The official preview season for Outlaws of Thunder Junction starts next week, but since Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has already wet our whistle with some early sneak peeks, I thought it would be fun to go over what we’ve seen so far and share my thoughts on the cards. Buckle up, buttercup, and let’s ride!
Nexus of Becoming
Nexus of Becoming is intriguing. Providing you cast it during your precombat main phase, you get its benefit right away at the beginning of combat on your turn, which is important for a six-mana investment. First, you get to draw a card, and then you can exile an artifact or creature card from your hand; if you do, you create a token that’s a copy of the exiled card, except it’s also a 3/3 Goblin artifact creature in addition to its other types.
Smallish artifacts or creatures with enters-the-battlefield triggers make excellent choices here. I’d totally exile a Mulldrifter to get a 3/3 artifact creature copy and draw two cards. How about an indestructible 3/3 copy of The One Ring? Or an indestructible 3/3 Mithril Coat? I’d even be happy with a 3/3 Ichor Wellspring! I see a ton of cool options with this card and can’t wait to see what people cook up with it.
Sword of Wealth and Power
I was not expecting to see another Sword of X and Y, but here we are, and what a cool Sword it is! Instead of protection from colors, it has protection from instants and sorceries, so the equipped creature won’t be able to slip past blockers as easily as some Swords make it, but it also makes it easier to avoid targeted removal or sweepers like Blasphemous Act. The combat triggers are also quite powerful, making a Treasure and setting up to copy the next instant or sorcery spell you cast this turn. The presale prices for this card are quite steep, so I wish everyone good fortune in cracking it in a random pack!
Duelist of the Mind
Nathan Steuer’s World Champion title earned him the right to be immortalized on a Magic card, and here it is! Duelist of the Mind has appeal for both competitive and casual play. For two mana, you get a creature with flying and vigilance, letting you both attack and defend, which is certainly the gold standard for creatures in Commander. Its power is equal to the number of cards you’ve drawn this turn, so if you’ve got main phase card drawing you can potentially smash in for a large chunk of damage, or if you have instant speed card drawing you can block and take down a large attacker.
Then there is its “commit a crime” trigger. What does that mean? Mark Rosewater recently shared the reminder text for it on his Tumblr:
(Targeting opponents, anything they control, and/or cards in their graveyards is a crime.)
The important things to remember are the word “target” and that anything your opponent controls includes spells on the stack. See, we always knew people who stuff their decks with counterspells were criminals!
At any rate, because it’s a loot effect, you can definitely see it playing a role in decks that care about stocking the graveyard for reanimation, fueling delve, or other shenanigans.
Hell to Pay
The latest spin on Fireball can only target creatures, which is a step back from the trend of late of burn dealing damage to either a creature or planeswalker, which definitely limits its play. Still, the upside is formidable, creating tapped Treasure tokens equal to the excess damage dealt to that creature. You could even target your own small creature to set up a huge turn after your next untap step, and if that creature is a Brash Taunter, all the better!
Fblthp, Lost on the Range
Fblthp is back and has apparently wandered through the Omenpaths to Thunder Junction and gotten lost on a new plane! It’s hard to evaluate this card without knowing what “plot” does mechanically, and since it has not officially been explained by WotC, I’ll just smile at this cute critter and patiently wait for a full evaluation.
Oko, the Ringleader
Oko, Thief of Crowns was so busted it ended up banned in multiple formats, so his next incarnation is definitely powered down quite a bit. Still, I think it’s actually pretty cool, and while I don’t play planeswalkers much in Commander, I do dabble in Oathbreaker, and I think this could make a pretty cool oathbreaker to build a deck around. In particular, that static ability is nifty, letting Oko become a copy of up to one target creature you control until end of turn, except he has hexproof.
I did a little brainstorming for creatures it could be fun to copy with Oko:
If you’ve got a creature with haste like Ulvenwald Oddity, Vengevine, or Froghemoth, then you could have Oko attack the turn you cast him. Froghemoth is a neat choice here since you could potentially add some +1/+1 counters to Oko that you could use to buff up some other creature he copies in later turns.
