Awkward . . .

Last week, when I said I wasn't going to address the elephant in the room, Wizards decided to go ahead and spoil the whole set. While I'm saddened that they had to do it, it took me by surprise (they decided to release it the same day as my last article), and I think it's a bold move. Will it work out in time? We'll see. Since Wizards decided to address the issues, I'll go ahead and break my silence about the set.

This might be the closest you'll get a set review from me. My feeling is that unless a card requires you to have multiples to work (See: Squadron Hawk), it can possibly see play in Commander. Not every card will be a powerhouse, but somewhere, someone one will love it and want to put it in all of their decks.

What I did do is look through the set and pick out thirteen of the most interesting cards that may change the way you play the format. None of the chosen cards are Commanders (they are always relevant), but each of these speak to my Spike, my Johnny, or my Timmy side. These might be the cards that you'll end up putting in deck after deck. Not because they're staples, but because they all do something worthwhile.

Karn Liberated

Being the first colorless planeswalker, there's the temptation to put it in every deck. And why not? All it does it exile cards, and if you happen to reach his ultimate, the game's yours.

If.

Listen, there are a ton of ways to deal with planeswalkers. Even with that silver-bullets piece I wrote a few weeks ago saying that planeswalkers are the toughest permanent type to have an answer to, it's still pretty easy. Unless the Karn owner has something like Privileged Position, which would be the smart thing to do.

Some might complain that Karn just makes games longer, making already long Commander games take even more time, so he should be banned. He doesn't bring back dead players, and if that idiotic Shahrazad is still legal in this format, a planeswalker should be fine. No, Karn is not worth its current price tag; if you want him and you don't pull him out of a pack, I would suggest you wait a couple of weeks after the set is released; he'll drop by then.

Suture Priest

This is not just another Soul Warden reprint. It actually fights against those swarm decks that you see Soul Warden in. You lose the bonus of other people's creatures entering the battlefield, but you gain so much. By making the opponent lose life (which is the inverse of you gaining life), this gives White decks a fancy little toy. 1 life isn't a whole lot, but when it's compounded over and over, it can add up.

The reason this card makes the list is because it's White. This color doesn't get effects like this, and being a common makes it collectable for all. Both of the triggered abilities are "may" triggers, so stay on top of that. It's not fetchable by Ranger of Eos, but it is a great turn-two play. With any luck, your playgroup will become tired of seeing this and make it a target of a removal spell instead of one that affects the board.

Psychic Surgery

The presence of this card in your metagame might shake some waves. First, if you play with players who like to shuffle all the time, you can start removing cards from their libraries with glee. At 2 mana, it's in that sweet spot of costing too much to be effective and being playable in multiple styles of decks.

But where it really shines is a certain style of card. There are a bunch of tutors, which of course shuffle the library, but then they put the card on top instead of the hand. Vampiric Tutor, Worldly Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, and the cycle of creature tutors from Lorwyn all put the searched card on top of the library. If you have enchantment out, you have now shut down what they can search for. However, they can respond to the shuffle trigger with Sensei's Divining Top (Pro Tip: If your opponent puts the Top on top of his library, exile it).

Not everyone will find this card exciting, but I feel that this is one of the better Commander Spike cards in the set. It's a pseudo-Jace that because of the exiling rules doesn't allow the opponent to see what you exiled (it's exiled face-down).

Viral Drake

There's not much to say about this card besides the fact that this is repeatable Proliferate without sacrificing anything. The Drake is also a finisher all by itself with the Infect and Proliferate combination. I could talk more about possible combo cards with this one because of Proliferate, but since NPH is the third set, and Proliferate isn't new, you probably have already found your favorites. One I want to try but haven't yet is Djinn of Wishes.

Who knows, I might put that combo in my Rafiq deck.

But I would recommend picking up a foil of this card; it'll be great trade-bait in a few months.

Praetor's Grasp

One of my friend's most-anticipated cards from this set. It doesn't really work in this format, because if your opponent plays different colors than you, you can't cast the spell. There's already Extract (for 1 mana, no less), so why would this be good? Because if you have a five-color deck, you can now play anything your opponent can. It's no Bribery, but it will allow you to get any nonland of your opponent's. It's a non-bo with the Zenith cards from Mirrodin Besieged, so you have been warned.

Chancellor of the Forge

None of the Chancellors are really good for Commander, because you can't have multiples of them and they don't provide a huge effect for the first turn in a multiplayer game. Even the Chancellor of the Dross (which I would love in my Sygg deck, except Sygg can't be on the battlefield when the drain triggers), which can cause an 18-point swing at the beginning of the game, can't be counted upon (three opponents at 3 points of life each, and you gain 9).

Of course, they have to be in your hand at the beginning of the game. That's a 1/99 chance you have it in that situation (just over 1% of the time). The Blue one can be useful in the later game, but I like the Red Chancellor. The fact that you can double your creatures (quadruple if you have Doubling Season) and with Anger in the graveyard and a Battle Cry creature, this can be part of an alpha strike. The best part is that he triggers on an enters-the-battlefield trigger, so Living Death and "blinking" it can be very abusive. Nomads' Assembly and Goblin Bombardment can be very fun to mess around with as well.

