Ravnica Allegiance Legendary Creature Review

Hello again, MtG expert Nathan McCarthy is back with some more Commander content!

It’s been a bit, and in our time apart, I’ve continued brewing sweet Commander decks and running to medium finishes at large tournaments. But mostly, I’ve spent my time getting extremely excited for Ravnica Allegiance (RNA). This new set has powerful options for all formats, but I’ve been most impressed by the Legendaries. Because of that, I felt it was appropriate to borrow an article style from a previous series on Flipside and examine the Legends in RNA through a couple predetermined lenses.

For those that have been following Flipside Commander content for a while, you’ll recognize these metrics from Kilian Johnson’s articles:

I will be giving x/10 scores on the following axes:

As a Commander: How well I think a legend will do as the leader of its own deck. Cards can get points for being fun build arounds, promoting unique deck building choices, or potentially being powerful competitively.

As Part of the 99: This is how well I see them fitting into existing decks or archetypes, with preference given to support cards, as opposed to build-arounds

Versatility: This is basically the opposite of being a build-around. Legends with high versatility scores are great based on stats and require minimal support to want to include in existing decks.

Budget Friendliness: This is how easily a Legend can be built on a budget while still being functional and fun to play.

Overall: The rounded average of the scores.

Now onto the first legend:

Teysa Karlov

Each visit to Ravnica has given us a new version of this Orzhov representative and she has been ever-present as a driving force in the guild and a stabilizing counter to the actual guild leader(s). Teysa, Orzhov Scion was the first Commander deck I ever built, so this character will alway hold a special favor from me. Regardless of my bias, I believe her new incarnation is one of the coolest Legends printed in a long time. She obviously lends herself to an aristocrats strategy (one where you kill your own creatures for value), but she does so in a unique way.

I’ve talked before about how much I like different approaches to the same archetype and this is a unique payoff for her archetype. She wants you to have all the pieces of the archetype in your deck in equal amounts (sac effects, creatures to sac, and abilities that trigger when creatures die), and just puts the whole process into overdrive. She fills none of the three roles by herself, but makes all the existing synergies even more potent.

Her token anthem effect is not a huge deal, but incidental life gain is important in many metagames. Being able to pay life to your black effects and have faith that you’ll gain the padding you need to survive being attacked and taxing your own life total simply by enacting your game plan is very useful.

When building around Teysa, creatures that make tokens when they die are basically the ideal support cards for her. Look to Afterlife cards from RNA or older staples like Requiem Angel.

As a Commander: 7/10 - Strong build-around options, though not as high of a raw power level as her original iteration.

As Part of the 99: 9/10 - Staple in all aristocrats decks that can cast her.

Versatility: 2/10 - Requires build-around and does not function outside of a specific archetype.

Budget Friendliness: 9/10 - There are tons of options for aristocrats that are dirt-cheap, only not 10/10 because she’s enemy colored, so less budget dual land options.

Overall: 7/10 - Great card I will 100% be building around soon.

Lavinia, Azorius Renegade

Lavinia is not really meant for our format. Her “you have to play fair” effect is relatively narrow, but her main strength comes from her color combination.

I do not believe she will be a large player at more casual tables, but she could be an extremely potent commander at a more competitive table. I do not consider myself extremely versed in competitive Commander (CEDH), but I do watch basically all of ‘The Laboratory Maniacs’ YouTube content. If you want to learn more about the format, I’d recommend them to give you a good idea of just how degenerate and fun it can be when everyone is trying to break the game.

Now, with that small aside out of the way, I want to highlight how powerful her effect is in that format. Mana rocks and rituals are very common to fuel big payoff turns, and free spells like Pact of Negation and Force of Will are used to protect important combos. Additionally, creature removal is not nearly as present in CEDH because much of the action in that format happens on the stack, or involves lock pieces like Trinisphere or Thorn of Amethyst. Having a 2-mana creature in your command zone that forces your opponents to play fair is very potent. The presence of White in her color identity allows you to play all the most potent hate spells in your deck, such as Stony Silence, Rest in Peace, Ethersworn Canonist, and Enlightened Tutor to find whatever is necessary in this time. You can even combine her with Knowledge Pool to lock everybody out if you're feeling extra sadistic. 