I also like the idea of casting a sweet creature with an attack or combat damage trigger after Oko is already on the battlefield; cast your Elder Gargaroth and let Oko rumble into combat and get that sweet, sweet trigger. Of course, the dream would be copying Ancient Silver Dragon and let Oko draw you a d20 roll’s worth of cards and have no maximum hand size for the rest of the game.
Here’s a wild idea—use one of Oko’s abilities, copy a huge creature, attack, sacrifice it for some effect such as Greater Good, and bring it back with Cauldron of Souls and get another activation of its planeswalker abilities.
I would definitely run some Clone cards like Stunt Double or Auton Soldier to copy powerful creatures your opponents might have that Oko can then copy during combat.
One thing I’m not clear on—once Oko becomes a copy of the creature, he loses his planeswalker abilities, right? So that means you’d want to activate his planeswalker abilities before combat.
Tinybones, the Pickpocket
Lastly, we have another potential deck commander in Tinybones, the Pickpocket! I’m thrilled that we’ve got a new Tinybones that’s much more Commander-friendly than the original Tinybones, Trinket Thief.
The original card encouraged building a heavy discard deck, which is pretty miserable to play against. But the character was so cute, you felt bad about hating to play against it. Tinybones, the Pickpocket has all the cute but little of the feel-bads! Here are some first sketches on how to build a sweet Commander deck around it.
First Strike
Often an opponent will be reluctant to chump block a tiny 1/1 with deathtouch that you can easily cast again from the command zone, but if the defending player has a stocked graveyard, their evaluation may change, which is why you’ll want ways to give Tinybones first strike, which combines with deathtouch to ensure survival of your commander most of the time. I’m a huge fan of Power Matrix, since it boosts Tinybones and also gives it trample and flying. Ace’s Baseball Bat has equip legendary creature 1, so it’ll be super-easy to equip to Tinybones. Just remember you only get first strike when equipped creature is attacking. Quick-Draw Dagger can be a great combat trick if someone chump blocks Tinybones and is expecting to trade with it.
Ninjas
You might consider a few Ninjas in your Tinybones deck since you can reasonably expect your 1/1 deathtouch creature to go unblocked sometimes. After an opponent declares no blockers, ninjutsu one of these sweet Ninjas onto the battlefield attacking, and you can redeploy Tinybones for just one mana. If Tinybones has first strike, you can do a really cool trick here—have Tinybones deal first strike damage and get that trigger, and since Tinybones is still considered an unblocked attacker, you can return it with ninjutsu and then have the Ninja deal regular combat damage too. Nashi, Moon Sage’s Scion is perfect here, playing with the theme of using your opponents’ cards against them.
Mill
Black gives you access to creature removal spells so that you can kill a creature directly you’d like to cast with Tinybones, but I also think some amount of mill is helpful, especially “everybody mills” cards like Mesmeric Orb and Dread Summons. Since Tinybones is a Rogue, it even synergizes with Thieves’ Guild Enforcer.
Mo’ Mana
Tinybones’s ability scales depending on the mana you have available to cast bigger and bigger permanents, which works out pretty well since black has fantastic “temporary” mana cards like Dark Ritual, Culling the Weak, and even Bubbling Muck, as well as permanent-based big mana sources like Cabal Coffers and Magus of the Coffers.
Even though Tinybones lets you spend mana as if it were any color for casting those permanents, sometimes those permanents may have colored mana activations you won’t be able to use with black mana, so I’d run cards to help with that, such as Chromatic Lantern. Timeless Lotus taps for one of each color mana and should help with nonblack activated abilities. I’d likely run an Exotic Orchard in my land base too!
What other cards would you put in a Tinybones, the Pickpocket Commander deck? Which of these sneak peek cards are you most excited to play with?
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.
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And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.
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