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Commander 2014 Spoilers – 10/29/14

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The dust has settled and there are quite a few more cards to spoil. I'm glad we're not going to do the rest of it a deck at a time. Let's take a look at what trickled in today.

Angel of the Dire Hour

5WW
Creature - Angel
Flash

Flying

When Angel of the Dire Hour enters the battlefield, if you cast it from your hand, exile all attacking creatures.
Illus. Jack Wang 5/4

Sweeeet Jesus. This card is going to pull the pants of someone trying to get there with Craterhoof Behemoth for sure! This is a steep mana investment but it's more than worth it as the effect you get is very, very good. I am a very big fan of this card. It's hard to not broadcast if you leave a ton of mana up, and a lot of decks like Kaalia and Mayael are going to risk putting this into play at an inopportune time, but I really like the idea of using a Cavern of Souls to stuff this down a blue player's throat or just stymieing the hell out of an alpha strike. This is a very, very good card. With not a ton of value spoiled out of the white deck so far, this could have a financial impact, although its mana cost relegates it to EDH only and hurts its upside.

Sylvan Offering

I think others like the offering cycle more than I do. I think they're probably fine, but you have to put yourself in a position to either make a new ally or benefit from the card more than your opponent does. I think a good way to do that is to get twice as many tokens as they do with this card, something Green does easily. You don't want to give them a million blockers, but if you're going to Overrun or Baru or Craterhoof, it won't matter. You can also protect someone vulnerable by giving them blockers and be set up to benefit yourself. I don't know how much money these will be worth but I think there will be rough parity with the Temptation cycle from Commander 2013, and those are under $1.

Dulcet Sirens

You can't make the creature attack you and there is no consequence if the creature isn't able? Granted they don't want to create a blue Royal Assassin by making Sirens all have the Siren's Call ability, but surely SOMETHING should happen. I don't know why this has morph as nothing else spoiled in blue really deals with morph at all, but if we're seeing more Morph stuff, an Ixidron reprint could be in the blue deck and I'm not super happy at that prospect. This card can cause a lot of mischief, though and that may be enough for it to see play, but I tend to doubt it. If you can make them attack into your blockers, that would be one thing, but if the other two players agree to a harmless block or to just let the damage go through, all you did was annoy two people.  Not the best political move. This card is as tricky to evaluate as it will likely be to play with, but I'm not impressed.

Wave of Vitriol

"Play Basics" - Aaron Forsythe today on twitter.

Play basics, man, It's a bulk rares and basic lands format. This card is bugnutty and while it's expensive, it does WORK. I really like this a lot and it can really set some annoying deck types back quite a bit. Best of all, this is a great card for punishing players for throwing more money at EDH. If they don't have enough basics in the deck to get anything out of the back end, they could really get hit hard when they lose a board full of Sol Ring and Sylvan Library.  Look to Bane of Progress for my best guess as to this card's price, but I am hoping it sees some play.

Flamekin Village

Land
As Flamekin Village enters the battlefield, you may reveal an Elemental card from your hand. If you don't, Flamekin Village enters the battlefield tapped.

T: Add R to your mana pool.

R, T: Target creature gains haste until end of turn.

This really wanted to be in Lorwyn. Is it too late for it? I hadn't noticed an Elemental sub-theme in the red cards spoiled, but this has utility outside of that precon to be sure. People play lots of Elementals as their generals. Not only that, this card benefits more from Elementals than Elementals benefit from it. That is to say it will come into play tapped in red decks with no Elementals and then it will give creatures haste which is very useful. Coming into play untapped isn't all that important. Still, people play generals like Ashling the Pilgrim, Animar, Soul of the Elements and Horde of Notions and this can go in there for sure. I think this is a cheap utility land with narrow utility, but if the red deck is underbought (HA! Good luck with that) it could break $1? I don't know, I'm not super jazzed here. Printing this card was easier than admitting there wasn't a good corollary to Crypt of Agadeem most likely.

Assault Suit

Ever wish you could lend a creature to someone who needed it? Now you can. This baby protects you from getting swang at by your own doods while it's at it. This is a nifty little piece of equipment that will cause lots of fun scenarios in EDH and I welcome it. It's not likely to be worth a ton of money, but if it's only in one deck, despite its uncommon rating, there will be one of these for every copy of the Planeswalkers, so if people want this ability its true rarity is 1 per set, same as the mythics. I don't think that will matter as its rarity indicates its power level as much as its scarcity. This is more cool than relevant, but it's cool enough that I felt like talking about it. I like the idea of lending creatures out quite a bit, especially ones with drawbacks, although I wouldn't play creatures with drawbacks just hoping to pair them with this. You'll most likely lend a dude to an opponent so they can kill someone else with it and that's fine by me. This beats swipe effects in a pinch as well.

Crown of Doom

This is a real hot potato. Likely falling under the same "more cute than good" banner as Assault Suit, this could potentially be a cheap anthem effect that has a lot of liability built in. This may deal as much damage or more to you than it does to opponents, but if you have way more creatures than everyone else, this could end up getting there. Still, I'm not imagining this has financial relevance.

Tyrant's Familiar

YES! A good lieutenant. a GREAT Lieutenant. This card is stupid good. I realize it's a 7 mana dragon, but if you play EDH at all, you know that you're most likely cheating this into play somehow or reducing its cost. The ability to clear blockers, eliminate pesky utility creatures and swing for 7 is very good for a lieutenant upside. I think I want to make some room in Mayael for this guy. I realize there are only so many dragons you can jam, but this guy is legitimately exciting. I don't predict he'll be worth a ton of money, but I think he's worth playing and that has to be worth something. This gives me hope for the rest of the lieutenant creatures.

 

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Jason Alt

Jason Alt is a value trader and writer. He is Quiet Speculation's self-appointed web content archivist and co-captain of the interdepartmental dodgeball team. He enjoys craft microbrews and doing things ironically. You may have seen him at magic events; he wears black t-shirts and has a beard and a backpack so he's pretty easy to spot. You can hear him as co-host on the Brainstorm Brewery podcast or catch his articles on Gatheringmagic.com. He is also the Community Manager at BrainstormBrewery.com and writes the odd article there, too. Follow him on Twitter @JasonEAlt unless you don't like having your mind blown.

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