Commander 2013 Review: Utility and Mana

Hello and welcome! I am Grandpa Growth and this is the final installment of The General Zone's review of Commander 2013. If you missed the previous two segments, then I encourage you to go back to the archive and check them out. So far we have looked at nearly every new card in the Commander 2013 decks, but we still have a few to go. Today we will be looking at the utility and mana cards.

Mana cards generally produce some type of mana, but this category also includes things like search based ramp cards, color fixers, etc. Utility cards are slightly harder to define. They expand the functionality of your deck, allowing you to do different things. Sometimes they draw cards or tutor. Sometimes they form a combo or engine. This is the catch all category; for all intents and purposes everything that isn't a threat or an answer will be included here. So, let's check them out.


First up we have another member of this ridiculous curse of blahblahblah cycle. I don't ever play straight up lifegain cards. There isn't really a reason too, but when it starts gaining you genuinely absurd amounts of life (i.e. Beacon of Immortality) a single card can make it very difficult for certain types of decks to win. That being said, this card needs additional help in order to even do anything. If you have a ton of attackers, don't worry about gaining four or five life a turn, just go ahead and kill your opponent. Once, again, never play this kind of garbage in multiplayer. There is no reason to invest a card to the board AND let your opponents gain life. Group Hug isn't a strategy, it's a mockery.

Ahh, the worst of the new "choose a direction" cards. I am going to gloss over the fact that multiplayer is inherently unstable and that there has been virtually no research and development, or design for that matter, put into the design of cards and mechanics for multiplayer. When I do play multiplayer, I have frequently suggested that we just have this card in play from the get go. Establishing a direction or general schematic for how battle goes in a multiplayer game helps control the flow and more clearly defines the goals. Free-for-alls tend to get kind of silly because there is a lack of established guidelines for good strategy. They often become purely political contests where the 'strategy', if you can call it that, is to STRATEGICALLY CHOOSE NOT TO TRY AND WIN. I prefer variants like Emperor or Star for this reason. I am perturbed that this card even made it to print. It is insulting to both 1v1 players and multiplayer fans. If you wanted to play in a 'screw to the left' game then do it. You don't need a card to tell you (and you shouldn't have to basically discard a card from your hand and pay 5 mana for this privilege either). If we agree to play a free-for-all and then some jerkus magerkus plays this card...it isn't going to go over well with me.

There is a term in R&D: 'rule-making cards'. Permanents that change the fundamentals of the game; they just say something that is now true about the game state. Timmy gets twice the tokens. Jimmy gets two combat phases. If Johnny, draws out, he wins instead of losing. Rarely, though, do these cards actually impose changes to the format that you are playing. In fact, this may be the first (and I hope the last).



Tempting offer is an interesting mechanic. It seems well balanced to push aggressive behavior in multiplyaer games by rewarding you for taking advantage of passive situations. It also punishes people for being greedy and/or making poor strategic choices. Now, this card...is a bit of a different story. It is just too expensive. Basically every deck that wants this also plays Green, which means you should just play Beastmaster Ascension, some Overrun variant, or Collective Blessing, instead of this. Conveniently, those cards are strong in 1v1 and multiplayer...jeez. Go figure. The new hot tech that was SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED FOR MULTIPLAYER SUCKS IN MULTIPLAYER? Thanks, Obama.



Uhhh...do you remember what I said about designing cards for multiplayer? About how Wizards doesn't ever do this and as a result is horrible at it? Yea...luckily this card isn't even close to playable in any format of Magic that has ever existed so you won't be tempted to do something stupid, like put in into a deck.




The price of this card is TOO DAMN HIGH! Especially given that this is basically just an Ebony Owl Netsuke at best. If someone goes deep and draws a boat load of cards, chances are they are going to win on the spot or at the very least find an answer for your 7 mana do nothing Enchantment. Please, I am begging you not to play this.

More like Curse of bad cards. Heh...double puntendre! Aside from its modest comic value, this card is horrible. I can't recommend playing this.



This is pretty brutal. I don't know if you keep count, but people tend to shuffle their libraries about every 2-3 turns in Commander. More so in the early turns, but if you are on the play you can put this onto the board at a time where it severely punishes your opponent. Having to put cards back on top of your library is often worse than just being forced to discard them.

This is like one of those 'my face when' pictures. In this case, this is the reaction I had when reading Diviner Spirit. I hate to beat a dead horse, but then again...I hate being FORCED to beat dead horses even more than choosing to do it. Wizards needs to form a specially chosen team of designers to research and test new multiplayer mechanics. It is more important that a card actually be playable and, you know, worth casting in multiplayer. If you are only making cards that have the novelty of: "Oh, it says any player? I guess it must be for multiplayer," then you aren't doing your job. Part of game design is actually getting people to WANT to play your game, or in this specific case, play with your cards.