Additionally, the fact that she’s blue allows your to play counterspells yourself, and  since her effect is asymmetrical, you can still Force of Will your opponents without having to worry about them Force’ing back. Finally, she very importantly does not shut down your cantrips, which means that you can play the greatest and most powerful aspect of blue and a hatebear strategy simultaneously.

Grand Arbiter Augustin IV was a previous option for a prison-oriented UW deck in CEDH, but his text encouraged you to play more mana-denial and taxation effects, meaning a turbo-xerox strategy was particularly ineffective. The fact that Lavinia allows you to be fair while still playing cantrips is a big deal, and the biggest question for me is “how do I win the game with this deck?”

For a more casual sample Lavinia deck, see CMDR 99’s deck tech here. 

As a Commander: 6/10 - I believe she is only relevant in CEDH, but has the potential to be extremely potent in that format.

As Part of the 99: 2/10 - Unless your meta is combo-heavy, I wouldn’t bother with this style of taxation.

Versatility: 1/10 - Niche card.

Budget Friendliness: 0/10 - If you’re playing her, you are preparing for a metagame full of Ancient Tombs, Moats, and original duals. Appealing for many, but far from budget friendly.

Overall: 2/10 - Niche card, but far from useless.

Judith, the Scourge Diva

This is a card I have high hopes for in Standard, Modern, and Commander. She is a solid role-filler and her incidental anthem effect is a big deal. She is a nice parallel to Teysa Karlov, where they both are payoffs for an aristocrats strategy that also benefit the going-wide secondary strategy that frequently pairs with killing your own creatures.

Judith does not compare particularly favorably to Teysa in Commander, however. She is BR, which is much less essential to an aristocrats strategy than WB is and her payoff is not as unique. While having another instance of Outpost Siege in your deck or Command Zone is certainly very powerful, she is not nearly as door-busting as her trans-guild partner.

You can pair her with incidental deathtouch to turn her pings into removal spells and she is the best commander to be a free win condition if you are bent on doing some Phyrexian Altar/Gravecrawler comboing. Judith isn't as strong leading a traditional aristocrats deck without tailoring it to her but with some tweaks, you can accentuate her power. 

Additionally, The Command Zone already created a deck tech for her if you waned to check that out. 

As a Commander: 5/10 - She is honestly one of the worse options for aristocrats as she is in a unique albeit restrictive color combination for the archetype, but if BR is where you want to be, she is the best option.

As Part of the 99: 9/10 - Basically same position as Teysa. Powerful payoff that should be an auto-include in aristocrat decks with both black and red.

Versatility: 2/10 - Narrow aggressive Aristocrat card.

Budget Friendliness: 10/10 - Aristocrats is heavily supported by commons, and there are a ton of common/uncommon dual lands for BR.

Overall: 7/10 - Good where she’s good.

Nikya of the Old Ways

Nikya is an extremely exciting card for an existing archetype. Ruric Thar, the Unbowed basically created the archetype of ‘all beef’ and it has been a popular choice for a good reason. While having Ruric Thar in the Command Zone is certainly appealing to punish your opponents for not abiding by your restrictions, Nikya is significantly more potent.

In general in Magic: the Gathering, it is better to be proactive than reactive. Ruric Thar is a card that’s effect only comes into play when someone else makes the choice to have it trigger. He is still potent besides this because the thing he punishes is extraordinarily common and his body is honestly huge, but Nikya is an entirely different animal (not a horse pun).

Nikya is a volatile mana doubler, which is one of the strongest effects in Commander.  Generally, Commander games allow you to spend some time setting up and untapping with your 5-drop is far from unlikely. Once you untap with access to 10+ mana, you can do some truly powerful things, even in a deck that is 100% creatures.

If you’re looking for how to build her, you’ll want to look to existing ‘all beef’ decks, of which there are plenty. However, unlike Ruric Thar, I would recommend running actual 0 non-creature spells. In Ruric Thar decks, it was frequently right to run some number of extremely powerful spells you didn’t mind taking 6 for, like Zendikar Resurgent, Green Sun’s Zenith, or Primal Surge. However, Nikya explicitly stopping you from playing these spells instead of just punishing you means you should really avoid putting them into your deck altogether.

As a Commander: 9/10 - Best commander for her archetype by a lot. Only not 10/10 because her archetype is significantly restrictive.

