The Toolbox - Broken Fall
Elijah KleinFebruary 15, 2022
In which Elijah tries to break the Broken Fall!
( | Art by Zina Saunders)
Breaking Out of Winter
Welcome back to The Toolbox, where we take a look at underutilized cards and evaluate new ways to play them. Today, we’re discussing a protection enchantment that I think is very underplayed in Commander: !
is an enchantment all the way from Weatherlight that returns itself to its owner's hand as the cost of its activated ability, similar to cards like (which you can read more about here). The ability itself regenerates a creature, which means the card is a great way to protect your favorite critters from interaction, or even to help ensure they won't die in combat (for instance, if you really want an attack trigger from your creature, but don't want to lose it to big blockers). The effect is cool, but the cost is interesting. There's a lot we could do with an enchantment that goes back to hand!
Our resident Challenge the Stats writer, Jevin, is the one that originally brought and to my attention as cards that have underutilized potential. I'm going to focus on for the purposes of this article, but both enchantments offer a lot for EDH players, and could use more love!
Let's briefly examine the commanders that are already making a little use out of , according to their EDHREC data. from Commander Legends currently plays at a rate of about 10%, the highest adoption rate for this little Aura so far. To me, Hans is a weird mix of , , and : he aims to cheat big creatures into play, but he also constantly fights them. helps protect Hans from his own downside; it's nice to cheat out a and keep Hans alive to tell the tale!
Next, the great Wurm commander, also plays in about 9% of decks. Grothama's usual play pattern involves fighting huge creatures, like , to draw a million cards. The thing is, opponents can also try to take down Grothama for that reward first. saves Grothama from fights you didn't want it to get into, making sure opponents don't get the raid-boss rewards, because Grothama won't actually die from those combats, so that you get to keep the benefits all to yourself. While I'm not entirely sold on this, I can still understand the utility, and the reasons why would appear more for this commander than others.
Finally, our little enchantment shows up in about 6% of decks. Eutropia is one of my favorite newer aggressive enchantment commanders, one who grows from a bunch of Constellation triggers and forces damage through enemy lines by giving things flying. fits well in a package like this, both to repeat Constellation triggers and to protect her against big flying enemies!
This is just the tip of the iceberg, though. Now that we have a good baseline of applications for , let's find some other places where it could do some work!
Getting Sun-LIT
Starting off, we have . She's an Enchantress commander with a pretty aggressive slant. You could also make a strong case to play this enchantment more in , too! Like we saw with Eutropia, Enchantress decks love these effects.
For specifically, she's kind of like a Commander version of in Modern Bogles. Even though she only draws a card off the first enchantment each turn, she grows and grows with each enchantment we play, which can become a very heavy advantage.
, at worst, can trigger Tuvasa once each turn. If you have in play, you might even be able to do it multiple times per round! Remember, the enchanted creature doesn't have to be about to die for us to regenerate them. Regeneration just means we're placing a shield around the creature to protect them if they would die later that turn. This turns into protection and card advantage, and it protects our primary engine in the early game, while we're still setting up a wall of effects! Paired with other , , and effects, that repeatable card draw can really pop off, and all the while, it keeps our commander safe from random s and s.
Oh, and if you pair it with cost-reducers like , you can just spam-cast over and over to let those Enchantresses churn through your entire deck!
With all that, I think it's time to take a look at the decklist:
Bantchantress
"Rada Rada" - Schnitzel
Next up, we have a commander that I would personally love to see more often at EDH tables: ! In my opinion, she's just the absolute coolest Elf, because she has this super-interesting ability to make tons of mana from combat.
in a Radha deck might look like an odd inclusion, but I prefer to think of it as spicy! is a great way to let important creatures attack with no regard for the size of blockers. Cast and immediately re-bounce it to give a regeneration bubble to your important creatures, such as Radha, , or , then go to combat and generate a bunch of mana with no fear about the blockers. Then, in your second main phase you have all the mana you could ever need from Radha - including re-casting to secure her safety in combat again next turn!
I especially like how this can set Radha up for one-sided board wipes. By generating a ton of mana and using on our important creatures, we can clear the field with our own ! It might be a niche interaction, but that's the kind of thing that can steal games out of nowhere.
may be a bit of a meta call, but it's definitely worth taking a look. Let's get into the decklist!
RADAAAAAAA
The Vicious, Villainous Voltron
For whatever reason, a deck idea I've never been able to get out of my head is with an Auras twist. Using Gargos as an engine to clear out blockers while also getting beefier from all the Auras is just *chef's kiss*.
Gargos faces a similar issue as and : they just can't stop fighting. There's definitely a cost there, particularly when your commander is six mana, because losing a fight is a major setback in mana, and can put a huge damper on your plans. This is already mitigated somewhat with popular Gargos cards like , , and , which give the Hydra some longevity, but we could always use more of it.
Therefore - you guessed it - we could also supplement Gargos with ! We can dump a bunch of cheap Auras onto our commander, while helps make sure it survives from fight to fight, and that it won't perish in combat, too! It also works well with the , and s of the deck if you need to really dig for more cards.
I think is well worth the inclusion here, so check it out in the decklist below!
V for Voltron
Breaking My Fall
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this installment of The Toolbox and that has found a place in your toolbox. What other ways would you use ? Do you think that I’m overvaluing this card, or do you agree that it’s highly underrated? What other cards do you think are missing from players’ toolboxes? Let’s talk about it in the comments below.
If you have any suggestions for the series or things you’d like to see in the future, I would love to hear them as well. Thank you all once again, and please stay safe!