War of the Spark Legendaries Review

Hello again! War of the Spark has a ton of sweet cards for our favorite format in it. Recently, WotC has been spoiling us Commander players with big, splashy spells (Planewide Celebration), sweet new Commanders (Feather, the Redeemed), and even my favorite: the glue spells that help tie a room together (Deathsprout). So come along for the ride with me, and get hyped about which of these new Legendary cards we’re going to be putting into our new and old decks!

Commanders

The God-Eternals

All five of the gods in this set (the four God-Eternals and Ilharg) have a very unique ‘god clause’. The flavor of gods not being able to die in a normal way is a great way to convey the divinity of them, but Ravnican gods give this a very unique spin. Flavorfully, they are not difficult to deal with, but they will continue to be reborn and never truly go away, just get buried for a later generation to unearth. This is super cool flavorfully, and the mechanics make them very interesting Commanders. Assuming you have any small amount of card-draw in your deck, you realistically never will have to pay Commander Tax on them, barring a Counterspell, unless you want to. However, putting them into your deck obviously leaves them vulnerable to mill and forced-shuffle effects (looking at you, Field of Ruin). This balancing act you’ll have to play when one of these is your Commander is super interesting, as cheating the Commander Tax is a super powerful effect, but losing your Commander forever is a huger risk. Overall, I think this is super powerful and not to be over-looked, especially for the gods with powerful enter-the-battlefield effects like Bontu and Rhonas.

God-Eternal Oketra: Oketra is in the running for top 3 Mono-White Commanders. I think it’s close to impossible to unseat Sram, Senior Edificer on raw power, but Oketra offers a much more flavorfully white effect. Being able to play a creature-based strategy and not over-extend onto the board is a frequent problem in EDH. A lot of the time people solve this by playing an abundance of value creatures, which are primarily found in Blue, Black, or Green, leaving Mono-White out to dry. However, when your Commander creates such an insane board presence with just one or two other creatures, you can actually hold back on playing out your hand and just pressure them with a few spells at a time. She’s a little expensive, but you certainly get your mana’s worth when you cast her and get even two triggers off her.

God-Eternal Kefnet: Kefnet is my personal favorite god for Standard, but I’m not super high on him in Commander. I am not sure he adds a meaningful advantage over other mono-blue Commanders, specifically his first iteration. The original Kefnet is slightly more reliable card advantage (albeit very expensive) and a similarly over-statted flying body. However, Kefnet’s undead iteration does have one big benefit: combos! With a time-walk effect and a way to repeatedly put it back on top of your library (Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Scroll Rack come to mind), God-Eternal Kefnet becomes a particularly potent combo deck, where you can play a ton of card draw and tutors and even redundancy in your Time Walk effects. Also, because Kefnet triggers on the first card you draw EACH turn, you don’t have to fully untap with him in order to go off. For example, if I Portent a Time Warp to the top of my library then cast Kefnet with 1UU up, I get to cast Time Warp on the next player’s upkeep, only giving my opponents that single turn to deal with my commander before I keep going off. I do not intend to make use of this strategy personally, but if you’re playing in a more cutthroat play-group, this is a combo deck that doesn’t have to play ANY bad cards to enable the combo, just ones already great in Commander.

God-Eternal Bontu: Bontu suffers from too much competition. There are a lot of great aristocrats-style Commanders in Mono-Black, including possibly the best one in any color (Yahenni, Undying Partisan). This burst-style sacrificing is fine and all, but honestly I don’t see a compelling reason to run Bontu as your commander. She could potentially see a place in the 99, but only as a budget alternative to more powerful sacrifice outlets. That being said, she is still extremely good at what she does! It’s not that she’s a bad budget option, it’s just that there’s already far too much competing for her same slot that is either more impactful or has a lower mana cost.

God-Eternal Rhonas: I am a bit stumped on Rhonas and would love your help. Rhonas lends himself to a strategy that I am not personally well-versed in and I’m not sure if he’s good or bad at what he does. My gut instinct is that he is a worse Overrun effect than most of the other options in the 99 (Craterhoof Behemoth , Pathbreaker Ibex , etc.), but it’s possible that having this effect in the Command Zone instead of the 99 is something worth exploring. That said, I certainly won’t be the one doing it! Please feel free to send me your ideas or decklists for Rhonas @SuddenOats on twitter, as I want to see what others are doing with this card that stumped me!

