The Best Commander Cards From... Weatherlight
Welcome back to The Best Commander Cards From..., a series focusing on the most powerful EDH cards from Magic: The Gathering's rich thirty-year-long history. Today's focus is Weatherlight, the eleventh Magic expansion set, which was released in June of 1997. Weatherlight appropriately begins the Weatherlight Saga, which lasted through 2001, and it also finishes off the Mirage block.
The Skyship Weatherlight & The Legacy Weapon
Weatherlight follows the crew of the aptly named Weatherlight flying ship as they try to collect a series of artifacts to stop Yawgmoth from invading Dominaria. These artifacts, assembled by Urza, are known collectively as the Legacy. If you know names like Gerrard, Squee, or Sisay, this set is where they really start to shine.
Mechanics & Firsts
While Weatherlight contained no new named mechanics, one more interesting fact is that none of its first-time creature types still exist today. These new types, Undead, Avizoa, Behemoth, Peacekeeper, Gatekeeper, Aboroth, Barishi, and Thundermare, have all since been changed. Enough about that, though, let's get into some cards, starting with a dishonorable mention.
Lotus Vale
As written, the original text of Lotus Vale implies that one can refuse to sacrifice lands and simply use this as a one-time ritual with the ability on the stack. One can argue that this would certainly be banned if it functioned that way, but I digress. Instead, you must sacrifice two untapped lands for it to enter the battlefield at all, and that makes this a very dishonorable mention indeed.
Mind Stone
By far the most popular card from Weatherlight, Mind Stone is an excellent representation of what the Commander format values, as people love ramping and drawing extra cards. Personally, I love this card, and I've cracked it for a card in many games once the ramp was less valuable.
Null Rod
While Null Rod is another two-mana artifact, it does something far different than the last entry, and costs significantly more money. The recent discourse around cards like Collector Ouphe should make it clear: cards like these can just shut some decks down completely if you don't have a good backup plan or immediate removal.
Doomsday
I've rarely seen this card played correctly, but playing it properly usually means you win the game on the spot. While Doomsday is usually considered more of a 60-card constructed win-condition, it's more than capable of getting the job done here too.
Noble Benefactor
Three mana for the whole table to tutor, possibly with a severe delay, is a very intriguing card. Sure, you can put this into group hug decks all day long, and, sure, it's probably just far worse than Scheming Symmetry, but for less than $1 I can't help but feel like Noble Benefactor is a very exciting and cheap way to make my combo decks a bit spicier.
Scorched Ruins
Unlike Lotus Vale, Scorched Ruins offers you more mana than if you'd simply played a basic land. While the risks of getting this blown up are still very high, the payoff is similar to a City of Traitors or Ancient Tomb. Colorless mana is restrictive, but I'm sure you won't be playing this in Jodah, the Unifier.
Buried Alive
A cornerstone of graveyard decks, Buried Alive represents a great way to get everything from dredge cards to reanimation targets into your graveyard at a reasonable rate for later use. Unlike Entomb, you can grab up to three things with Buried Alive, which is great for decks like Meren of Clan Nel Toth.
Gemstone Mine
If you need multiple colors of mana at any cost, it's hard to do better than the immediacy of Gemstone Mine. Primarily played in cEDH decks, I've mostly found a home for this card in my very own Atraxa, Praetors' Voice deck. I think any combo deck can probably make use of it, though.
Abeyance
I had Abeyance used against me as a silver bullet when I was playing my trademark Saheeli, the Gifted storm deck. While I did counter it, that meant I couldn't interact on the stack later that turn, and I subsequently lost. Still, drawing a card when you're not using it to interfere with storm players is a nice consolation prize.
Aura of Silence
Usually, I think cards that interfere with the casting of certain card types can suffer if they're played too late in the game. I also think Aura of Silence avoids that weakness pretty well. Add in a Sun Titan or Sevinne's Reclamation, and you've got a recipe for pain.
Fervor
While this is registered in tens of thousands of decks, it seems that Fervor will soon be dethroned by Rising of the Day as a premium way to grant haste to your whole board in red. If you're desperate for this effect, you can run both, but sadly Fervor is significantly more expensive right now. Such is the changing of the guard in Magic.
Vitalize
There aren't too many cheap ways to untap all your creatures, so Vitalize maintains relevance in a handful of decks that really care about getting extra activations out of their creatures. In particular, Seton, Krosan Protector, Marwyn, the Nurturer, and Selvala, Explorer Returned are among the most popular commanders featuring it.
Gaea's Blessing
Just under Null Rod in popularity within the set, Gaea's Blessing is mostly an enabler in The Gitrog Monster, although it also has some limited utility as anti-mill tech or a slow way to interfere with graveyard decks. Admittedly, I don't see this often, but it's in the top-8 in popularity somehow.
Veteran Explorer
Usually, I see Veteran Explorer paired with Confounding Conundrum or a commander that can loop it like Meren of Clan Nel Toth. Outside of those situations, it's mostly just a pleasant little group hug card that speeds up the game quite nicely and never hurt anyone, right?
Firestorm
When I say that Firestorm is heavily underrated, I don't mean that it belongs in very many decks. However, as someone that's often had far too many cards and not enough fast mana, I can tell you that Firestorm excels at letting you get utility out of needless cards. Also, it is utterly obscene in Rielle, the Everwise.
Pendrell Mists
This painful lock piece punishes any creature-dense deck pretty hard. Combine Pendrell Mists with any kind of mana denial and you've got a recipe for a very rough game. This is a very sink-or-swim card in the sense that it's either doing nothing for you or doing something and making everyone else miserable.
Disrupt
I've got a soft spot for conditional one-mana counters, and Disrupt is a pretty good one. There's not much like watching someone spend their last mana paying the 1 for your Rhystic Study trigger knowing that you're about to hit their removal spell with a Disrupt. Sure, it's high variance in a format like Commander, but many of the most fun cards usually are.
I must admit, Weatherlight has a lot of underplayed goodies that are just waiting for the appropriate tables and decks. Some of these cards weren't on my radar before, which made this a particularly fun set to look through. As always, I expect that your pet cards will be in the comments. Perhaps a fan of Steel Golem or Abjure? Just as well, if you're wondering where Portal and its subsequent releases are, since they're technically next in the Magic chronology after Visions, know that they'll be featured as soon as I figure out how best to combine/separate them. At any rate, I've been Luka "Robot" Sharaska, and I hope I'll see you next time.