As Part of the 99: 5/10 - She’s 10/10 in ‘all beef’ decks and 0/10 in anything else.

Versatility: 0/10 - Don’t play her with noncreature spells.

Budget Friendliness: 6/10 - While she is in good colors for budget decks, I think you will have much more fun with her if you play the most powerful things to do with your mana, which can be far from budget-friendly. If you’re looking to battle on a budget, Nikya works with whatever random fatties you have lying around and you can upgrade with more expensive fatties over time. While that’s not the most scientific method to build a deck, it is a nice option to have.

Overall: 5/10 – Restrictive to one style of deck, but an absolute all-star in it.

Zegana, Utopian Speaker

To be frank, I am not a fan of Zegana’s new iteration. Back when she was Prime Speaker, she drew a ton of cards, got a ton of counters, and was enabled trivially. After her demotion, she’s looking much less appealing.

Not only is drawing 1 card not a huge payoff when playing a 4 cost creature, but having a creature on board with a counter is not extremely easy. While your deck is likely to be able to do this if you’re aware Zegana is in your deck, it is not nearly as trivial as just having any creature at all, which is what enabled old Zegana.

Not only is she not particularly powerful in a vacuum, but she also has the stiffest competition among all the Commanders in the new set. UG is the most powerful color combination in Commander by a very wide margin, and has extremely potent Commanders to choose from.

If you are going to be building around Zegana in your Command Zone, maybe because you really like her art by Slawomir Maniak, you’ll want to build a deck that never worries about triggering her first ability. There are many +1/+1 counter synergy decks that already are supported in UG and Commander in general, but you’ll want to slant more towards creatures that self-enable. Wide pumping spells are much worse than just a creature that enters with a counter already attached when trying to ensure Zegana is the best she can be.

As a Commander: 2/10 - Stiff competition and not extremely potent.

As Part of the 99: 4/10 - Possibly belongs in the 99 of a +1/+1 counter deck, but far from one of the best payoffs.

Versatility: 3/10 - Not trivial to enable and restricted to a deck that can enable her.

Budget Friendliness: 7/10 - Being able to use Green ramp spells and blue draw spells greatly increases the power level of any budget deck.

Overall: 4/10 - Not a fan of Zegana.

Rakdos, the Showstopper

Now this is a Commander!

If nothing else, Rakdos is cool. A 6/6 Flying Trample for 6 Demon is cool. Flipping coins is cool. Killing creatures is cool. Consider him Miles Davis.

In my yesteryears, my friends loved a specific deck of mine. I had a Mogis, God of Slaughter BR control deck. It would tax your life total, wipe the board, and play a ton of symmetrical pain effects. The reason why this deck was so popular is because it dramatically changed how the games played out when it was present, but was far from overpowered. Because it played a ton of symmetrical pain effects, it would kill itself just as often as it killed opponents and frequently sped the game up while not being a target itself because it was always so far from winning. While this play pattern is somewhat dependant on deck construction, I have noticed it as a common trend among many BR control decks that I have seen in the past.

Because I have had such positive experiences historically, Rakdos excites me because he fills a significant hole the archetype had. While BR had access to board wipes and threats previously, attaching this random board wipe effect to your commander is basically the exact effect you want in a deck like BR control.

Rakdos will pair well with card draw and mana ramp as most Commanders do. The fact that he does such a good job of protecting you from out-of-control opponents enables you to ramp and draw cards unmolested.

Additionally, he is a coin-flip card that isn’t disastrous if you lose flips. I am not a huge fan of random effects where you basically lose the card or lose the game if you get the wrong dice roll or coin flip. If you want to embrace the flips though, you can go hard in that direction. Rakdos has the excitement of not really knowing what your spell will do but even if you lose every single coin flip, you still have a 6/6 Flying Trample Demon. A decent consolation prize, if I do say so myself.

As a Commander: 10/10 - Exciting, unique, and generically powerful. Great Commander.

As Part of the 99: 5/10 - Doesn’t automatically belong in any deck, but a reasonable support spell. Very little synergy, mostly leaning on power level.

Versatility: 9/10 - Will fit into basically any archetype, even one trying to go wide.

