Dragons of Tarkir Set Review: Answers

Hello and welcome back to The General Zone's Review of Dragons of Tarkir. If you missed any of the previous segments be sure to check them out in the links below.

Part 1: Legends
Part 2: Threats

In today's segment we will be addressing the answer cards. Answers are what you use to stop your opponents game plan. They answer threats and disrupt development. Removal, counters, discard, sideboard cards, color hosers, and graveyard hate all fall into this category along with many others. Answers are a diverse bunch; the best way to evaluate them is to think in terms of what problem you want this to solve and how well it can perform in that role. Let's find out what the Dragon clans of Tarkir have to offer us:



The White entry of this cycle is a pretty spicy one. I am really into Creatures that kill other other Creatures. Reprisal is a decent removal spell, albeit one that doesn't normally see a lot of play in Commander. Stapling this onto a three power Lifelink is a deal that I can see taking, although for six mana I would expect something better most of the time.











There are probably more multicolored permanents in Commander than any other format. That being said, this is a very tight restriction on a removal spell, let alone that it can only hit particular card types.

You see there is a general guideline for playable removal spells.

• At zero mana you get a drawback AND a targeting restriction. Ex: Snuff Out.
• At one mana you should get either a tight targeting restriction OR a drawback and NO targeting restriction. Ex: Deathmark, Swords to Plowshares.
• At two mana you should get a loose targeting restriction or sometimes a tighter restriction that comes with a bonus. Ex: Doom Blade, Combust.
• At three mana you generally shouldn't have targeting restrictions and sometimes you will get a bonus anyway, or maybe extra flexibility. Ex: Murder, Crackling Doom.

Radiant purge is pretty far behind on this chart and, as a result, isn't very good. There are of course examples of cards that perform better than these standards...those are the cards you should be playing instead.




When I first saw this card I got a little weirdy feeling. I thought that they just printed this in Khans. As it turns out Suspension Field has the inverse targeting restriction. For most applications in Commander I would guess that you would want to have Suspension Field. You are generally more worried about dying to a large Creature rather than a small one.

The biggest problem here though is that if you wanted this, you already had Journey to Nowhere, which is a Common and better than both of these. So bascially, you don't need this.







This is the first of an enemy color hoser cycle of uncommon removal spells. All of them are very mediocre, but I am going to discuss them all for completeness sake, even though only one or two will ever see play. Spoiler: This isn't on of the good ones.













I don't know anyone who would use Polymorph as a removal spell in Commander. The risk of something going horribly wrong is just too high in this format. However, I have see people use Proteus Staff in their Blue decks to good success. You can continue activating it until they flip out something that is actually way worse than the original target. This gives you a similar safety valve in case they reveal something that is even scarier than what you targeted the first time.

The thing that sets this apart from Proteus Staff is that the target is exiled instead of being tucked away to the bottom of their library. For many regular threats, read: not someone's commander, you are happier exiling than putting into the graveyard or back into their library. On balance, this is a card that I could imagine seeing some play, but it isn't going to be a runaway hit because you can't use it on your own things.



The Blue entry in the color hoser cycle is also quite poor. The only saving grace that I could imagine for this card is the relative lack of removal in Blue. However, with an eternal card pool you are sure to find better options than this. I would guess that just about ANY counter spell will serve you better than Encase in Ice.











Illusory Gains is the most interesting Control Magic effect that I have seen in quite some time. It also just so happens to be quite poor. Why are we going to pay full price for this when we could pay less for a better card? IF you wanted to play actual Mind Control you can. I don't recommend that because there are probably ten better ways to take control of your opponents' stuff than that. This effect is worse than Control Magic so I would expect it to cost less than control Magic, sound fair?









This is some of the greatest and most inspiring flavor text that has ever made it onto a Magic card. It is wasted on a pretty silly card, but hey, what am I complaining about. I will take ANY good flavor text over the constant stream of babble that gets printed nowadays. The quality of literature and humor in Magic's flavor text is more akin to a teenager's Twitter feed than a professional writer's portfolio.

If you have a Creature with ETB triggers, you can put this on your own thing for profit. That is a high risk and I don't really know why you need a second trigger from your Frost Titan. If you use it on other people's Creatures then you can use the token as a blocker to pick off their team or perhaps even trade, although this doesn't seem like a great use of the card. In my opinion, the payoff from this just isn't worth what it takes to set it up.

This seems pretty sweet. A one way board sweep, even if it only clears things back to the hand is still worth looking at. This takes a little bit more to set up than I would like, but there aren't enough comparables to declare this unplayable. Decks like Animar are going to be very interested in this because they will be able to play it with a heavy discount, they are likely to have a large Creature to feed to it, and they can immediately capitalize on an empty board by attacking for the win. Look for this a finisher in those decks, but I don't foresee it popping up much anywhere else.

It kind of bothers me when the English language has words like profane which are spelled and pronounced the same regardless of whether they are being used as an adjective or verb. Profaner sounds to me like what you would use to mean 'more profane' if you weren't all that familiar with the language.




By now there are more than a dozen versions of this card. Blue, make something small, maybe it becomes a frog or cat or sheep or some such nonsense. This card is still just as good as its predecessors, but it also has all of the same problems. PLUS this isn't an instead and it doesn't remove abilities. I don't see much of a future for this in Commander. Pauper Commander maybe.

Dragons would know humility. Why wouldn't they? I am sure a dragon can kill another dragon, which means that they would still know the fear of death and loss. We clearly see dragons being killed in several pieces of art. Maybe the dragons are having trouble learning Humility because that card turns things into 1/1's and not 0/2's.

