#commander 2017

Skullclamp

The mind is a beautiful bounty encased in an annoying bone container.

Haven of the Spirit Dragon

Heirloom Blade (Commander 2017) - Carmen Sinek

<- Previous Set | Next Set ->

This entry will feature all Commander products before they started being associated with specific planes & standard sets. So everything from Commander 2011 to Commander 2019.

Cool - Duelist's Heritage

The best techniques outlive their creators.

Today's Date is April 29th, 2024 and today's card is Ramos, Dragon Engine!

[ID The picture depicts a massive metal dragon walking across a grassy plains. It's silhouette is sort of reminiscent of a giraffe due to its long neck and four legs. It's head has a short snout and two horns curving inward. It has an incredibly long tail likely more than double its height, maybe triple. Keep in mind its like kaiju size. it also has very very big, thin, angular wings that are as long as double its height.

It's a Legendary Artifact Creature with the Dragon subtype. It's mana cost is 6 Colorless. It's power is 4 and its toughness is also 4. It's rarity is mythic rare.

The rules text reads "Flying

Whenever you cast a spell, put a +1/+1 counter on Ramos, Dragon Engine for each of that spell's colors.

Remove five +1/+1 counters from Ramos: Add 2 White 2 Blue 2 Black 2 Red 2 Green to your mana pool. Activate this ability only once each turn."

It's been a while since our last Budget Commander Sleeper, and this one isn't a recent release, though it ties in with one. In fact, it hails from all the way back in 2017, when Wizards released a set of tribal preconstructed decks for their yearly commander release. Those were infamous for the Eminence ability that adorned its face commanders, and shaping up tribal decks for years to come.

The card I'm gonna talk to you about today was made for that environment, and it's immediately obvious. Heirloom Blade is a tribal equipment, it says so right on there, it wants creatures in your deck to share a creature type!

The card is actually relatively popular in a variety of tribal decks, ones that need little excuse to run an equipment or have their tribal creatures die. We can see a similar mindset from Wizards of the Coast, that didn't miss occasions to reprint it in tribal precons across the years, in the Human deck of C20, the Rogue deck of Zendikar Rising and the Dragon deck of Forgotten Realms. This constant reprinting has, incidentally kept the card very affordable.

In the Brothers' War set, less than six months ago, WotC released Transmogrant's Crown. People were fast to identify it for what it is: a fixed Skullclamp. It's far from Skullclamp's power, but Skullclamp is a card banned in every competitive format that bans cards, so it might still be decent in decks that really want the effect. The extra downside in commander is that black mana symbol restricting the card to deck with black. That assessment is correct, Transmogrant's Crown is a very fine magic card.

You can probably see where I'm going with this. Heirloom Blade is just a mostly better Transmogrant's Crown. It costs 1 more mana to cast, but the same to equip (one mana), but it can go in any deck, and give you an extra +1/+1. +3/+1 for equip 1 is actually a whole lot of power and toughness, one that's hard to match, and one that'll incentivize your opponent to kill the equipped creature... And draw you a card.

"But!" You'll tell me, "That only works for tribal decks!" Well, I don't believe so. While it is text on the card, if your deck has a reasonable number of creatures, there should be overlap with almost every single one of them, with the race/class system of creature types having common repeats. Humans by themselves represent almost a quarter of all creatures in magic. The majority of creatures are either a human, elf, zombie, vampire, goblin, merfolk, dragon, angel, wizard, shaman, soldier, warrior... And many of them are a couple of those. Even in a non-tribal deck, a Heirloom Blade trigger will have multiple hits for 90-95% of creatures and creature tokens, just incidentally.

And that restriction is actually an upside! Because of it, Heirloom Blade will always hit a nonland when it hits, guaranteeing you a draw into more action, that can also pick up the blade!

Magic: the Gathering - Chad, the Hipster Planeswalker

Chad, the unluckiest Planeswalker in the Multiverse

Curse of Vitality - Good Health beckons many a vigorous follower. Curse of Verbosity - Idle chatter beckons many an attentive ear. Curse of Disturbance - Should of life beckon many a restless soul. Curse of Opulence - Jingling coins beckon many an eager hand. Curse of Bounty - Flavorful aromas beckon many a salivating maw.

Click on over here for a great article by Chris Gleeson posted to the Wizards of the Coast mothersite.  Art by Kieran Yanner, Mark Winters Art Director and Ari Levitch concept.