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radramblog · 3 years ago

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Crimson Vow Commanders

Normally I limit myself to one Magic post a week, but I kinda want to just go through with this. Surely, if I wait another week (since I’m finishing off the Cube Planeswalkers series tomorrow), my takes will be well and truly too lukewarm. The set technically isn’t out yet, but I’m pretty sure everyone that actually gets views has made their version of this already.

Thus, here’s my thoughts on every new commander made available in the new Magic set, Crimson Vow, and it’s associated preconstructed commander decks. There’s a lot of them!

Katilda, Dawnhart Martyr // Katilda’s Rising Dawn

As the relative lack of decks for Mono-White Spirit Tribal would imply (there’s 144), it’s a tribe that kind of needs multicolour to work. With that in mind, a lot of the ones you do get are pretty good, so it could work- Katilda’s ghost certainly has the power to make it work if you want it to. This card reminds me a lot of Eidolon of Countless Battles- a card which would definitely go well in her deck, or a much better Callaphe, as she similarly benefits from permanents merely existing as well as being attached to her.

I genuinely think this card is decent to great in either the zone or 99, depending on the build. White has no issue with enchantments, and either side of this card lets you kill with commander damage pretty easily should you have enough to back it up. And flying/lifelink are excellent abilities to staple onto a Voltron threat- this is still just an aura you can cast from the bin if you want to. I like the card- wouldn’t be building it myself (because it’s too similar to Callaphe), but she’s got a lot going on.

Donal, Herald of Wings

I was going to try and find what the best cards to copy with this card are, but it looks like EDHREC’s database doesn’t have the precon cards yet, so we’re on our own here. The fact that Donal’s ability only triggers once per turn encourages you to play bigger things, which tend to be legendary, but there’s still a fair few bangers here- Consecrated Sphinx, Diluvian Primordial, and Tidespout Tyrant come to mind, not to mention synergistic cards like Windreader Sphinx or Sharding Sphinx. I’d also be interested to see if someone could make, like, a flash-based swarm deck that just casts a bunch of little guys on everyone’s turn and copies them all. Maybe that’s going in too deep?

Like with Katilda, Donal is somewhat hampered by his colour identity. But, I’m one who tends to like decks with less colours, so I actually don’t really have a problem with that- besides, the card is very cool. I really like that they made permanent spell copying a thing- it seemed like an obvious choice, and it’s added a lot of cool tech to the designer’s toolbox.

Geralf, Visionary Stitcher

Much as Innistrad sets add to the list of Blue Zombies, especially with the Wilhelt precon, I’m not sure enough of them aren’t draft chaff to make a proper Zombie deck around this card. Fortunately, you basically don’t have to- Geralf lends himself subtly to a bunch of different strategies. I’m obviously not the only one to notice, for example, his synergy with Charix, the Raging Isle, with a Mono-Blue booty deck that can flip offensive at instant speed seems pretty cool.

Geralf seems like he’s probably going to sit in the 99 of a bunch of UB Zombie decks- probably a bunch of the ones built around his and his sister’s one-card combination. But I’d encourage folks to look into the other things he could potentially do- it’s not too often Blue gets a sacrifice outlet, and he’s one with a lot going on.

Jacob Hauken, Inspector // Hauken’s Insight

The obvious comparison here is to Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, but rather than a flashback ability (and some other bad nonsense) you get a slow value engine that probably scales better in commander. Um. Sure?

My main issue with this guy is how slow he is, mostly. 2 mana is obviously cheap, but even if you have 6 mana you’re still waiting a turn to flip him. Not to mention, you’re going to feel really bad if he dies with some insane fatties underneath- and while the enchantment is tougher to kill than the creature, it’s still Going To Die to things. I do like the idea of a future-sighty deck around this guy, but it’s far from the game-ender you’re going to want. Mind’s Dilation is still a card, ya feel?

Henrika Domnathi // Henrika, Infernal Seer

While you could flip her immediately, I’m not sure whether you should, because the front side is actually more interesting to me…but you will have to eventually, and the front is just sort of worse Rankle. So I guess we’re peeking at the back side.

Black has the capability to generate a bunch of creatures that Queen of the Nighthawks can pump, and the ability doesn’t have any limits except mana. So you could do some work with this, especially with Black’s tendency to get a shitton of mana at once (did someone say Coffers?). But the effect isn’t strong enough, and nor are the other words inspiring enough, that I’m particularly interested in this card. Maybe if it cost a little more and gave +1 for each of those abilities? I dunno.

