commanders, since in a typical game of Commander there are many incentives to sit back and not be aggressive. This helps games be more dynamic and pushes them towards a resolution rather than bogging down the game.
Now, a lot of these cards will be best in an Assassin deck where you can really rely on satisfying that freerunning ability. The trick for other decks with an aggressive enough commander is whether the full mana cost is still worth running. For instance, Distract the Guards making three token creatures is perfectly fine for three mana instead of two, especially in decks that care about tokens. Overpowering Attack will be great at three mana, but it’s also perfectly fine for five mana in decks that care about extra attacks.
Sagas
It’s nice to get a new cycle of Sagas for decks that care about Sagas or enchantments, and all of them seem neat. The Revelations of Ezio is pretty narrow and wants to be in an Assassin deck, and as a longtime Magic player, I smile at Chapter I’s callback to Royal Assassin killing a tapped creature. Ballad of the Black Flag will be exciting to decks that care about historic cards – yep, your local Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain player is gonna jam this right in their deck!
The Aesir Escape Valhalla is a slow, grindy value engine that offers a ton of opportunity for an opponent’s Naturalize effect to stop your shenanigans, but if you’ve got a way to add lore counters at instant speed, you can still get some value.
New Legendary Equipment
Fans of the Pendragon Magic format will enjoy these iconic legendary Equipment cards they can use to build decks around.
What is Pendragon, you may ask? It’s a Commander variant inspired by the legend of King Arthur and Excalibur, where you pick a common creature to be your champion (commander) and a legendary Equipment to be its “signature” weapon; both of them start in the command zone, and the color identity of the rest of the cards in your deck are determined by the color(s) of your common creature commander and the legendary Equipment. So, if your commander is Priest of Ancient Lore and the signature equipment is Embercleave, your deck’s color identity is Boros. Also, the cards in your 99 all have to have a printing at common rarity, in a nice callback to the Pauper format.
Here is the website explaining the rules if you want to dig in further.
Excalibur, Sword of Eden is a sweet new Equipment that should stick to historic decks in order to shave down that mana cost, unless you’re counting on your commander having a high enough mana cost to discount it; for instance, Ghalta, Primal Hunger’s mana value is twelve, but you’re often able to cast it for considerably less, and with Ghalta on the battlefield, Excalibur will cost zero mana. Having a T. rex with its little arms wielding Excalibur is thoroughly amusing!
The other cards are sweet, but I particularly like that The Spear of Leonidas has three choices when you attack with it, including summoning Phobos, a legendary 3/2 red Horse creature token.
Other Equipment
There’s also a bunch of other cool Equipment cards, including a cycle for each of the five colors. Assassin’s Gauntlet seems particularly strong for commander, tapping down all the creatures a target opponent has, setting up a big attack by you and any other opponent who has a turn before them. Hunter’s Bow is neat; it’s got a Bite Down attached to it, gives reach and ward 2, and has an incredibly cheap equip cost. Brotherhood Regalia is great for your aggressive commander and is reasonable even if it’s not equipping a legendary creature.
Okay, let’s dig into individual cards that caught my eye!
Templar Knight
Oh cool, here’s another card that breaks the singleton nature of Commander, letting you run any number of copies in your deck. That activated ability is sweet, but you can’t just cast your fifth Templar Knight and then activate the ability unless you can give that Knight haste, so there are some hoops to jump through. The legendary artifact card that jumps to mind for me is of course Excalibur, which will circumvent that pesky high mana value, but there are a ton of sweet options you could put in the deck outside of Equipment. The One Ring, Bolas’s Citadel, The Great Henge, and Bident of Thassa all spring to mind.
Haystack
Haystack’s flavor cracks me up, even knowing nothing about the Assassin’s Creed game—jump into and hide in a Haystack to avoid removal! Two mana to activate is very reasonable, and phasing the creature you control out means it’s more effective than blinking when it comes to a creature that’s equipped or enchanted with Auras.
What Must Be Done
This is a fascinating modal spell—you can either blow up the battlefield, or you can reanimate a historic permanent from your graveyard to the battlefield. Which is cool—how often have you ripped a Wrath of God from the top of your deck after the battlefield is already empty?
Become Anonymous
This reminds me of the “three-card monte” con game, where you try to guess which of three cards is the “money card”, and Become Anonymous does a cool job of mimicking that. Four mana is a lot to hold up for a responsive spell, but if your deck has multiple ways to sink your mana at instant speed, it seems super-fun. It’s fun that it uses the new cloak mechanic, providing some additional protection to the creature you’re trying to save. If I’m not playing a bunch of cloak, morph, or megamorph creatures, I’d want enough creatures in my deck so that the odds are pretty good that the other two cloaked cards would include another creature I could flip up.
Crystal Skull, Isu Spyglass
Playing cards from the top of your deck is super-fun, and this one will even tap to provide a blue mana to help cast your historic spells. There are many commanders that care about historic permanents that will love this spell; for me personally, I will be slotting this into my Lara Croft, Tomb Raider deck!
Palazzo Archers
As a lover of mono-green, I have a particular love of protection from flying creatures, and this seems super-fun, especially with ways to pump the Archer’s power, as with Rancor and Bloodforged Battle-Axe, or give it deathtouch, as with Basilisk Collar and Vault of the Archangel.
Bleeding Effect
These sorts of “quest” cards are super-fun! How many keyword soup creatures can you put in your deck, and how might you put some of them in the graveyard to pump all your other creatures?
Jackdaw
This card has a potentially very powerful effect for artifact-heavy decks, and I like that you can choose not to discard your hand if you don’t want to. It’s quite balanced by not being very large and has no inherent evasion, so it can take some effort to connect with it.
The Animus
Yet another card seems super-fun! It’s quite slow, though, since you won’t get to exile the legendary creature until your end step, and you can only activate it as a sorcery, but I’m excited to see what people do with this!
Apple of Eden, Isu Relic
The Apple is notably very difficult to use for webcam Commander play like Spelltable, but I love these sorts of cards for in-person Commander, since they scale so nicely with whatever power level your pod is playing. For high-powered or cEDH, the Apple will be quite potent, and for other power levels, it will be just wild and fun. I think it’s neat that each time you’re playing one of the exiled cards, your opponent gets to draw a new card, so they won’t be out of gas once the effect ends.
Yggdrasil, Rebirth Engine
This seems fun in a deck that plays a lot of creatures and is a nice way to grind value. By the time you’ll have the mana to cast Yggdrasil and activate it, you should naturally have had some creatures hitting the graveyard from removal spells. You can also set up huge reanimation targets with something like Entomb. I’ll probably give this a whirl in my Zirda, the Dawnwaker deck, since it will discount that four-mana activation.
Escarpment Fortress
While I wouldn’t say Escarpment Fortress is an exciting card, it does seem like a solid workhorse for aggressive decks that might otherwise be desperate for card draw. And of course, people will slam it right in their Arcades, the Strategist decks!
Tranquilize
If you’re playing a proliferate deck, Tranquilize seems like a great way to neutralize a potent attacker or blocker indefinitely. I might even play this in a deck that wants to attack early and often for profit, and will be considering it for my Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow deck.
Which cards from Assassin’s Creed are you most excited to put in your Commander decks?
Talk to Me
Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter! I run polls and start conversations about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun! You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.
I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl, and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can. If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel. You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews.
And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.
Visit my Decklist Database to see my decklists and the articles where they appeared!
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