G'day brothers1Jake FitzSimons here to review the best cEDH tools from the worst thing that ever happened to Dominaria; The Brothers War. We've got combo pieces, powerful interaction, fascinating commanders and even a leak that didn't quite live up to the hype. Most surprisingly, we've got good white cards!
This is my seventh cEDH set review of 2022 and try as I might, it's usually a stretch to fill out the white section. Not so with The Brothers War, white got as many cEDH relevant cards as blue, red and green2 put together!
is its utility. It's just as good at stopping an opponent from winning as it is at protecting your own win. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Calamity's Wake
. Like most white abilities, this is a symmetrical effect, and a resolved Calamity's Wake
is going to shut off your own noncreature spells the same as your opponents'. This would relegate it to a purely defensive role, if not for creature only wincons.
isn't bringing much new to the table. She's fine if you're desperate for redundancy, but the real appeal is her activated ability.
No, I'm not about to tell you giving out free cards is secretly a good thing. This is a terrible source of card advantage, if you could even stretch the term and call it that. But if you read Comprehending Competitive: How To Stop Thassa's Oracle, you'll know forced draws are one of the strongest ways to defeat Commander's strongest combo. From the turn after Loran of the Third Path
lands, she becomes a must remove problem for any hopeful Thassa's Oracle
is a fair four mana rather than the terrifying two mana that the "leak3" suggested she would be. On the one hand I'm thankful because a superior Grand Abolisher
doesn't seem necessary and the price would be ridiculous. On the other hand, I love busted cards and I like when white gets broken things. Anyway.
effect we all love and loathe, one of the best cards ever printed for saying "wait your turn" to every blue player at the table. With no direct stack interaction to speak of, it's one of white's few ways to truly protect itself. Unfortunately in the case of Myrel
, it also costs four mana, nearing the upper limit of what most players want to pay for protection.
in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty thanks to how Channel works, but they remain airtight against everything else. If you're not interested in the Soldier production, the only question is whether or not you're willing to pay twice as much for a Grand Abolisher
.
If you are interested in the Soldiers? I applaud you, exponential growth is fun at any power level in Commander. In a stax deck, once everyone is locked down, Myrel
does present a very real clock and she will take over the game in much the same way Najeela, the Blade-Blossom
. If you're still new to cEDH, it's worth knowing bounce spells are ubiquitous. The temporary nature of the removal doesn't matter in a format that moves this quickly. Besides, you'll often use interaction like this to open up a winning line.
adds an additional tax of (2) to whatever you hit. In shorter games, this is essentially hard removal. Who wants to pay five mana to get back the Rhystic Study
into the mix and you'll never have to worry about what you partitioned again. Just remember that's a double edged sword - you don't want to exile one of your own things and have someone else land a Drannith Magistrate
before you get a chance to cast it again.
Why would you want to exile your own things? Enter the battlefield abilities of course. Yes, we're back to Dockside Extortionist
with cheap instants isn't new to cEDH, but outside of Ephemerate
, it's fairly new to white. The sheer utility on this card as a tool to remove stax pieces and go further on your own combos makes it my pick for the best card of the set.
. No doubt we'll go through it again next time we see a card like this. But I'm always thrilled to be wrong, so quote me and call me a fool if Defabricate
was blue? Well, you'd have a better card than this one. While it's close, Machine God's Effigy
has a few key differences that make it worse than it's leaner red cousin. Obviously, four mana is just not as good as three. Three is already sketchy given the speed of cEDH mana, but Cursed Mirror
gets away with it thanks to providing haste and sharing a color with Dockside Extortionist
.
That second feature can't be overlooked. Blue already has access to clone effects at a cheaper price (Phantasmal Image
but with all the worst parts of both. If you know anything about cEDH, you'll know Tymna the Weaver
is a powerhouse, drawing her controller card after card for small increments of life. If you've been playing for a while, you'll know Edric, Spymaster of Trest
was once a force to be reckoned with, overcoming the downside of its universal draw ability with a tide of 1/1 enablers, turn spells and countermagic.