Timothar, Baron of Bats

We’re going to come across this, but there are a lot of Vampire Tribal Commanders in this set, that is adding to an already long list. So a lot of these are going to get pretty redundant pretty quick. Timothar is one of the more interesting options, in my eyes- he’s going to make a Vampire deck play closer to a Zombie one, with a bloodthirstier take on the usual resilient abilities of that tribe. 6 mana is a lot, though.

Timothar, like a lot of these Vampires, is probably going to go in the 99. The thing is, Vampires already has a Definitive Best Commander, in the form of Edgar Markov. He’s going to have a shitload more decks now, with a bunch of new and powerful cards, and he’s probably going to completely overshadow every other Vampire in the set. This is why cards like Edgar Markov are bad!

Side note: there actually isn’t a Mono-Red (save 1 half of a partner pair) or Mono-Green Legendary Creature in this set. I wasn’t aware 2021 MTG design allowed that.

Dorothea, Vengeful Victim // Dorothea’s Retribution

Make your own Fire Emblem joke here (wrong colour combination, though!). I mean, I’m sure Dorothea is an actual name, but these are the only contexts I’ve ever heard for it.

Unfortunately, Dorothea’s major upside on her front half doesn’t scale to EDH in any meaningful way. A 1-shot 4/4 is not worth that all-important slot, and the aura half isn’t particularly inspiring either. Even in the 99, she’s an aura that doesn’t do anything super relevant (aside from maybe triggering creature/Spirit ETB/Dies effects). We already have this aura, its name is Invocation of Saint Traft, and it’s basically unplayable.

Would slap an Assault Suit on it, though. And the showcase art is incredible.

Millicent, Restless Revenant

As a 5-colour Spirits player, I’m surprisingly disappointed with this set’s offerings- that said, WU Spirits and WUBRG Spirits are such utterly and completely different decks that want completely different things, so I should probably just shut up and wait for Cyber-Kamigawa. Millicent and her(?) ilk can have their own time in the sun.

Millicent’s cost reduction is great, and her static makes for a really quick-assembling, resilient deck full of flying idiots what punch you. This card is really powerful- to the point where it might be bordering on “de-facto WU spirits lord”- if anyone’s ever played with Sharding Sphinx, that card takes off very quickly, and this is that in the zone with inbuilt wrath insurance. Spooky as fuck.

Rhoda, Geist Avenger and Timin, Youthful Geist

Interesting that they chose to do partner-commanders this time. Kinda ruins the perfect colour balance on them, but eh. With that in mind, this pair is not particularly inspiring. I actually like Timin- having played effects like Rattlechains and Sentinel of the Eternal Watch before, I can tell you that this effect is much more powerful than it looks, and this one even works on your own turn, or can be used as a political tool to help opponents attack each other.

Rhoda is just so utterly bland, though, that I can’t imagine ever wanting to put them in the zone or 99- with that said, Partner With effects mean you can tutor for each other, so if you really want Timin, you can play Rhoda to find Timin if you’d like. I actually do that with Toothy in my Roalesk deck.

Runo Stromkirk // Krothuss, Lord of the Deep

It is utterly devastating that this card costs 3 mana, since it means you can’t have Gyruda as your Companion- that said, holy shit, this card is sick as hell.

Most of the “sea monster tribal” decks I’ve seen have been in Simic, which I believe is largely a result of having Kiora around (and also for ramping out the big fatties), but it’s not like you need that colour. There wasn’t even really a commander specifically for it until this guy, and all the synergy cards are in Blue. So sure, why not UB? You can work around the lack of insane ramp, right?

I mean…maybe. You’re probably dedicating a lot of the deck to it, seeing as you’re going to want a lot of Krakens/Leviathans/Octopuses/Serpents, and they tend to cost a fair bit. But once you do figure that out, you’re left with a pretty powerful commander that’s not too difficult to flip, and the backside is just kind of insane. You don’t even really need to run it in a sea monster deck, though you lose a lot of the insane value (and they make it easier to flip). Card is really strong, but we will have to see how the builds work out.

Umbris, Fear Manifest

Two tribes that definitely don’t have commanders brought together under this thing’s…leadership? Or just mill things, I guess. Consuming Aberration but Legendary here gets real big and is guaranteed to piss everybody else off, because if there’s two things I know Commander players hate, it’s getting milled and getting their stuff exiled.

Umbris is kind of interesting for a Tribal commander, because what the tribal cards are actually doing is making the commander better rather than making each other better. To be fair, there really isn’t any consistent threads to pull for these pretty disparate tribes (aside from the Nightmares from Torment, which I like that this works with), so there isn’t a lot to work with in the design- with that said, the spooky stuff making the manifestation of fear stronger is a cool flavour hit.

