New cards are awesome! New cards designed for casual play (which often have a major impact on Eternal sets) are awesomer! The new Commander product has just arrived from the shelves, and it looks quite nicely done! (I love the amount of Portal Three Kingdoms product that was reprinted.)

Because they were designed for a Commander product, they are innately good for multiplayer. Despite the fact that there are just fifty-one new cards in the set, they have a high average quality, and a lot are going to be hits for years to come.

But what are the best cards from the set? What are the Top 10 Cards from the set? Before we move to that list, let’s look at a few cards that just missed my cut and wound up with an Honorable Mention.

Honorable Mention #2 - Prossh, Skyraider of Kher – The Commander decks have pushed legendary creatures that increase in power the more they are killed and replayed. While that’s nice for Commander specifically, most of them lack true strength in multiplayer or casual formats. That’s not true for this guy. Play him, and you’ll spit out six 0/1 Kobolds in addition to a 5/5 flyer who can do his best Fallen Angel impersonation. Just sacrifice a creature (for no mana), and his power pumps by 1. You can use the tokens as manaless fuel for his firebreathing or for a variety of other uses. Frankly, I’d prefer him if you removed the mana trick and just had an enters-the-battlefield trigger of making six Kobolds when he hit play—that way, you could do fun things, such as Flicker it or bounce and replay it or kill it and reanimate it. That keeps it down on my list since its value increases so specifically in one format to the cost of others. But don’t ignore the value of this guy in a sixty-card format.

Let’s look in at the Top 10 Cards!

#10 – Oloro, Ageless Ascetic – If you set aside the 2-life-from-the-command-zone trick this guy can offer, you still have a great creature. Paying 6 mana for a 4/5 with abilities gives you some red-zone potential. Then, you gain 2 life every upkeep for free. Slowly, over time, that is going to really matter. Then, add in the other ability: When you gain life, you can pay a colorless mana to draw a card and shoot each opponent for a life. Not only can you use that trigger on Oloro’s life-gain, but you have a lot of potential for life-gain in your Esper colors. Just consider cards such as Death Grasp and Solemn Offering. He downright loves extort.

#8 – Sudden Demise – There are a lot of fun X spells that are running around and can sweep up a large number of opposing dorks. This card can sweep up a lot of guys, just as long as you choose the right color. From sweeping up token creatures (which it usually will) to blasting one player’s battlefield, you can do some serious damage with this removal spell. I love it, and it should play quite nicely, giving red a nice bit of card advantage and flexibility.

#6 – Illusionist's Gambit – There are a smash-ton of things I enjoy about this card. First of all, it gives us what could honestly be called the first blue Fog. (Sure, you could argue that about cards like Turnabout or Reins of Power, but this is actually a Fog-like ability). That alone gives it some serious cred. Then, add in the fact that the person attacking you gets his or her creatures back, untapped, and can attack again. He or she won’t lose the attack step—so he or she is not upset at being open. Sure, you are forcing the person to attack someone else with the same creatures that came your way, and that could mess up folks’ life totals and creature count, but the attacker does get to do something. That’s a lot of value. Also, note there is a side case here in a large multiplayer game. This does not remove from combat creatures that are just attacking you. So, if Betty is attacking Bob, you can cast this, pull the creatures out of combat, and make her attack someone who is not you. For example, perhaps Bob, in the declare blockers step, already tapped and used his Maze of Ith or Kor Haven or tapped out to cast AEtherize or the like. Now you can pull them out of combat and give Betty another shot to attack through his defense. Knowing these sorts of corner cases can help squeeze out the power from your cards.

What made the cut for the Top 5?

#4 – Unexpectedly Absent – This card gives any deck a great degree of flexibility in multiplayer. Note that it is massively better than cards like Griptide. Just two white mana, at instant speed, bounces any nonland to the top of a deck. That’s a nice way to have bounce without losing card advantage. (Since the player misses a draw.) It enables you to do typical bounce tricks (such as prepare for a counterspell or hurt Auras, counters, and such). You can also use it to tuck one of your own cards prior to removal if you are really hurting. Don’t forget that tucking a card into the library gives you ways of slowing it down—there are several ways you can shuffle an opponent’s library. Plus, in Commander, tucking a commander is always a nice way to deal with it semi-permanently. This card gives you needed flexibility and power.

#2 – Tempt with Immortality – By far, this is my favorite temping offer card. It’s 1 mana more than a Zombify. (But it’s on par with cards like Rise from the Grave.) Play it, and bring back your best card. Then, people have to decide if it was just a Zombify or if they are going to improve your own board position by helping theirs. You’ll continue to grab your best stuff right onto the battlefield as they choose to reanimate something too. No matter what happens, the spell is worth playing. I think the best places for these Tempt cards is the first person to make a choice. I can easily reanimate one of my dudes, and I barely help the player of the card at all. But the person sitting in one of the last seats has to make a difficult decision. This spell is starting to become backbreaking—do you take one for the team and not reanimate something in order to keep the player down? Or do you give him or her one more creature? It’s a tough card. Those sorts of cards are great in multiplayer.

And what card clocked in at number one?

And that brings us to the end of our looksee at some of the newest cards to be printed. There’s more where that came from, so let’s move onward to the next article.

See you next week,

Abe Sargent