The fixed Doubling Season is still pretty sick. It is much better than Parallel Lives and definitely worth playing in addition to the original. I haven't ever personally cast a Doubling Season because I avoid token decks like they are the plague...because they are. The losing plague. Still, this card is good and the decks that want it will remain popular no matter how much evidence piles up to prove how bad they are.



This is an extremely powerful spell. Do not underestimate the flexibility that this offers. It can be ramp. It can be a mana fixer. It can give you a shuffle effect. It can be a Sinkhole. Most of the time you are just going to be digging back a fetch land that you used early on in the game to try and get ahead on mana. In case you haven't heard: fetch lands are insanely good in this format and should be played even in monocolored decks. This spell is positioned perfectly to capitalize on the juicy graveyard available in Commander. Strip Mine can win games on its own. Getting a second copy in the same game is just insanely powerful AND THIS DOESN'T EVEN COST YOU A LAND DROP.

This flavor text is a little absurd. If I am interpreting this correctly, and I like to think that I am, Mayael is telling us that the land has built the structure we see at the focus of the art....but that is shenanigans. This is clearly a man made structure, thereby rendering the flavor text completely nonsensical. Dear Wizards, please try to do better.



Finally, we have a Tempting Offer card that is actually just strictly inferior in single player games. Searching for any land is certainly powerful, but not worth four mana. Getting two lands and giving your opponent one isn't very enticing and probably just worse than Skyshroud claim. Getting 2-6 lands at the cost of giving your opponents one each is a much better deal. This can immediately set up something like Valakut or Emeria. Getting more than two lands that sac to destroy other lands can essentially shut one player out of the game entirely.



I am unsure what the point of this is. A card that only gets you land when you are behind on land...and does nothing else? Planning to be behind on lands in Commander is a bit like planning to die in a zombie apocalypse. You are supposed to use planning to stay ahead. Grim Monolith makes mana too, and you don't have to risk losing altogether in order for it to do anything. I have a friend, who is somewhat new to the game, try to explain to me that this card is good because it acts like mana screw insurance...which is asinine. If that was your plan you'd have been better off if this was just a land. Imagine this scenario: your opening hand contains one land, Surveyor's Scope, and five random cards.  Would you keep that hand? Would you expect the Scope to buy you out of land screw? Do you think you actually have a shot at winning that game? No. You would mulligan and get a better hand.



From a flavor perspective this card is equally silly. This is not a surveyor's scope. Those look like this ->
Modern iterations may not be stylistically appropriate for a fantasy game, but this somewhat dated model is perfectly suited for adaptation into the world of Magic. Secondly, the terrain shown in the background of the art doesn't actually match up with what is shown on the device. That is really an oversight by the artist, but the creative team allowed it. This looks like it should be a compass or heck, let's call it what it is. A VIDEO GAME MINIMAP.




In the first Commander release, we got Command Tower, which is probably in the top five most played cards in the format. This card isn't quite as good and won't be quite as ubiquitous, but I think that is a good thing. Here's why, this card requires you to care about your commander's combat stats. Not every deck does. The fact that this card doesn't tap for any color unless you are casting your commander is a significant drawback when you need to cast other important cards in control based strategies. Wrath, Counterspell, and the Ultimatum cycle come to mind in this regard. Many popular decks like Norin the Wary, Azami Lady of Scrolls, or the RtR guild paruns just can't use this card. The benefits are minor and the cost is heavy. That being said, decks that do care, like Jenara, Asura of War, couldn't be happier with this card. Although, even in that example, having this in your opening hand makes the prospect of casting a Jenara on time somewhat dubious. Overall, I think that this is a solid card and it will see some play. Shimmering Grotto is a weak fixer, but Shimmering Grotto with a relevant upside is worth exploring even in multicolor decks. In my opinion, Command Tower was too strong. A land that taps for any color, comes into play untapped, and has no drawback is just too powerful. Wizards would never release a card like that into a tournament environment, it would be the single most sought after card in the modern game. The fact that R&D is okay with doing things like this in a Commander product shows me that they aren't serious about supporting the format and just want to cash in on what the EDH community has been building. This is a strong sign that there is no hope for support of Commander as a tournament format. Wizards is just going to milk the players' enthusiasm for all that it's worth and then move on to the next format de jour. I for one hope that I am wrong.

Thanks for sticking with me all the way to the end Zoners. I'll be back to my regular position next Sunday. I hope you enjoyed the review. Let us know what you think about the new cards, the article, or anything else you want to talk about in the comments below. Stay tuned to TGZ for more exciting stuff this week.

-GG