By the light of the silver moon....

So the Eldritch Moon full card list has now been released and I've been giving it a good look over.

I have to say this set doesn't grab me the way other sets have but it's still full of cards I'd like to play in Commander.

I was going to start with the Legends but there's a brand new card type in the set that I HAVE to talk about first: Meld cards.

Wizards have now found a way to take two cards and make them greater than their separate parts.  Using the Dual Face Card (DFC) they have printed a giant card on the reverse of two normal cards.

Let's have a look at my two chosen examples:

Gisela, the Broken Blade and Bruna, the Fading Light.

Each of these two Angels could be used as your commander and then the other can be tutored for easily enough. (More about that a little later) then with both in play you can meld them.

Melding requires you to exile them, flip them and join them together.

And them put them on the battlefield as one giant card.  Should be fun to try and do this in commander. Can't see it happening in any other format to be honest.

While there are three pairs of meld cards I've only chosen two pairs for this blog. The angles and these two; Hanweir Battlements and Hanweir Garrison. I've chosen them because of what they turn into:

Hanweir, the Writhing Township

Such a cool concept, a little short on toughness maybe but still a great way to spawn creature tokens.

And here is the reason those poor angles and that township have been mutated! Emrakul, the Promised End. Now I'm not a big fan of the original Eldrazi - they are overpowered and easy to cheat into play so much so original Emrakul is banned in Commander. This one seems different though. Firstly you have to cast him to get the best out of him, secondly he had limited protection and thirdly his upside has a downside. If you can't kill me when you take my turn I'll get two to get my own back.

There are 7 types of Magic cards; Creature, Instant, Sorcery, Artifact, Enchantment, Planeswalker and Tribal so it's possible to get him down to a cost of 6 but it's more likely you'll cast him for 8 or 9 I suspect.

Gisa and Geralf continue a recent trend to have pairs of characters on one card, Pia and Kiran Nalaar for example. I've heard plenty of people comment that they intend to use this for Zombie tribal. I think I'd rather put it into my Grim Grin deck as one of the 100 rather than as my commander myself.

Thalia, Heretic Cathar - great in a permission deck along side such gems as Grand Abolisher, Ghostly Prison and Angelic Arbiter. Even better she's on 3 CMC so comes out early and slows your opponents down immediately.

"Finally!" I hear you cry. "A Legendary Spider." Well maybe I didn't but hey Wizards has finally given us one. Don't forget it's Green and Black not just Green.

Of course I could have written that dialog above for Ulrich. So in one set we get a Legendary Werewolf and a Legendary Spider. Cheers from Tribal fans all round. Although the Werewolf isn't all that. Basically he is just a big beater that can make himself bigger and fight another creature. Ulrich is possibly the only classic werewolf in the set. All of the others go from Werewolves to Eldrazi using mana to flip them rather than the no spell/two spell rule for normal howlers.

On top of the legends there are two Planeswalkers in the set:

Liliana, the Last Hope is average unless you can get her to go ultimate and then she rocks in a Zombie Tribal deck.

Tamiyo, Field Researcher has a really interesting +1 in that it has both offensive and defensive possibilities. Her ultimate is also rather special and I can see that being a lot of fun in Commander if you get her to 7.

Nephalia Academy is just great, you can choose to discard or you can choose to put it on top of your library. It's the fact it gives you that choice, gives you mana and doesn't enter tapped that makes it so good.

Geier Reach Sanitarium is a Legendary Land and these days that seems to be a rarity. In this case it's great for Group Hug decks and I suspect it'll make it's way into many Nekusar, the Mindrazer decks.

There are exactly 0 artifacts that have me excited when I think of commander decks so with that in mind what else have I found? There are a couple of DFC cards that I particularly like the look of.

Lone Rider/It That Rides as One it's not hard to gain 3 life in the right Commander deck and having a 4/4 First Strike, Trample, Lifelink creature is never going to be dull, especially if you can pump it.

Never mind this combines my two favourite things, books and magic, it's also great for making your spells cheaper.  Getting 3 instant or sorcery spells in your graveyard isn't that hard in Commander let's be honest.

If you've been following the Innistrad releases you'll know that there are two iterations of this ever evolving creature that have come before.

If you haven't been following along here are the other two. Delver in particular has made a big splash across the MTG formats.

I like it because of Final Iteration. It's a great card in a Wizard Tribal deck and even on it's own it still pumps the tokens in produces.

You have to set it up in your favour, with cheep token Zombies or such like, but when you do transforming Voldaren Pariah into Abolisher of Bloodlines can force your opponent to sacrifice a creature he didn't want to because it requires her to sacrifice not one but three!

