If you’ve been reading Commander-centric columns for a while, you’re probably familiar with the concept of hidden gems: obscure old cards that you’ve never heard of but that could serve your decks admirably.

But such cards weren’t lost relics when they came out, they were scrutinized just like all the cards currently in the Dragon’s Maze spoiler. Some of them were widespread before their popularity dropped off, but others never caught on because the cards they pair well with simply didn’t exist when they were released.

That can happen nowadays, too. If you want to find hidden gems in the future, you can start by keeping a list of cards that seem as though they could do something sweet but for which you can’t find a complementary card that does what you need. As an added bonus, if you’re interested in Magic design, this is also a great way to find untapped design space.

Maze’s End by Cliff Childs

Destined for Greatness

If you think creatively enough, a huge number of cards have the potential to do crazy things, but most of those interactions will be difficult to put together in Commander even if the right cards are printed. For that reason, I want to focus on some of our new legendary creatures. I’ll be covering their present applications at a later date, but for now, let’s dive into what they might one day do.

Ruric Thar, the Unbowed probably doesn’t strike you as a particularly Johnny-oriented commander, and indeed, I haven’t found a crazy deck for him command just yet, but I have had a few ideas I hope will become plausible in the future.

Omen Machine is among the few cards that doesn’t let players decide against casting spells, thus enabling Ruric Thar to kill your opponents. That said, red has a number of similar effects running around, so eventually, we may have enough to make this a real strategy. Alternatively, I guess you could try to Mindslaver lock your opponents, but that doesn’t strike me as particularly fun to do. Then again, there is one player whose spellcasting you do control: You.

Yeah, yeah, dealing damage to yourself isn’t generally desirable. But maybe you have a Stuffy Doll equipped with Pariah's Shield. If we’re lucky, red may eventually see its own take on Repay in Kind that deals damage equal to the damage you’ve been dealt this turn or something. Or maybe we’ll see some more cards like Blood Hound. Whatever the reward for hurting yourself, red and green are excellent at making mana with noncreature spells, so you could chain rituals into something reminiscent of storm. Speaking of which . . .

Now That’s Just Weird

Storm decks in formats like Modern Legacy operate on a principle of proportions. They need to draw the right ratio of Dark Rituals and Preordains in order to generate the requisite mana to cast a whole lot of spells without running out of cards in the process.

In theory, Melek cuts out the middleman and lets you just chain doubled rituals without ever having to play a draw spell, but between Commander’s singleton nature and increased deck size, there’s simply no way to get a critical mass of rituals in U/R, even with blues land-untapping and Mana Severance.

Another idea that intrigues me regarding Melek is casting a whole bunch of cards from your library without having to, you know, pay for all of them. There are a whole bunch of spells that my memory told me should be perfect for the job.

Turns out they’re not. Cards like these generally exile your spells before casting them. So far as I can tell, there’s no reason Epic Experiment needs to work that way since the cards are cast during its resolution, so I guess we’ll see if Wizards opts for a shorter and more Melek-friendly template in the future.

Hull Breach

There are only so many cards in the game that Vorel has any meaningful interaction with as a commander. I should know: I just looked through all of them. Obviously, new counter-laden permanents will give Vorel more to do—or at least, most of them will.

Vorel doesn’t cooperate with enchantments or planeswalkers, but that just means it’s our job to turn them into something more familiar. Unlike old combos with The Mimeoplasm, you can just turn these permanents into artifacts without then having to make them creatures, but drawing Mycosynth Lattice or Sculpting Steel on its own doesn’t do a whole lot (Memnarch, on the other hand, is Memnarch). That problem could be solved, but you don’t have enough ways to make things into artifacts to really justify running cards like Broodstar. Maybe we’ll see more ways to make artifacts, but why not just cut to the chase and have the Simic recruit Gideon, Champion of Justice?

Not a Ghost of a Chance

On her own, Teysa acts a great attack deterrent. If you start forcing your opponents to swing with Bullwhips, they either give up their creatures or start beating the spit out of each other. This red effect did, in fact, used to reside in black’s slice of the color pie, so you can make use of cards such as Instigator and Imps' Taunt, but sometimes, you need to take a creature off the board and there’s no way to make your opponents attack you specifically. Despite some cool political implications in multiplayer, I don’t expect to see any card fulfilling this role printed in the near future. What we could see is a permanent with an effect such as Blood of the Martyr or Sivvi's Valor that will let you jump in front of problematic creatures that attack other players.

The Man, The Myth, The Legend

As of this writing, two of the Dragon’s Maze legends remain unspoiled, but even among the ones I’ve reviewed, I’m sure there’s more untapped potential just waiting for the right card or mechanic. What other ways can you dream up to build crazy decks around the maze runners? Better yet, pick a legendary creature that you’ve never seen a cool deck with, and figure out just what you’d need to make it happen. Who knows? Maybe the tools are already there.