I dunno. It’s pretty one-directional- play the best Nightmare/Horror cards, some evasion, and maybe some other mill, kill them to death with commander damage and/or mill them out. If you sit down with Umbris, people are going to know what you’re up to, and a 5 mana target in a colour combination without Green is awkward. With that said, this might finally be the UB BFZ-Eldrazi general I’ve been looking for- maybe I would have preferred Sultai or Grixis, but I’ll take this!

Toxrill, the Corrosive

That blue pip in the sacrifice cost is doing a lot of work. I wouldn’t hold your breath for Slug tribal- there are 7 other slugs in black-bordered magic, and only 2 of those approach playability. And they aren’t in Dimir. No, this is definitely more of a UB control/proliferate general- the Slugs are just a bonus for blocking with or sacrificing.

Toxrill is slow, but reasonably effective at controlling opponents’ boardstates. I hate to keep harping on about this, though, but it’s 7 mana. That’s a hard sell, even if you do have green, and the fact that you could get basically nothing out of it on a board with larger creatures turns me off. Maybe if they were -1/-1 counters, but they don’t like doing those in sets with +1/+1 counters, which is almost every set. I think they could get away with it at Mythic, though.

Anje, Maid of Dishonor

Wait, this is a 4 mana 4/5? Get in my cube? Anje 2 is aggressively competing with the RB precon-mander, Strefan, for a slot, both of them being Rakdos Vampire commanders that produce Blood tokens and give you something new to do with them. And it’s awkward, because Anje has the less specific bonus effect, but a more specific trigger, so she’s probably going to lose out on this exchange.

A lot of people are going to be comparing Anje unfavourably to her previous card. Which, uh, yeah, that card was a precon face card, playable in cEDH, and was literally the most popular Rakdos commander until Prosper a couple months ago. I do like this card, because in general I think Blood tokens are cool, but she’s in a really awkward place, and probably won’t see a lot of play as a result. At least, in the zone- she’s going to be in the 99 of like, every Vampire deck for the next year.

Olivia, Crimson Bride

One of the marquee cards of the set, and pretty much the better one. Haste is doing so much for this card, as is the fact that, well, you can reanimate Legendary Vampires with it, so the downside isn’t as bad as it usually is for reanimator decks. RB reanimator has a few options at this point, but I don’t think any of them are as explicitly powerful as this one. She can pull out a lot of power out of nowhere.

What I like best about Olivia is that she doesn’t have to be a Vampire commander, even though she very much will be a lot of the time. She herself is obviously a Legendary Vampire, so if you’re interested in protecting your queen, then you can do without others. Like, this card can just cheat Emrakul in (and attacking) out of the yard, and Conspiracy is a card that exists. I like it!

Strefan, Maurer Progenitor

And here’s the other Precon face card. Makes Blood, sacrifices them to cheat in Vampires fastly. There are a handful of really big dudes this fella can sneak in- Vampiric Dragon, Butcher of Malakir (both of which are in the precon) come to mind, as do Shauku and The Haunt of Hightower.

Funnily enough, though, I’m actually more interested in what you could do with a deck that just completely ignores the second half and goes all in on Blood tokens. Like, this thing can produce 4 artifacts a turn relatively easily, and the colour combination has more than enough ways to take advantage of having a bunch around. Not to mention, the Bloods can be used to find your synergy pieces and win conditions, or just act like ramp with that one “everything has Improvise” card which I can’t be bothered to find the name of.

Prosper has made Rakdos Treasures into a deck. This would trade that ramp for cards, while pinging your opponents down all the way, and I’m super keen to see how that plays out.

Kamber, the Plunderer and Laurine, the Diversion

Much like with Rhoda/Timin, I’m only especially interested in one of these. Laurine is okay, Goad is always fun (and she’s probably be great in a Zara deck), but the numbers on her aren’t super great. Kamber, though, Kamber gets me interested.

There are so many cards in this set that say “this ability only triggers once per turn” that it’s astonishing that Kamber doesn’t. At 4 mana, they can just positively churn out Bloods, and worst case they count themselves should someone point a kill spell at them. It triggers on every creature, much like the best Blood Artists out there (like, yknow, Blood Artist), and while it’s not going to explicitly kill anyone, it’s not to hard to make it do that. This might just end up being one-card Partner that also happens to get to play Red cards.

Halana and Alena, Partners

You can just say they’re gay, guys, we all know it. Halanalela is an interesting reverse Xenagod- where that card encourages you to play big creatures to make them truly huge, this one works better with smaller creatures, providing a permanent effect while they can safely stay on defence. You might need to find a way of making them bigger before it starts being worth it, though.