Beast Within

While the name sounds like a horrible title to a sci-fi movie, this is going to be one of the cards from this set that you'll most commonly see in Commander decks wherever you play. Yes, this might be called one of those "staples" you've heard about. There are so many awesome aspects to this card that I can hardly contain myself. Destroying anything, including a creature (or a planeswalker—like, say, Karn), in Green is great. It costs 3 mana, half the cost of similar Desert Twister, and only 1 Green mana in its cost, which is great for splashing. And it's an instant?

The drawback is that whoever gets their object destroyed receives a 3/3 Beast. This is a clear offshoot of one my favorite cards from Worldwake: Terastodon. Players who are worried about the drawback shouldn't worry too much, because if you have Green in the deck, you most likely have a larger creature anyway. Instant speed "kill-anything" in Green or "save something from being stolen" makes it a nice, versatile spell.

Birthing Pod

Since this is the first card I've addressed that has Phyrexian mana, I want to say my short piece here. I believe that this is why that whole color-identity issue came up when the rules changed. This is a Green card and has a Green symbol—only it has a Phyrexian slant. Like the colorless hybrid mana cycle from Shadowmoor, though these could theoretically be played in any color deck, in Commander, they are limited by the deck's color identity.

You can only activate this as a sorcery, which rules out combat shenanigans, but the benefit is so worth it. By being able to trade up creatures, you can cheat plenty of things onto the battlefield. You can start with a token and get a 1-casting-cost creature, turn that into a 2-casting-cost creature. Bonus: You don't have to get a Green creature; any color will work.

Obviously, creatures with ETB abilities are the best for this kind of card. It's a great repeating tutor effect that allows you to escalate your creatures to bigger (better) ones. I believe there's a combo in there that involves Karn (the creature) and Intruder Alarm.

Fresh Meat

Others might have just shrugged this off in comparison to its predecessor, Caller of the Claw. There are three huge differences between the two. First, Fresh Meat can't be tutored for in a mono-Green deck, because there's no instant tutoring, while there are plenty of creature tutors for Caller. But the next two differences are huge benefits for Fresh Meat. Instead of creating 2/2 Bears, this creates 3/3 Beasts, triggering AEther Charge, Garruk's Packleader, Totem Speaker, and Wirewood Savage.

The other difference is that Fresh Meat doesn't require the creature going to the graveyard to be nontoken. That's right, all your tokens' deaths trigger Fresh Meat. And for the second card in a row, there can be a huge loop (sacrifice creatures, play Fresh Meat, sacrifice all the Beasts you created, play Eternal Witness, play Fresh Meat again, getting double the number of creatures you had in the first place). Yes, this set might turn out to be as combolicious as the last third set of a Mirrodin block, Fifth Dawn.

Caged Sun

Such fan favorites as Gauntlet of Power and Extraplanar Lens will be joined by this gem. It's more expensive (but that doesn't matter if you have one of the other fan favorites in play before), but the tradeoff is huge. It doesn't require the appropriate basic land to tap for extra, but any land that could produce that color. It best combos with Black and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth turning all your lands into ": Add to your mana pool."

The great thing about this card is that you can most likely pick it up pretty cheap for a while. The bad thing is that people are wise to how players want to play this for Commander, so the foil (which I imagine is pretty in its shiny glory) is way more expensive than twice the price. Such is the cost of pimping out your deck.

Isolation Cell

I'm just pointing this out to more of the budget players out there. It might make some players play a little more cautiously and others just go ahead and pay the 2 life; you have to know how your playgroup works. Yes, this will go in my Sygg, River Cutthroat deck as well as several other decks. It might not slow down the swarm decks, which create creatures by other effects than just casting them, but to those that play the mana curve close, it might punish them. This will be a hit-or-miss card, but the times it hits will be hugely beneficial to you.

Omen Machine

The first line changes games because it shuts down so many cards. Mind's Eye, Jace, etc., etc. are completely locked out. Tutoring still works, so keep that in mind. It's the second ability that can get people excited. For most of the time, it's just free spells that benefit you. If it's a Wrath of God when you don't want to do it . . . oh well. It creates games where everything is random; I can only imagine this with Planechase out in play.

The real beauty is when you have a Crystal Ball in play. Suddenly you can slightly control your draws to the point of skipping lands and get to all-business spells. Be the envy of all your friends, as you completely control your fate. Of course, you can use cards like Fact or Fiction to put cards in your hand without drawing them.

Torpor Orb

This one also depends on the playgroup, but it will still be relevant most of the time. A large number of creatures that see play have ETB abilities, so this can completely shut down some decks. There are people whose only answers are in the form of creatures. I would not recommend cutting all of your creatures if you have this card in your deck, because you won't get it all the time.

There you have it. These are what I consider to be the most interesting thirteen cards from this new set for Commander. There are other good ones that will see play in certain decks (Unwinding Clock in Karn, Puresteel Paladin in Kemba), but I left those alone because they're so narrow. If I did leave something out, let me know in the comments below; I'm curious to find out what cards you're excited to play with. I hope I've given you some ideas, as it's time once again to go through your decks and change them up.

As I hope most of you know, this coming weekend is the prerelease, and for the first time in a few years, I won't be able to go due to a prior conflict. Don't cry for me; I'll still be having a good time. I've already talked about the prerelease experience, and I would encourage you to go, since this will be the last time the large prereleases will be held. The cards are also legal as of Saturday, so get a leg up on your friends—head to a prerelease and open some good cards.

Next week, I'll talk about the new Commanders, since everyone likes those. You might be surprised by which ones I like and which ones I think are better in decks where they're not the main focus.