Bokkie Doke

Is this whole list just an excuse for me to play Johnny, Combo Player? No, I promise.

Okay, we’re gonna keep this first part short and sweet. This is an article and list you can show to a playgroup to hopefully get them to allow you to play a small selection of Un-cards in formats like Commander. My criteria for whether a card should be banned.

1. Will some players not able to use the card easily?

2. Is it disruptive or annoying to your playgroup or surrounding people?

3. Will it cause the game to grind to a halt when resolving it?

If the answer to ANY of the three was yes, it was banned. Also if you just want to get straight to the Unbanned list, here you go. Yes this is the list of Unbanned Un-cards, because there is about as many cards that are banned as there are “legal” under my rules. And I found it is easier to look through a list of permitted cards and add the ones you like when the ban list is that big.

Some cards that might seem otherwise fine, like cards that reference art or expansion symbols, aren’t included. They can lead to bickering and confusion, which wastes time and frustrates players.

If you are the person reading this because someone else wanted to play some Un-cards in your pod, feel free to stop reading now. I hope you enjoy your game. The rest of the article is for people curious about the process of making the list itself and some of my choices that they may disagree with. Why is [X] Legal?

That's right Timmy, B.F.M. AND Infinity Elemental are allowed.

“Cast a copy of [Named Spell]” Cards – There is already a tournament legal card that does this (Garth One-Eye). Yes some of the Un-cards with this effect are more mentally taxing but I don’t think it is a significant enough difference to ban them here.

Some Weird Counter Cards – These cards require you to put special counters on them or place counters on specific parts of the card. I let some of them be legal, but only if they could easily be tracked in some other way and they don’t want you putting non-counter objects on the table. For example Baron von Count could easily be tracked with a D6 and doesn’t call for you to put your shoes on the table.

Some Word and Letters Matter Cards – The ones that are quick and easy to resolve are included, the ones that aren’t are banned in my list. I realize this is partially subjective, but my yardstick was “Would a group be annoyed if you resolved this multiple times in a game?” and “Who has to do all the processing to resolve it?”. Some more complex word and letters matter cards made it on the list of legal cards if the person playing them could calculate it all ahead of time or easily keep track of it mentally.

It Came From Planet Glurg – This really feels like an effect that would already be in the non-acorn pool if it didn’t have a couple rules wrinkles involved. I believe in most circumstances Glurg will be about as complex as other clone/copy cards. Doppelgang and Experiment Kraj existing led to me giving this a pass.

Clocknapper – The effect is definitely weird, and may lead to some awkward rulings, but since it is a single phase stolen once I think in most situations it will be pretty easy to resolve.

“Why is [X] NOT legal?”

"Aww shucks, I was gonna play all of those..."

Animate Graveyard – The potential mental overload from this card is absurd. Similar cards are legal on this list or legal normally but this is on average way more complex, and for just 5 Mana. Nobody but you is going to enjoy the aftermath of you playing this. And for the people that tend to avoid Un-cards, let's just ban this one so they don't get a bad first impression.

Topsy Turvy – Look, I love the idea of playing this card in Commander. But it is such a headache to deal with and I doubt many playgroups are gonna be down for figuring it out.

Everythingamajig, Ineffable Blessing, Garbage Elemental, Sly Spy, Very Cryptic Command, Knight of the Kitchen Sink. – Some of the versions of these cards work within my parameters, some don’t. To avoid confusion, I’m saying all of them aren’t allowed.

The Grand Calcutron – I think this card is very borderline, what pushes it over the edge for me is the amount of time it will take in the average game of Commander. At any table there is more than likely at least one person who takes a while to set up their “program” and goes into the tank with every single card they have to add to it. That's fine, I am that kind of person, but I'm banning it for that reason.

Oddly Uneven – I know a lot of “count the number of words/vowels/lines of text” cards are included in my list, but this one is going to slow the game down a LOT. Counting the number of words in the name of every creature will take a while, especially if you have token copies of named creatures.

