The Best Commander Cards From... Stronghold

Luka Sharaska • November 3, 2023

Review

Welcome back to The Best Commander Cards From..., a series focusing on the most powerful EDH cards from across Magic: The Gathering's rich thirty-year-long history. Today's focus is Stronghold, the thirteenth expansion set, which was released in March of 1998 as the second set in the Tempest block.

Creature Types

While we did just miss out on Halloween, I hope you'll at least accept that this is a Friday in which we'll be discussing the thirteenth of something. This is usually the spot where I talk about new creature types, but... Stronghold didn't have any. I don't really know why, and I'm fresh out of jokes, so uh, next section!

New Mechanics

Stronghold may not quite have the depth that its predecessor, Tempest, does, at least not when it comes to how many cards we're gonna talk about. Mechanically, however, this set only introduces one new thing, mostly borrowing and expanding upon mechanics featured earlier in the block. The en-Kor damage redirection ability is this new thing, and it's certainly not the attention-grabber I'd hope for in Commander. Anyway, we've got 143 cards in this set to think about, so let's talk about the cool ones!

Mox Diamond

Every time I look at this card, I'm astounded by how expensive it is. At this point, I think my favorite printing would have to be either HP or Epson, if you catch my drift. All joking aside, it's clear why this is the most powerful and widely popular card from the set. You should expect to see this at many cEDH tables.

Burgeoning

I recall purchasing this card for only $6 a few years back and feeling kinda silly for it. It did good work in my Tatyova, Benthic Druid

deck, and it's more than double in price since then. Basically any deck with lots of card draw can make excellent use of Burgeoning
, and it feels like that's more and more decks each day.

Bottomless Pit

Hehe, now here's a fun stax piece that I really like. Most of the time your random three-mana enchantments need to survive for a turn to really see any benefit, or worse, they hit you first if they trigger on end step. Not Bottomless Pit

, though. In fact, the whole table will get a chance to stare into the pit before you ever have to.

Constant Mists

It turns out that there's an increasing number of commanders that care about your lands hitting the graveyard, and Constant Mists

is a pretty nice enabler. I usually wouldn't expect a Fog
 effect to be this expensive, but buyback is a pretty big game. I imagine this card is even more frustrating in two-player games.

Grave Pact

This card is what I call a groaner. You play it, and anyone playing creatures will probably groan, because those creatures are not long for this world. Whether you're playing Braids, Arisen Nightmare

or Meren of Clan Nel Toth
, this is usually a card you're hoping to find.

Dream Halls

One of the all-time greats when it comes to chaos, Dream Halls

makes Possibility Storm
 look like a snooze-fest by comparison. This card gets the game moving very quickly if you don't just immediately win immediately after you cast it, since there's bound to be someone at the table that certainly won't make that mistake.

Hermit Druid

The trick here is that you'll dump more and more cards into your graveyard for every nonbasic you're running over a basic. And if you have no basics? Congratulations, you've really made the grade, and you can feel free to play Thassa's Oracle

or Laboratory Maniac
 at your earliest convenience.

Horn of Greed

This may be a symmetrical effect, but I would only want to play this in decks where I'm playing lots of extra lands. As you might imagine, Azusa, Lost but Seeking

is the big winner here, with cards like Dryad of the Ilysian Grove
 and Oracle of Mul Daya
 seeing big returns out of the 99 as well.

Intruder Alarm

At some point it becomes easier to tell you what cards this doesn't combo with. Perhaps the intention was to let a player untap their potential blockers in the event that an opponent played a hasty creature, but whatever the intended purpose of this card was, it's now largely relegated to enabling all manner of shenanigans.

Megrim

If you thought that Megrim

would be most prominently featured in Nekusar, the Mindrazer
 decks, you'd be wrong. It's actually mostly in Tinybones, Trinket Thief
! That damage can stack up very quickly if wheels start flying, though, so don't be afraid to put it into any deck featuring them.

Mortuary

Mortuary

Notable for going absolutely wild in Gyruda, Doom of Depths

, Mortuary
 can also be used to great effect alongside cards like Bolas's Citadel
. As you might expect, ways to interact with the top of your library, particularly casting spells from it, are what you're aiming for here. This is a very specific effect that only some decks are looking for, but it does that job quite well.

Portcullis

This card is not popular at all, but before the printing of Mirror of Life Trapping

I would spend lots of time thinking about how to use it. Unfortunately for fans of this card, I'm pretty sure it's only ever going to be an expensive way to interfere with commanders, which is probably why it's most prominently featured in Liberator, Urza's Battlethopter
.

Reins of Power

This card has Commander written all over it to the point that it's only been reprinted in Commander products since its original printing. Borrowing someone's army to finish off a player or two is a pretty cool play, and I've lost to this card on two occasions myself.

Ruination

I'd usually only want to play this in a deck with mostly basic Mountain

s, where the effect it'll have on board ranges from negligible for some to utterly backbreaking for others. In my book, punishing greedy mana bases is more than worth having a card that doesn't always do too much, especially if it'll almost never touch my lands.

Tortured Existence

There's a lot of sweet things you can do with Tortured Existence, including create a sweet Pauper deck! Pauper aside, lots of commanders care about cards leaving your graveyard or cards getting discarded, and this does both at a rate that's quite palatable!

Sliver Queen

One of the biggest Slivers to ever see print, Sliver Queen

still remains the priciest one on the market, largely due to her presence on the Reserved List. Although the number of five-color legendary Slivers has only gone up since her printing, she remains a notable card from Stronghold.

That's all I've got for you today. I cut just a few cards this time, but nothing too wild. I really feel the sense of experimentation and freedom of design that went into this set, and although I think a lot of cards missed the mark by a wide margin, there's a lot of fun to be had in looking back in retrospect. Next up is Exodus, but before we get there, what's your favorite EDH card from Stronghold? Let me know in the comments. At any rate, I've been Luka "Robot" Sharaska, and I hope I'll see you next time.

Luka Sharaska

Luka Sharaska

Luka "Robot" Sharaska has been playing Magic for more than a decade, since the days of New Phyrexia. They've been captivated since that day. They earned the nickname "Robot" with their monotone voice, affinity for calculating odds, and worrying lack of sleep.