I like this card. I was always going to, I like these characters a fair bit. It’s not the most technically interesting card in the world, but RG +1/+1 counters isn’t really a deck yet, and this both gives them out and benefits from having them. It’s also a great home for the Gruulfriends shippers, given that they happen to be in Chandra and Nissa’s colours and also have their own original individual cards. Move over Ladies Looking Left, we can now build Ladies Looking At Each Other.

Torens, Fist of the Angels

Ehhhh… very often we get these combat-focussed mechanics, and very rarely do they translate well to EDH. This reminds me a lot of Aurelia 2, but somehow, I like this less. Also, as someone who’s played a fair bit with Cathar’s Crusade (and against Monastery Mentor), dealing with tokens and differential numbers of +1/+1 counters is a huge pain in the ass, so I’m not really interested anyway. There were like, 4 different Humans commanders in the last set, just pick one of those. Maybe he can get in your 99.

Edgar, Charmed Groom // Edgar Markov’s Coffin

Slow and boring. The front side ain’t worth it, the back side is better but still bad, and while it’s kind of resilient, people do play Artifact removal. If they deign to remove this thing in the first place.

There’s been a fair bit of conniption about why this card isn’t Mardu, and like. Are you people for real? Is this your first time? Characters change colour identity all the time for a variety of reasons, it’s even happened in this set (though people complained about that too), get your head out of your ass. Especially since explicitly Edgar is trying to chill out a bit here, so not being red is sensible. Come on, man.

Eruth, Tormented Prophet

I like this! I have no idea what the hell to do with it. Storm, I guess, but there’s got to be something better we could build.

There’s a lot of things that get better when your hand is empty, so perhaps that’s the best kind of deck for Eruth. She turns looting effects into pretty much free (impulse) draw, which is potentially pretty powerful, and the effect gets around a lot of draw-limiting effects that tend to get played in the format (I think?). That leaves you with an idea, but I’m not really sure where you go with it even from there. I’m interested to see how people solve this conundrum- because Eruth is kind of a puzzle with which you need to make the pieces yourself.

Old Rutstein

(Don’t know what’s going on in the bottom right there. Blame Scryfall.)

Fans of Druidic Satchel and Primeval Bounty will be right at home here. Old Rutstein is another of those cards that will always give you something, it just kind of varies on how things work out. In this case, it’s always a token of some kind. Okay.

I’m not sure this is a Commander on its own. The fact that he is going to very often make an Artifact makes that a potential angle, though Glissa may have that very limited market cornered. Secondary artifact matters colour + colour that rarely cares about artifacts makes that a limited opportunity. But he’s not doing much else- there are better options for self-mill, it’s fucking Golgari.

Odric, Blood-Cursed

Man, this guy is so close. I genuinely think if he himself had a keyword to work with, then he’d be incredibly solid, though I’m not sure they could have fit it in the textbox.

There’s still potentially a lot to like here, though. The requirement of keyworded creatures is awkward, but making a bunch of artifacts on ETB is obviously pretty good. Plenty of synergies for this card exist, as well as a few infinite flicker combos, and it’ll go well in any Akiri, Line Slinger/X deck (as she does with him). I’d be surprised if I ever saw a deck with this and without Krark-Clan Ironworks, but you don’t need to go infinite. There’s always Reckless Fireweaver and the like. Not to mention he helps alleviate half of Boros’s Big Issues.

Might build this. Been tossing up the Second Boros deck, so.

Grolnok, the Omnivore

Our final commander for the evening is BIG FROGGE. This biþ no smale beaste, seeing as it basically turns every (permanent) card you mill into a second hand- this is kind of just a weaker Muldrotha, actually. Can’t recur things from the battlefield, so less combo bullshit, and you don’t get Black (which in a graveyard deck is awkward), but it’s cheaper, completely resistant to Graveyard hate, and Simic has plenty of ways to mill itself- Jace, Memory Adept, anyone?

Grolnok will paint a target on your back, though. Muldrotha is already kill-on-sight, and you do need your commander to do anything with your croaked cards. Unless you’re very explicitly a silly Frog tribal deck (and even then maybe), I wouldn’t be surprised if you have a hard time keeping froggo on the board.

I do like that this giant Innistradi frog also has an arm sticking out of its mouth, though.

This concludes the Crimson Vow list. Honestly, I think it’s overall better than Midnight Hunt- while there is obviously a bit of a Vampire problem, there’s a bit less of what I saw in that set- that’s to say, a lot of 99 cards and not as many Commanders. I think Blood tokens are a really interesting thing to have around, much like their artifact token companions, and this set provides ways to play with them that Clues took a very long time to get around to. There’s a few gaps, but I’ll get to those- I am planning a post about my overall issues with the set, but that will wait for another time, because this post is already fuckin massive. Adios!

#ramble #mtg #mtgvow #commander #edh #innistrad crimson vow

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