Season’s Beatings – Once again, there are tournament legal cards that take this long to resolve but the bar for inclusion in this list is a bit higher because of the general wariness towards Un-cards.

Staying Power & Grand Marshal Macie – This is a rules headache waiting to happen but also just keeping track of it is a nightmare. You might think it can’t slow down the game that much but when the Macie player is spending most of their brain power keeping track of the affected cards and is also trying to keep track of all the repercussions of those effects, it’s gonna slow things down.

Frazzled Editor – Honestly the text box is such a mess on the card itself than I’m disqualifying it just for that.

Claire D’Loon – How do you do this without basically cheating if the cards end up in your deck? You sleeve up tokens in the same sleeves as your deck. Then you have to remove them all at the end of each game. Way too time-consuming even without all the rules headaches.

Vazal, the Compleat – This card effectively reads “When this card enters the battlefield, read Gatherer for 10 minutes. Then, you probably win the game.” in most games of Commander. No thanks. Rules Lawyer – As odd as it may seem, I think this one is also very borderline for me. But something that changes this many fundamental rules of Magic all at once just feels like it’ll lead to a lot of random blowouts because people forgot that X or Y is also a state-based action.

“Why Not Just Errata [Insert card here]?”

Pictured, Me, going through ~400 cards to errata them all.

I’m writing this article because I love Un-cards and I agree you should be able to play with some of them in Commander or other casual formats. Most of the players who refuse to play with them have some image in their head of dancing, bugging random people at your LGS, and headache inducing rules nightmares. And I know that is NOT the case for a good amount of Un-cards. (And you can thank Unhinged for most of the ones people hate!) But if you are already asking players to do something they are iffy about, adding a bunch of errata onto ~50% of the cards is going to annihilate your chances of getting them to agree. And I want you to be able to enjoy Un-cards with more people!

The Point Of This Article

Oh this? It's for just Maro, if he somehow ends up reading this. Hi!

Very weak wordplay I know. If you can even really call it wordplay. In this edition of Elder Dragon House-Ruler, the series about cards people should really just let you use as your Commander already, we’re going to go over the Mythic Creatures from Alara. Not all of them though, just the 7 (or 8 including my honorable mention) creatures I actually find interesting enough to build a deck around. Sorry if you’re a big Sphinx of the Steel Wind fan, I also think the card is neat and historically interesting but a keyword soup Commander doesn’t really get my motor runnin’.

"Think of all the things you could do! Like play Voltron and...well…”

Now directly after insulting a beloved card let me put in my honorable mention.

Honorable Mention (Aka #8) - Thornling

This entry is less for Thornling itself, which is a fine card I really like. This entry is really about the whole cycle started by Morphling, which I’m just gonna call the Superman Cycle to be both a dweeb and confusing.

And it only took 20 years to finish the cycle! Also only took ‘em 20 years to figure out that they could just make the two power-swapping abilities one single ability. I know there is probably some weird rules reason for one being technically different and better. I really want all the Morphlings to get their own special Commander. We actually did get a really interesting “activated abilities matter” legendary creature recently in Tazri, Stalwart Survivor but I need that art of all the members of the Superman Cycle on one card and just an absolute mess of weird color specific activated abilities. Anyways, onto the list that will actually be about the creatures themselves and not a weird brainworm I’ve had for years about a cycle most people probably didn’t even know existed or was finished recently. NUMBER 7 – Apocalypse Hydra

I’m putting Hydra in the lowest slot because while making a very big dude and having the ability to ping down everything is interesting, there is also a play pattern I see coming from a mile away. “So my Commander has X in the cost, and an activated ability that both costs mana and is really good if I can spam it. Well, time for infinite mana!” And while I am a combo enjoyer, if I see your ass untapping and tapping the same handful of permanents more than like, twice in a single turn I am pulling out a nightcap and going full-on 1930’s comic strip character taking a well-earned nap. I will honk, shoo, and even mi-mi-mi-mi-mi. Just wake me up when you have lethal.

NUMBER 6 – Dragon Broodmother

“You can’t have dessert until you finish your goblins!”