Budget Friendliness: 8/10 - Generically good cards are good with Rakdos, and BR has a lot of cheap lands. Unfortunately, it is likely he will be an expensive card on his own, due to his power level in Standard.

Overall: 8/10 - My favorite Commander from Ravnica Allegiance.

Prime Speaker Vannifar

It’s rare we see a Commander on this power level. The honest truth is, if you have Vannifar in play under your control without summon sickness, you win the game.You can look to the many reddit threads to see exactly how you turn her into a kill, but the bottom line is that all your opponents die. As a result, I actually do not recommend building Vannifar unless you’re already the villain of your playgroup.

If you sit down and reveal her in the Command Zone, it is simply the correct choice for your opponents to focus you down ASAP. Additionally, if you include her in your 99, you are likely to get one free win off your opponents not expecting you to play her, equip Lightning Greaves, and kill everyone, but after that, the jig will be up and once again, you can expect to be heavily focused whenever you bring that deck out again.

The awkward thing about Vannifar is that she does not fit as a CEDH Commander either. She is almost certainly too slow of a combo for that format and she’s extremely vulnerable to interaction.This puts Vannifar in the awkward position of being too good for casual and too bad for competitive.If you want a more optimistic take on this absurdly powerful Prime Speaker, see Jumbo Commander’s deck tech.

As a Commander: 5/10 - Compare to Narset, Enlightened Master.

As Part of the 99: 5/10 - Will win you exactly one game before turning your deck into a Narset, Enlightened Master deck.

Versatility: 5/10 - While she could fit in any deck, you’re probably going to want to combo, which pigeon holes your deckbuilding. 

Budget Friendliness: 5/10 - Her combo is cheap but to protect her is expensive. Depends on your metagame whether you’ll have fun building a budget Vannifar deck.

Overall: 5/10 - What did you expect?

The Haunt of Hightower

This bad boy is the buy-a-box promo for RNA, and I’m honestly a fan. It’s not extraordinarily powerful, but it is unique and has a lot of potential. I have already talked about the potency of incidental lifegain in Commander, and The Haunt of Hightower gives you a lot of that. This card obviously pairs particularly well with a more voltron strategy (planning to protect your Commander and win by dealing 21 Commander damage), where we leverage their absurdly large body. Make no mistake, The Haunt of Hightower is not a 3/3, as it appears on the tin. Just attacking once makes it a 4/4 and it’s likely it’s much bigger than that with minimal effort.

Importantly, there are a lot of good discard synergies in Black and Black also has the most payoffs for being mono-colored. Access to Cabal Coffers and Cabal Stronghold mean you can likely get to the 6 CMC commander without an issue. You can also feel free to pay as much life as you’d like to draw cards, when you can count on your Lightning Greaves to ensure The Haunt connects to recoup your lifeloss.

I also feel a lot of people will underestimate The Haunt of Hightower and you are unlikely to be a target in any given playgroup until it’s already too late and The Haunt has way greater than 21 power. If you want to play it in the 99, its combination with Traumatize is *traumatic*

As a Commander: 7/10 - I’m honestly impressed and think The Haunt will provide for a potent and fun gameplay experience, which is all you can ask of a buy-a-box promo.

As Part of the 99: 1/10 - A lot of the strength of The Haunt is the guaranteed access to it. You can build and play your deck much differently when you know you have a giant flying lifelinker whenever you’d like one. However, when they’re not in your command zone, The Haunt is unlikely to impress unless in a Dimir Mill deck.

Versatility: 6/10 - While The Haunt really doesn’t fit into any deck they’re not headlining, I do feel like there are a lot of different ways to go when building the deck. A heavy discard theme, a traditional control deck with The Haunt as the finisher, or a life gain/drain deck all seem compelling.

Budget Friendliness: 10/10 - Mono-colored, upgradable, and likely buildable to a potent level with only budget box commons, uncommons, rares and maybe some mythics you have lying around, I feel this is the best Commander for building on a budget from RNA by a significant margin.

Overall: 8/10 -  Basically the ideal buy-a-box promo.

Wrapping Up

This was extremely fun for me to write and I’m so excited for this new set. I am chomping at the bit with ideas for Standard, Commander, and even Modern fueled by RNA cards. Expect more long-winded information from me in the future.

Destroy Nathan McCarthy if your coin flip comes up tails.