Commander Legends Preliminary Review Part I

Technical difficulties leading to no pictures. I typically go on chronological release as per Mythic Spoilers for these reviews so that is the best place to get such things if you wanted to follow along.

http://mythicspoiler.com/newspoilers.html

Enemy Battle Lands 0

For heads up play these are pretty much bottom of the pile as far as dual lands go and so they are of little use to me however they are nearly as good as you can get for the multiplayer settings. If you play multiplayer get a set of these, they will go up and stay up. Reprints will not happen often enough to quell demand and not do too much to reduce price.


Keeper of the Accord 0

Cute multiplayer recovery tool but rather too low impact to be all that busted. In 1v1 play this is terrible when you are ahead and not enough when you are behind.


Alena, Kessig Trapper 2

This is an interesting card and doesn't even need to be used in multiplayer or as a commander to be viable. It is a little like Neheb the Eternal with a bit less power and a different mechanism to gain loads of mana. Great with haste and for some blowout swings but generally going to be a bit too much phaff to set up and a bit overkill. Fun looking and certainly a card I play to experiment with but expecting it to not have many suitable homes.


Halana, Kessig Ranger 0

Removal in green is nice but this is too much mana for what it brings to the table. 


The Prismatic Piper 0

Interesting design and useful but so low in power I doubt it will make it into play at all often. Like under 1% of games sort of infrequent and that is only in commander and brawl. Not a card that has any application in more conventional magic. A nice way to enable drafting with commanders though. 

Behemoth of the Abyss 1

Not close to good enough as a threat but as a mechanism to bounce lands this does have a glimmer of hope for getting some play. 

Self Mutilating Hydra? 0

Such a poor rate of return on this dork. Wouldn't play in hydra or in counters themed decks.

Aesi, Tyrant of the Epicycle Strait? 2

Translation so the name is likely wrong. A lovely Simic staple. Lay extra lands, draw extra cards, on a big fat serpent. If someone where to ask you to describe Simic you could show them this card and have answered the question very efficiently. It is a bit high up the curve for a value card in cube but it is still sufficiently powerful and on theme that I can see running it in lands themed Simic decks. Just more redundancy is what you want. If you are playing Tatyova and Dryad of the Illyian Grove then  there is room for Aesi. 

Glowing Soulsteel 0

Would have been nice to have an equipment to help support this kind of Star of Extinction combo but sadly this is wildly too much to equip to help with that. Obviously far too weak for trying to use conventionally either. Really you need to cheat it onto something and that is just going to then be too many steps to be worth bothering. 

Providential Guard Rune 0

Not good enough without commanders being potential targets. Really handy for when you have a commander you want to build around though. 

Wyleth, Soul of Steel 2

A commander such as Wyleth! (re previous card) This guy loves getting all the buffs and being all sorts of protected. Likely one of the best vaultron commanders. Viable for cube constructed decks as well. You don't need to go as all in with Wyleth as you do with Kor Spiritdancer. Lightning Greaves into Wyleth is efficient and low risk. Most cheap equipment is for that matter, as are protective auras, those with flash in particular. Wyleth is certainly a synergy card but I suspect you can fit him into both aura and equipment decks effectively. Aura ones don't tend to need card draw and are usually green and white base, often with a blue or black splashes before red. Equip decks however are all about the red white base and make good use of protective dorks from white like the Runes one drops, Selfless Spirits and Bodyguards! Green auras does not lack for value, Boros equips do thus making Wyleth appeal a little more still. Just don't get him Shocked in response to paying much of an equip cost. 

Interpret the Signs 1

You can set this up to draw a whole lot of cards if you wish. That gives it some application in something like a Cadaverous Bloom deck. Too clunky and setup intense to be worth running outside of the abusive drawing of 10+ cards to immediately go off with. 

Brinelin, the Moonkraken 0

A very big Man-o-War indeed. This is just far too expensive for the effect it has on the game. It is not much protection, threat, or value. 

Mnumonic Deluge 2

Very powerful but prohibitively expensive for most cube uses. I want to have Omniscience with this. I really want to hit Time Stretch too which sounds like a bit too much top end for any sort of viable deck. Basically you need to abuse this to play it and there are very few places which can do that.

Krark the Thumbless 1

Much as this is a meme card it does start to make a coin flip constructed cube deck viable. Fun too! I'll absolutely be building that up for a laugh now one day.