She ain’t too fancy, and she might be way under-statted for her mana value in 2024, but she is a nice little engine for getting some big boys on the board.

So what do you do with a repeatable way to make a pretty chunky little dragon? Well we just have to find a benefit to having big creatures enter the battlefield in Green and Red, if that exists. Let me just put in a quick Scryfall search for cards with the text “when” “enters the battlefield” and “power” in Gruul...

Which brings me to our Number 5 pick. NUMBER 5 – Godsire

"Just a hungry little guy."

So I will NOT make the same mistake twice. Now I know making a big token with a Green and Red commander is pretty good! Also the tokens this big fella makes are always at least 8/8, and you can do it for free if you just had some way of untapping him. Now if only there was a way to do so in these colors. Oh and perhaps some way of giving the creatures haste as well, or even an extra combat step. Oh yeah, we’re in Red. Just order every card that says “untap” and “extra combat”. Or perhaps don’t, you’d be blowing $100+ on a house-rule deck that’d probably get annihilated by a single piece of removal or any Ghostly Prison effect. Just order a couple of the cheaper ones. They’re fun to have around. NUMBER 4 – Defiler of Souls

While writing this very article, I got to Defiler of Souls on my rough list and went “This dude is super simple and most of the time they won’t even do anything. And the rest of that time the person with the really good mono-color creature will just hyper-focus you out of the game for making them sacrifice it. Why is that all the way up at Number 4?” Then I looked at the art again.

Have we had a Muppet's Universes Beyond yet? Why not?!

NUMBER 3 – Maelstrom Angel

Now if you have played Commander for awhile you may have been in the midst of a discussion about using this card already. Back when we had like, 6 five color legendary creatures and two of them were freakin’ Atogatog and Cromat, any five color creature would have just about everyone begging for them to be usable as Commanders. And this one even more so because that ability is so interesting and potentially powerful. That ability’s potential power does make it a bit harder to argue for it’s inclusion as a Commander though. People are gonna read that and go “Absolutely not!”. I would ask them to consider a couple things though. One, it has to hit a player in combat to use it. Two, it has no built in protection. Three, you have to have something powerful in your hand. And Four, well my friend it is 2024 and you are worried that a five mana value commander might do something really powerful with a bit of set-up? The ship has sailed so far away that it has looped back around the globe and hit you in the back of the head.

NUMBER 2 – Prince of Thralls

“Maaaaa, don’t come in when I’m crushing my thralls. It’s embarassing.”

Now I know I was just saying “Hey with that much mana you can do much stronger stuff!” and this guy costs functionally a billion but wow, the potential ceiling of that ability is bonkers. Put some protection on this Prince of Maine and play one of the many cards in his colors that blow up most if not all permanents. Proceed to make your opponents either pay 20+ life or give you the most ridiculous boardstate you've ever seen. Though to calm down a bit and not be alarmist about an 8 Mana Value creature from 15 years ago (yes I know we ARE very old), I think if you spend the nearly 20 mana to do something that powerful, you deserve it. And honestly any reasonable person would just concede at that point unless they had a clear way to claw a win back. And 20 mana I win the game is like, more than fine by my measure. And at least it’s flashy without also taking 20 minutes off of my life.

NUMBER 1 – Empyrial Archangel

Am I honestly saying that a creature with Flying, Shroud, and a built-in Pariah is more interesting that all these other creatures? Yes. Why?

Now since they do have Shroud it is a bit harder to set up the “You will never touch this.” situation you can get with other Pariah-style effects, but it isn’t monumentally difficult to give a creature Indestructible without targeting it in Bant colors. And while the Shroud makes it harder for you to buff ‘em up, it also makes it much harder for your opponents to do something about the Archangel after you get them set-up. Indestructible, Shroud, throw in a way for them to not be sacrificed and you have basically made yourself immune to damage. Is there easier ways to do so? I’m sure. Are those ways as cool as setting up this big Angel that’ll help you end the game instead of just stalling forever? Absolutely not.