. Black has no shortage of evasive beaters, but it doesn't have the density of interaction and inevitability that blue can boast. For all its strengths as a color, black is also severely lacking in wincons. They're just too expensive to assemble and too difficult to protect. There's likely a winning line available via Doomsday
, but with no countermagic or preemptive protection, it strikes me as too fragile to be reliable.
and doesn't do even a tenth of what you'd expect for seven mana in cEDH. What you're left with is a mono-black deck that struggles to interact, struggles to win, and actively helps any combat-centric decks it might share a pod with. Sadly, Gix
. I'm shocked I'm mentioning it at all. Yes, in ideal circumstances you have a one mana removal spell that exiles not just creatures, but planeswalkers. But what's the more realistic scenario? Short of a self-mill strategy with a creature focus, you're unlikely to have a full graveyard in the early game. Frankly, you're unlikely to have a full graveyard in the mid game, and if you do, it's not likely to be made up of creatures. And if you're not getting the full discount, it's hard to argue this fares any better than reliable staples like Dismember
have always been on the verge of playability. There aren't many creatures with more than three toughness that see play in cEDH. Add mass artifact destruction as an option for when there aren't enough creatures to warrant a wipe and you've got a powerful tool for levelling the playing field.
, printed in Battle for Baldur's Gate and likely the superior option. While it only deals two damage, it's instant speed and asymmetrical to boot, making it a far easier inclusion for most decks. Still, if you're looking to keep the board under control over the course of the game, Brotherhood's End
offers two great options. Either hold back your artifacts a turn or two so you can clean up everyone else's, or hold back your creatures and do the same.
in play. The chip damage from this static ability doesn't seem likely to matter, but it's a must-remove thorn in the side of anyone wanting to combo off with Treasures. As to what sort of a deck would actually want this sort of anti-artifact tech, it's hard to say. First strike and trample make it a valuable attacker, but decks that want good attackers usually want them at one mana.
As for how that translates to cEDH? Poorly. It's a sweet interaction and in a high end landfall deck I'm sure there's no limit to it's uses, but cEDH decks just don't have four mana lying around for such an incidental bonus. Being asymmetrical, it's noteable that Rootpath Purifier
Finally, a Boros commander that breaks parity on stax and cheats mana costs! Card advantage paired with mana advantage is a potent combo indeed and Queen Kayla bin-Kroog
takes both concepts to the extreme. For just four mana a turn Queen Kayla
can get six mana worth of permanents into play and she'll still leave you with the same size hand you had before you activated her.
As it works for both creatures and artifacts, this is an incredible way of "cheating" stax effects into play. Without enchantments, Queen Kayla bin-Kroog
and a few others, but there's no reason they can't be played in the 99. There are more than enough stax pieces spread out between one and three mana that a Queen Kayla bin-Kroog
activation should give maximum value every single time.
One of the biggest challenges for any stax deck is how to get around its own stax. Queen Kayla bin-Kroog
's beauty is that she can develop the board without ever casting a spell! Better yet, once you've revealed your cards from a Queen Kayla
activation, your opponents won't have priority to respond to that. That means fetches can't be cracked in response to a Magus of the Moon
! This is sounding very similar to another Boros queen...
? "Because I don't want to" is a perfectly valid response to that, but let's quickly look at the similarities. Obviously, they share a color identity, one that does best focusing on stax pieces and disruptive effects. Queen Kayla
might be one mana cheaper to get into play, but she also takes a full turn to actually do anything, not to mention an ongoing mana investment. I think that's enough to relegate Queen Kayla bin-Kroog
as far as I'm concerned. Sure, discounting instants and sorceries is nice, but the majority of them only cost 1cmc to begin with, making the discount useless. If you're already enchanted with Stenn
, a commander looking to combo in almost the exact same manner? Stay put. The additional color and card advantage is worth more than the incidental cost reduction. I admit, I'm not crazy about Urza, Lord Protector
is both redundancy and an upgrade. If you need to attack with your combo pieces you know you're in a spot of bother, but it doesn't hurt that can also become a growing, flying threat without much extra effort.
The Brothers Snore?
The BrothersWar is less powerful than I'd hoped it would be. Artifact-centric sets have a history of far too powerful cards that require banning, but it seems like the powers that be have learned their lesson. In fact, there were only two artifacts even worth covering, neither of which will make waves in cEDH.
More than anything, I'm thrilled white has so many new tools. We're not there yet, but we're rapidly approaching the day that white feels like a genuine addition to a deck's color identity. I'm also excited to see Queen Kayla bin-Kroog
start showing up. Even if she does end up a pale imitation of Winota, there's something so fascinating about such an offbeat effect in Boros.
What did I miss? What are you most excited for? Is Defabricate
Jake FitzSimons is a writer from Sydney and a Magic fiend. He's either the johnniest spike or the spikiest johnny, nobody is sure which. When he isn’t brewing or playing cEDH, he can be found writing, playing piano, and doting on his little cat.