Ilharg, the Raze-Boar: Now we’re talking! Ilharg is really cooking with gasoline. This big pig is going to be extremely potent as a Commander, as cheating mana costs is always good with a card-pool as large as Commander’s. Ilharg is also more fun than a lot of other Sneak Attack style effects, in my opinion, because it’s not quite as broken. Because it puts the creatures in tapped and attacking, you don’t get busted attack triggers like annihilator or Etali, Primal Storm. While this does mean you won’t get as much insane value, it also means you won’t be as much of a target. When your enemies know you’re just going to hit one of them for a bunch of damage, and not going to make anyone sacrifice four permanents or something else ridiculous, they not as inclined to use their limited removal spells on your pig. Additionally, Bengineering (Ben Ulmer, of Loading Ready Run) created a great video about Ilharg, to be found here. 

Mono-Colored

Interestingly, WAR did not ensure that all their legendaries were evenly spread, as many past sets have, instead opting to just display important characters regardless of color balance. This means that there is a Rare Legend in White, Blue, and Black, two Rare Legends in Red, and only an Uncommon Legend in Green. I actually really like this decision on WotC’s part, as just designing good and interesting cards without worrying about fitting them into a cycle is better for everyone, in my opinion. Now onto the cards!

Tomik, Distinguished Advokist: Tomik is a curious card. He is quite clearly over-statted, but in Commander this honestly doesn’t matter much on a 2-drop. Additionally, his hateful text is extremely backbreaking sometimes and completely irrelevant other times. For this reason, there are two ways to go with Tomik. The first is to simply include him in the 99 of a hate-bears or creature-focused strategy. For example, I think he slots quite well into an Oketra deck, because he’s a cheap creature that has a potentially powerful effect. The other way to play Tomik is as lands deck yourself! This strategy is pretty exciting, as lands strategies are frequently already difficult to interact with and Tomik adds extra protection (think Padeem, Consul of Innovation). The obvious pitfall with this strategy is that White has very limited synergy cards with lands, so you’ll be leaning heavily on colorless draw-engines to get your deck going.

Massacre Girl: I am not a fan of Massacre Girl as a Commander. Similar to Bontu, her only proactive synergies in the Command Zone are with killing your own board, which has too much good competition already. Unlike Bontu, Massacre Girl is a unique and potent effect to include in the 99. While repeating this effect isn’t necessarily impactful, having the option for a 5-mana sweeper attached to a creature offers up a lot of avenues for decks to get out of places they wouldn’t otherwise be able to. Additionally, she synergizes well with blink effects, and I believe she fits right into an Aminatou, the Fateshifter deck. If you play her with even a 2-toughness creature on board, then blink her, she will trigger two more times. Doubling down on this effect so you don’t have to chain up the toughnesses and just get to give the board -4/-4 at a minimum seems particularly powerful.

Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin: This Commander is extremely sweet. While old Krenko really needs a dedicated Goblin deck behind it, the Tin Street Kingpin fits into so many more shell. He synergizes extremely well with pump spells, making him and Zada, Hedron Grinder best friends, but he also still makes Goblin tokens so if you want to include Goblin synergies, go for it! He also is particularly absurd with Mono-Red staple: Purphoros, God of the Forge. Because Purphoros can pump Krenko’s power, every three mana you spend when attacking equates to four extra damage off Purphoros triggers ignoring the actual pump effect on your attacking squad. Krenko is even good in decks just looking for value, like Feldon of the Third Path. He, by himself, makes two tokens the first time he attacks and only makes more as time goes on. He needs no help to be good, but scales insanely well when you do work for him.

Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion: Neheb’s third iteration is just as fascinating as his first two. I am extremely impressed that all three iterations of this character are so unique yet carry the same general theme and flavor. This Neheb is focused on aggression and looting. He still makes absurd amounts of mana (though not quite as much) like Neheb, the Eternal, but he also offers card selection, which is extremely potent out of the Command Zone. Additionally, his impressive stat-line (5/4 Trample for four) means he likely needs no help connecting with an opponent to get his trigger. While synergies do exist with Madness or Flashback cards and Neheb, he’s just a generically powerful mana-ramp and card selection engine that feels at home in the Command Zone of really any number of Mono-Red strategies.

Mowu, Loyal Companion: Good doggo. Nice pupper. Swolest friend. Make bigger. Block too. He protec & attac. Best boy.

