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Commander 2014 Spoilers – 10/28/14 (non-black)

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I have a lot to get through tonight because some jackass got ahold of the black deck and spoiled the entire thing, posting a picture of the decklist and pictures of all of the new cards. This really messes up spoiler season and is leaving me feel pretty deflated. Speculating and getting things revealed slowly was exciting. Having it all at once is a real bummer. I will post the full deck list in the post about the black cards, but if you don't want to see it, don't scroll all the way down. I'll get the non-black stuff out of the way first.

Titania, Protector of Argoth

I misread this card initially. I assumed it would trigger its own second ability when it came into play, but it's actually quite a bit better than that. An army of dorks is a nice consolation prize for having your lands wiped, for example and you can even put in some work putting lands there yourself. Myriad Landscape is a good candidate. Ghost Quarter is confirmed in the black deck and may find its way to the green one. Strip Mine is legal in EDH. I have always liked Crucible of Worlds effects and if you can recur this somehow you can get a nice value chain going. So while it doesn't necessarily directly trigger its second ability, it does compliment it nicely. This may be good enough to be a commander, I'm not sure. What I do know is that this is unlikely to break the $7 mark, at least initially.

Bitter Feud

This is a very interesting card. There are quite a few new cards that require you to choose an opponent and have yourself be the other target, but this one lets you pick two other people at the table and makes them haymaker each other into oblivion while you watch and laugh. This is a very cool political card. You can have it be a Furnace of Rath that bites back at you and lets you smoke an opponent or you can watch two people suddenly race each other on a very fast clock. This also makes the best player at the table manageable. There are so many applications for this card. Will it see play? Furnace of Rath and friends see play, and this is a more interesting version. I'm hopeful about its play but maybe not so much about its price. EDH is a format where bulk rares are good. I think Dualcaster Mage may crush this card into bulk.

Infernal Offering

Similar to Bitter Feud, this requires you to be on the receiving end of some of the punishment. However, being black leaves you in a position where you're glad to sac a dude in exchange for some cards and reanimating something cool is just gravy. If an opponent isn't set up to take advantage of this, you can really make out like a bandit, especially if the edict effect of the card circumvents Hexproof or Shroud on their last creature. I think it's a little too symmetrical, but it's a very interesting card. I like it, but I worry it might take a while to catch on.

Benevolent Offering

Bitter Feud is starting to look like it's not part of this cycle since two of the cards have "offering" in the title. Maybe it's not a true cycle, but it could be interesting to see what Blue and Green come up with (and maybe Red if Feud isn't part of it). This card is even more interesting than the Black one because you can use it to save someone and that's pretty cool. A token deck will take advantage of this to a huge extent and this has added utility. Sometimes you really want to save someone in a game of EDH and this lets you. All in all, this is an interesting card. I say that a lot because I think there is a lot of potential here. This can be used a lot of ways, and I like that flexibility. If these offerings see play, they will make some very cool plays happen. Financially... hard to say.

Warmonger Hellkite

4RR
Creature - Dragon
Flying

Creatures attack each turn if able.

1R: Target attacking creature gets +1/+0 until end of turn.
Illus. Trevor Claxton 5/5

This makes Magic chaotic, and that's a good thing. The best way to deal with annoying creatures like Platinum Angel and Prophet of Kruphix is to make them mix it up in combat. I don't know how much play this will see. I'd consider it in Mayael, but this is a bit of a nonbo with some of my Angels that I use to make it harder to kill me. I don't want to serve with Blazing Archon, I want to hide behind him. I bet there are plenty of decks that want this effect and in a pinch, you can even pump an opponent's attackers to kill someone else, which is cool. Wizards is getting better at designing cards that are good in scenarios that mostly come up in EDH. I like this card although I fear it may suffer the same fate as other red cards that aren't Dualcaster Mage.

Arcane Lighthouse

Spoiler Alert - no Nykthos in these decks. Oh well! I'm not even mad if what we get instead is two good lands at uncommon. This card is confirmed in the black deck and may be in others as well. Even more exciting, each deck might get its own! I love this card a lot. This comes into play untapped, gives mana and solves a big problem in EDH. This is a very, very good card. This will be worth more than a lot of the rares in the deck unless it's in every color. I think it's fair to call this a staple. It won't be in every deck, but there is a class of decks that struggle with hexproof and shroud and this solves that problem. Suck it, Rafiq! We're coming for you!

Commander's Sphere

I said in my review of Khans that I really like the banners cycle. I am not a huge fan of a million mana rocks in monocolored decks, but this either replaces or supplements Mind Stone so it's fine. Being able to sac while tapped is super relevant. In multicolored decks, it's obviously great. You may swap this for Darksteel Ingot and this can get played in 2 color decks the way banners can't. In 4 color decks, banners are worse than this. All in all, this is a good card to have a decent pile of. This won't go in every deck, but it's good to go in a lot of them. I imagine that the upside of drawing a card if they try to destroy it is better than the upside of being indestructible, so I like this guy. This may invalidate all of the foil banners I picked up, which blows.

 

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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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3 thoughts on “Commander 2014 Spoilers – 10/28/14 (non-black)

  1. I think you read Titania wrong. It says you get a guy whenever you put a land into your graveyard from play. Lots of triggers….fetchlands, Wasteland, Strip Mine, Cephalid Coliseum, Dust Bowl, Man Lands dying, etc etc etc. If you were so inclined, Armageddon.

    Titania seems pretty good to me.

    1. Yeah, you’re right. I assumed it would trigger itself. Benefitting from binning a Strip Mine and then getting it back seems better than getting value from triggering its own ability. It’s pretty broken if someone blows up every land and you get a whole side out of it. I don’t know what that will do to the price, though.

  2. Jason, I think the Offerings are better than you think. With the fact WotC has broken effects into different steps allows you to play them more politically and with greater effect. With Infernal offering you can pick someone that doesn’t have a creature out to sac allowing asymmetric card draw and then choose another player who has no creatures in the gy.

    Also I don’t think the Bitter Feud is part of the cycle as it doesn’t follow the same format as the Offerings. Interested to see what the blue one is.

    I wish that Arcane Lighthouse was playable in Modern. I would include 1 or 2 in my deck.

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