The Legends of Amonkhet

The Legends of Amonkhet

Tom is back, and following on from the last article he's taking a step down from deity status to check out what the regular old Legendary Creatures of the plane are up to in the Command Zone.

Of course the Gods get all the attention as far as commanders in the set go. They're big, flashy, and all around pretty cool looking, and are a very easy choice in the 99. But there's almost as many legendary creatures that aren't gods, and each of them take on multiple colours and provide us some unique options for the leader of your deck.

In alphabetical order, let's check out the newest additions to the commander retinue!

Cleopatra... er, Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons

First up we've got the most popular of the new bunch, weighing in at 178 decks on EDHREC.com as of writing. And there's no surprises as to why her and her snakes are the most enchanting.

-1/-1 counters were introduced as a major theme during the Shadowmoor block, and was found mostly in Black and Green. Back then though, cards weren't designed for commander and as such, we were left without a legendary creature to take advantage of -1/-1 counters. Until Amonkhet, at least.

Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons is the long awaited creature to fulfil your -1/-1 counter needs, and has an insane amount of support from prior blocks to make it happen. Time to make like a snake and slither into some of the powerful cards that are given new life.

Flourishing Defenses	Nest of Scarabs does the same thing, but redundancy is good.
Black Sun's Zenith	It's no Damnation, but that many counters is huge.
Necroskitter	Absolutely absurd for a 3-mana creature.
Triumph of the Hordes	Alpha strike aside, it also deters blockers.
Seshiro the Anointed	3/3 Snakes with built-in Curiosity is no joking matter.
Blowfly Infestation	A combo piece for sure, but very useful for making snakes.

A very straightforward commander in all the right colours; that's Hapatra. Ultimately the deck builds itself (See for yourself, just search for black and green cards with -1/-1 counter in their text), but it is good to see that Wizards still give a bit of thought to some of the old school mechanics, and a commander for -1/-1 counters has been long overdue. 

Speaking of overdue commanders, we've got another one, although with a bit more of a niche appeal for a lesser known tribe.

Neheb, the Worthy

Might be time to dust off those Digeredoos, because Minotaur tribal has a new general. I wonder what sweet Minotaurs we can pump up?

Uhhh...

I get it, everyone's excited to play Minotaur tribal with the new legendary Minotaur but these cards are... incredibly sub-par. And each of them are played in over 30% of decks on EDHREC.com. I am absolutely certain we can do better than this, but we'll have to get over the tribal factor to do so, and the best way to do that is read the card without the tribal references.

Neheb, the Worthy

1BR

Legendary Creature - Minotaur Warrior

First strike

Neheb, the Worthy gets +2/+0 as long as you have one or less cards in hand.

Whenever Neheb, the Worthy deals combat damage to a player, each player discards a card.

2/2

I know, it's practically a sin to take a tribal commander and remove the tribal factor, but doing so reveals a considerably stronger strategy to the deck. One which black and red already have plenty of support for; Discard.

Of course, we're not going to ignore the tribal aspect completely. Believe it or not, there are a fair few good Minotaur cards that help out the strategy.

Ragemonger	Edgewalker is already a good card.
Fellhide Petrifier	First strike and deathtouch Neheb? Good way to avoid blocks.
Sire of Insanity	He's no Minotaur, but he empties your hand, and everyone else's.
Waste Not	If we're making people discard, you're going to get a lot of value.
Malfegor	Turns on Neheb immediately, and wipes the board.
Rise of the Dark Realms	Finish the game with a bang. Reanimate all that discarded stuff.

Once you take off the tribal exterior, Neheb is just a madness and discard deck at heart. There just so happens to be a few Minotaur that meld well with the strategy. 

Of course, you can always play tribal. 

Just please, please, don't play Hurloon Minotaur.

Samut, Voice of Dissent

It's been a long time since I've been able to use the phrase "keyword soup" for a Magic card, but here in the year of the God-Pharaoh, Samut comes mighty close. Flash? Double strike? Vigilance? Haste? Other creatures have haste? She untaps creatures too? There's a lot going on here, but unlike our previous legends in the set, she tends to feel unfocused.

She'd be perfect as a good-stuff commander in Naya colours, but that's not what we're about. Anyone can fill out a deck with good cards and win games. We want cards that make Samut and her deck better than any old Naya-netdeck.

But where do we start? 

At the top of course, in that mess of keywords!

Odric gets his own little segment, as he is probably the only card, aside from Concerted Effort, that actually synergises with her keywords. Every combat, your creatures will get double strike and vigilance (and haste, but that's made irrelevant by Samut). That's a good deal for four mana! Add in some more creatures with funky keywords like Angelic Overseer and you could almost play keyword tribal.

Outside of the keywords though, Naya has a lot of very powerful tap abilities on creatures, and Samut being able to get multiple uses out of them a turn is a very good reason to play her.

Godsire	8/8 on demand, and Samut gives it haste?
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker	A format all-star. No surprises here.
Selvala, Heart of the Wilds	That's a lot of mana with all these beasts running around.
Mother of Runes	Protection on demand!
Elvish Piper	In a deck full of big things, this is a way to save mana.

You can even throw in a few blink effects in white for additional untaps, and for some redundancy for your commander like Ghostway and Eerie Interlude. Before you'll know it you'll have an interesting twist on your typical blink deck, relying on untaping and tapping more than entering the battlefield.

Speaking of twists on an old strategy...

Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun

He cares about tokens, but there's no green to be seen. That means no Parallel Lives, no Doubling Season, and certainly no Avenger of Zendikar. How can we possibly make a token deck missing so much support?

Quite easily actually.

While it's true he cares about tokens, Temmet has no interest in going wide like other token commanders. His ability only provides unblockability to one token at a time, so there's two ways to go about this; Either make big tokens, or stack a single token with equipment and auras. Or both.

But I don't want this article to fill up with all the good equipment, aura, and related card that you've seen around your kitchen table. We're going to focus on some of the more interesting token generation options in these colours, since that's what makes Temmet stand out. But before we get started, a quick shout out to these two embalm cards.

Both are incredibly powerful in any deck lead by Temmet and are the best picks of the set. But Temmet is designed for embalm creatures after all, so consider this our little section for it. Anyway, on to the picks!

Annointed Procession	We might not have green, but we got a white Parallel Lives.
Back from the Brink	It's embalm before Embalm was a keyword.
Faerie Artisans	Get the biggest thing on the board, then make it unblockable!
Sublime Archangel	Since we're not going wide, she's perfect.
Mirror-Sigil Sergeant	I've wanted to play this card forever, and it's right at home here.
Reef Worm	Aside from being hard to remove, it's at least three big tokens.

When it comes to tokens, consider me the biggest fan. Though it lacks green, blue opens up a lot of neat options including countermagic, and enchantment and artifact themes and provides a really sweet way to mix up a voltron deck with a token deck.

And with that, we're at the end of this article. Got some suggestions? Did I miss a key card or theme? Sound off in the comments below!

Until then, may his return come quickly, and may we be found worthy.