Oh my lord reminder text really destroys the templating on cards. This would normally be a very attractive text box, but I am so distracted by the line breaks that must be created because of the god awful parentheticals. If the dev team is concerned about people not properly understanding Flash, then why are they using it as an evergreen mechanic?!


Back in the real world where no one cares about my typesetting pedantics, this is a two-power, three-drop that has three relevant abilities. This card looks like it is small balling a bit for Commander, but you are getting a lot for the cost.





In Commander, we aren't hurting for playable counter spells. There are about 15 great options and 50 more that are totally reasonable if you don't want to by Force of Will or Cryptic Command. That being said, in many decks, this will be very close to Counterspell, which is definitely a quality card.












This is not may favorite of the cycle, but it is still very solid. It compares very favorably to things like Voidmage Prodigy. If you are able to counter something like a ramp spell en route to getting a 3/2 Flying, you have given yourself a huge boost in tempo and likely gotten in 6-9 damage already. I have a tough time seeing how you could leave this out of Blue Aggro-Control builds.











Foul indeed. I like my removal to come with a couple things: few targeting restrictions and card advantage. I am sometimes willing to pay large sums of mana to make sure that I get that. You might be slower and require more resources, but if every single card that you cast is a 2-for-1 you are going to be tough to compete with in the late game. I am really digging this digger and I can't wait to put it to use in some of my decks.











The Black entry in the color hosing cycle is easily one of the worst. This should absolutely be an Instant, I am not accepting any excuses for that. Diabolic Edict. It is ten years old and really isn't that good. Why are we regressing?

This is an interesting point about power creep that I want to make. Nowadays, the power is more concentrated around flashy, promote-able rares. If they can't make a poster out of it or put it on the front of a booster pack, no one cares. The overall power level of the game is moving up, but it is also being concentrated on fewer and fewer cards leaving things like this in a very disappointing spot.





I like this card quite a bit and it is just as good as the other members of the cycle. It calls directly back to flavorful cards from Magic's past. While Hidden Dragonslayer gave you a Reprisal effect, this gives you a Smother. Color appropriate, thematic, awesome.

The only problem that I see with this card is that its evasion ability allows it to sort of 'duck under' blockers, but activating the Megamorph ability INCREASES its power and thus increases the chances that your opponent can find a suitable blocker. The difference may not be significant in practice, but there are significantly more Creatures in the subset of [Power > 2] than there are in the set of [Power > 3].





I am never going to play this card. Neither are you. Instead I am going to go on a flavor rant.

What happens with the mechanics of this card is not the same as what is being pictured in the art. This card pictures dragons which are all from the Atarka clan, so they should all be on the same team. It also implies that the dragons are going to EAT the big cow things. So this card should have all of your Creatures fight all of your opponent's Creatures. It should also be Green. The flavor text somewhat matches up with this design.

The text box however, tells a different story. It implies that non-dragon Creatures are exploding and dragons are coming out of their dead bodies. Like alien eggs hatching from the corpse of a dead animal. The flavor text does not line up at all with this design. It would indicate that the dragons emerged AFTER they beasts were eaten...since you know that is what happens on the card, why would they be emerging hungry? They don't even emerge until they eat. This whole card is a steaming pile. I just can't anymore.




I love Fissure Vent. I don't get to play it all that often because it is a bit slow for competitive Commander, but it is certainly powerful enough to make it into a nominal deck list. It does a lot of what you would want non-Creature removal to do. For a common it is certainly pulling a lot of weight.

Well imagine my delight when they print an updated version which has:

• A better name.
• Better flavor.
• Better flavor text.
• An easier mana cost.
• The ability to hit ANY land.

I think we can place this squarely in the victory column.




Boom sucka! What does your whole team think about my Obliterate now? Red mass removal has come a long way in recent years. There is enough of it to make some frighteningly effect control decks. Really all that these decks are missing is a way to guarantee card advantage. With the limitations of Red spot removal and a lack of counterspells, you have to be able to make up for it with brute force...or a steady stream of fresh cards. Having a board sweeper that gets back another board sweeper is going to lead to a lot of card advantage.








This card is a little bit strange because it looks so much like it should fit in the Rare Megamorph cycle. In fact if you just made it Rare, no one would be able to tell the difference. But alas, it is an uncommon, so it doesn't get a free keyword/evasion ability at the top of the text box, but the Morph trigger is still very relevant.













Can anyone explain to me what is happening in the art of this card? Is the Rakshasa killing a Creature, because that doesn't make any flavor sense. The card can't kill Creatures. This is equally problematic if the other Creature is stabbing the Rakshasa. Perhaps the pink nonsense is somehow related to the protection effect of the card's second mode. I really have no idea.

This card does a lot of what you would want in a Green deck. It counters removal spells, remove problem permanents like Grave Pact or Future Sight, and it does so at Instant speed. At this cost, you can't ask for much more than that.







IN THE FACE!!! This is a solid card. It is very likely to hit something relevant and the size boost lets you trade up a significant portion of the time. I think that both Epic Confrontation and its predecessor Bear Punch are both quite playable in certain decks, but they are far from the best thing that you can be doing in Commander.












I am not going to speculate on the relative likelihood of this saving your whole team, nor am I going to explain the different ways to get +1/+1 counters onto your Creatures. I am simply going to say that, if you dodge or at least partially dodge a Wrath effect while drawing multiple cards, that is a big game. However you can make this work, you should go ahead and do that.

That is all for today ladies and gents. Remember to leave your comments below. I will see you next time for the epic finale of our Dragons of Tarkir set review where we will take a look at all of the things we haven't talked about so far.

-GG