Another new mechanic for the set is Emerge. I'm not sure I like the idea of sacrificing a creature to pay part of the cost of a bigger creature but there are a couple of them that caught my eye. Vexing Scuttler's ability to return an instant or sorcery to your hand is nearly always going to be useful.

Decimator of the Provinces on the other hand is a mini Overrrun. And depending on what you sacrifice it could end up costing you less - after all you only need to sacrifice a 5cmc creature for that to happen. Keep in mind he has haste as well so can attack as a 7/7 with Trample along with the rest of your horde the turn he comes into play.

There's nothing like a creature that can counter a spell, just look at the number of people that will play Mystic Snake. But this is something more. In effect you can make it a threat by exiling a spell you just cast. Play Wrath of God and then play Spell Queller. Exile Wrath of God and nobody will want to touch Spell Queller for fear of triggering the Wrath.

Campaign of Vengeance is, simply, put a way to kill your opponent in the declare attackers phase. All you need is a horde of creatures; Vampires, Soldiers and Zombies come to mind and you'll have one dead opponent before she can even consider blocking.

Mirrorwing Dragon is one of my favourite cards in the set. It may only be a 4/5 flyer for 5 but it's ability means your opponents will be loath to use any kind of targeted removal on it. And you can set yourself up to to cast multiple copies of the same spell yourself. Brute Force anyone?

I can not help but to get the feeling that a lot of people don't get this the first time they read the card. Then they're shown an example of how to use it and realise how nasty that little kitten really is. Give them a Demonic Pact, for example, and they've got 4 turns before they lose the game.

Speaking of loosing the game. Just giving your opponent 13 instead of 40, or maybe more, life is going to hurt but find someway to bring the Tree down with -1/-1 counters, for example, and they'll end up with even less. Note: damage does not reduce toughness.

If I'm right this is 5 2/2 creatures for 6cmc. I think that's a pretty good return on your investment and I expect you'll agree with me.

Speaking of Zombies how about I put 5 zombies into play and one of your creatures gets -5/-5 until the end of turn. Actually maybe my tree of perdition gets -5/-5 and suddenly you're on 8 life. Evil I know but that's Black for you.

So you've got lots of Zombies now but what do you do with them? Oh yes use them to help you draw cards. Note that even if you tap Cryptbreaker to draw a card you can still use the ability again and again until you run out of either animated dead bodies to turn sideways or life.

So the Eldrazi are turning everything living into mutated Eldrazi monsters. How do you fight back? Turn everything into 1/3 spirits. Better than that this card spreads like the proverbial plague. I still think it should have been an Ooze but I get what Wizards was trying to do with the card story wise.

Great for those opponents that enjoy land destruction or if you've been using land to feed the Gitrog Monster.

You're playing green you're almost always going to be playing large creatures, unless you're playing Elves but even they there's ways of making them bigger. Drawing cards to replace dying creatures is never a bad plan in Commander.

There are certain decks and certain commanders that are going to love this card. Others will make no use of it what-so-ever but flashing in an equipment and attaching it for free is always going to be powerful. And this card is oh-so-cheep to cast.

Expensive to cast but Subjugator Angel along side something like Eldrazi Displacer will cause your opponents any number of headaches.

I mentioned earlier tutoring for legends. How about a 4/4 with First strike that does exactly that? Certainly made me smile. See above comment about Eldrazi Displacer and apply to Thalia's Lancers.

Before I end with the Blue cards I just realised I had forgotten to include this around the same time I spoke about Lands and artifacts. I am sure this card is broken. Not in the same way I was sure Eldrazi Displace was broken but it still is. Food Chain is the one card I hear and read about when people discuss this card.

This needs little discussion except you must have an agreed sideboard/wish pile in Commander from which you'll get your Eldrazi's with Coax from the Blind Eternities.

Would you like to Scry every turn for free? You would? Well have you met Geist of the Archives yet?

This card can exile your creatures or your opponents. At worst it's a cheep way to remove blockers at best you engineer it so that you gain maximum benefit from any Enter the Battlefield effect the exiled creature may possess.

Oh I'm sorry but your commander is a land. This is one of the best cards I can think of to deal with enemy commanders since the rules for tucking them back into the library were changed. Seriously if I'm playing blue I'm playing Imprisoned in the Moon.

Expensive but Mind's Dilation is going to be oh so fun to play if it stays on the battlefield for any length of time.

Finally we have Summary Dismissal. I included this because you get to watch as your opponent's Planeswalker goes ultimate and the you counter the ability. Working out how to use this more than once in a game is going to be the fun part.

So there you have it my picks form Eldritch Moon. I always think I'll only end up choosing a ten or maybe a dozen cards and am always surprised by just how many cards I end up liking.

Until next time may you top deck that card you just wished for.

Phil