Saturday, October 29, 2016

Commander 2016: Blue

Let's continue with Blue. White was awesome.


Coastal Breach: Great with Aetherworks Marvel... wrong product. Anyways, another 'Delve for multiplayer' card. I am guessing there is one in every color?
Deepglow Skate: Awesome with a lot of Proliferate, also if you have many planeswalkers out. With planeswalkers, this can be the trigger for an ultimate. Also, if you are able to place negative counters on opponents' permanents, this can mean destruction for those permanents.
Fairie Artisans: You get to create the token copy only one at a time, and once you create a new one, the last one gets exiled. The copy does not get haste. It will give you a higher artifact count, but you can't attack with it. You can only use it to block. I guess that's all right.


Grip of Phyrexis: Excellent. You get to keep the newly controlled equipment. That's great. Your opponent can get it back with a 'bring back to hand' card or destroy it to put it in their graveyard. Otherwise, it's yours now.
Manifold Insights: This set gets better with more players. Some of the effects become amazing if there are seven players (six opponents). This card can give you such an awesome draw with six opponents. They have to choose a nonland card, and that is very important. That clause makes this card great in almost any draw, and if you draw eight lands, it will get you out of a mana flood situation-or get you mana screwed if land is what you needed.
Academy Elite: Another card that gets better the more opponents you have. The three mana activation is repeatable.


Aeon Chronicler: I am not a fan of the cards in hand effect. It will at least be a card draw engine, and that's better than the cards in hand effect.
Arcane Denial: Great play when you are trying to eliminate an opponent and there is no next turn when those cards would have been drawn.
Chain of Vapor: If you don't mind losing a land, this card will work well. It reads like a desperate play, though.


Chasm Stalker: So much fun playing this card when it was in Standard. It can become a real nuisance to your opponents. It's a cousin effect to that of Hangarback Walker.
Chief Engineer: A great card with a bunch of artifact creature tokens on the board-e.g. Thopters. I played it a lot when it was in Standard.
Devastation Tide: A casual card to be sure, and not one of the better miracles from Avacyn Restored. In Commander, though, all permanents can mean many, many permanents!


Disdainful Stroke: In Commander, this is a very effective counterspell.
Etherium Sculptor: Solid reprint. An auto-include in many Blue/Artifacts decks.
Ethersworn Adjudicator: A mid-game flyer in Commander. Nice target destruction.


Evacuation: Powerful effect in Commander.
Master of Etherium: It's great that it applies only to artifacts you control. Would be much better in an artifact creature token deck, yet in Commander you can get to have many artifacts on the board.
Minds Aglow: A very interesting card. I would play it when I had a ton of mana and I knew I was not going to mill myself, but also near the end of the game to make sure that no one puts down a lot of mana just to avoid getting milled.


Propaganda: Another great lockdown card from the old days (Tempest). Great artwork too.
Read the Runes: A costly way to draw cards unless you have dropped a lot of tokens that are not as important to you as what you can draw.
Reins of Power: If you are the one playing a deck where creatures are not a big part of your strategy, you can pick the opponent with the best creatures and drop it on that opponent. That will work great.


Spellwine: A great way to remove an offending instant or sorcery from one of your opponents' graveyards.
Swan Song: Great card from Theros. If what you are protecting is more important than the created token, it's worth it.
Tezzeret's Gambit: Sweet card draw with a counters bonus mid game. It's refreshing to see Phyrexian mana get reprinted, as broken as it proved to be.


Thrummingbird: Proliferate is one of my favorite abilities. It comes out early game in a format with lots of fatties. I can see being able to hit with this unopposed for a few turns early game.
Treasure Cruise: Nice! So broken! In Commander, it will definitely be as good as casting Ancestral Recall.
Trinket Mage: Better in Vintage to tutor for one of the Moxen. A solid card here too.


Vedalken Engineer: a solid mana dork in decks that are running four colors.
Windfall: Awesome reprint. Another card that gets better the more players there are.