Multicolored

Here is where many Commander players will likely start when brewing with this set. I don’t have much to say about these Commanders as a group, so let’s get into the specifics:

Roalesk, Apex Hybrid: Roalesk is another card I don’t think I can appropriately rate until I get my hands on them. Their enter-the-battlefield effect and stat-line both seem fine, but not overwhelming, but their death trigger is really where they get interesting. My gut says that Proliferating twice is so powerful that they belong in the 99 of most superfriends and counter-based decks, but not the Command Zone. Similar to Elenda, the Dusk Rose a few sets ago, this card is really limited by the fact they have to go to the graveyard to get their most powerful payoff. However, Roalesk is an extremely powerful ability if you can get them off so I’d recommend trying them in whatever UG counter/’walker/whatever deck you have and finding out for yourself. I am optimistic about this card’s potency in the 99, but cannot say anything for certain yet.

Storrev, Devkarin Lich: Now I know what you’re thinking: “Nathan, just skip this one, it’s a worse Meren of Clan Nel Toth”, but wait! You’re missing something! Storrev can regrow Planeswalkers! All right, all right, I know that GB isn’t the best superfriends combination, but bear with me. Similar to Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion, Storrev’s stats are so pushed that she should be able to reliably connect at least once or twice per game. This means that playing a lot of the new Planeswalker like Vivien, Champion of the Wilds and Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage gets more attractive because you can re-use them aggressively. I’m pretty sure this is the deck I’m going to be trying to make work personally because it’s a bit of a challenge but doesn’t seem underpowered.

Fblthp, the Lost: This iconic magic character finally getting a card is obviously exciting for a lot of players just for Vorthos reasons. Luckily for us, he’s also quite good! Out of the Command Zone, he’s really a curious thing. He doesn’t have much synergy with traditional Commander Mono-Blue strategies, but he does offer an interesting synergy/win condition with Proteus Staff. If you have zero creature in your 99 and Fblthp in your command zone, you can use Proteus Staff to tutor for any two cards in your library. Just target Fblthp with the staff and because the staff flips your whole deck over, you get to reorder the whole thing however you’d like. Simply move the two cards you need right now to the top and Fblthp enters and draws them because he just entered from your library! He also likely fits into the 99 of any Birthing Pod deck that includes Blue, but to me this is far less exciting than him in the Command Zone doing something unique and busted!

Niv-Mizzet Reborn: Another big, splashy 5-color Commander with wide appeal. Similar to other 5-color Commanders before him, Niv is generically powerful and requires minimal build-around. Sure you could try to go off and hit ten cards off him, but honestly if your 6/6 flier for five is drawing two cards, you’re in good shape. Just do whatever you want with this guy, whether it be Food Chain combo, lucky charms, 5-color control, or whatever, he’ll serve you well by being over-statted card advantage in the command zone.

Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves: Tolsimir is an interesting Commander. I think he’s a potent addition to the 99 of basically any White-Green deck looking to cast creature spells just as an over-statted body that sometimes kills a small creature, but his potential synergy in the Command Zone is really interesting. There aren’t that many Wolf-tribal cards, but the few that exist (Master of the Wild Hunt and Wren’s Run Packmaster) actually help form an extremely board-dominant WG midrange deck. Just playing mid-sized threats and fighting down all your foes is a pretty cool way to play commander and offers a unique removal path for the color combination. I am tempted to also try Tolsimir as he has totally insane synergy with Wren’s Run Packmaster and she’s one of my favorite cards from my childhood.

Feather, the Redeemed: I definitely saved the best for last. Honestly, she’s been talked about to death, but if you don’t know already, she’s an extremely potent card advantage tool that also sometimes rebuys removal. Spells like Shelter and Defiant Strike allow you to refill your hand constantly with your 3-drop commander and Reckless Rage and other such removal can be rebought to keep the board in check. Additionally, she synergizes super well with the new RW board wipe, Solar Blaze. She’s chock full of synergies and has already caused the MTG finance community to go wild buying up previously unplayable cards. She’s super cool and likely super fun and also definitely going to be the most popular Commander from WAR, as there really hasn’t been a Boros Commander on this level before.

Alright, I’ve talked enough! Jeez Louise this turned out longer than I expected, and I certainly hope it was entertaining enough for you.

If you have anything exciting from the new set for Commander or Standard or Modern or Legacy or whatever, let me know! My twitter is @suddenoats and I may or may not be streaming at Twitch.tv/alternate789 if you want to drop me a follow and see some clumsy Arena gameplay.

GLHF