"Brago , King Eternal: Starting Fresh"

"Brago , King Eternal: Starting Fresh"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

There are cards in the game of magic that tend to be abused more than others.Some tend to be driven into oblivion and forgotten , others tend to wake players up in the middle of the night because there are some cool interactions that they might not have thought possible. And yes the Magic muse does tend to strike pretty much at any hour.

Brago ,King Eternal seems to be one of the cards that would wake you up in the middle of the night. As an EDH commander he would be a 4 to cast Azorius creature(White/Blue Colors) which means that he represents one of the strongest color combinations in all of magic. Total control is what he represents.

Now , when you read that long line of text that Brago has it just simply means that you could return any number of target non-land permanents you control and return them to the battlefield under their owners control.

Let us dissect that a bit. So when Bragos is able to hit an opponent , his ability will trigger which means that for the exception of lands you have just exiled a lot of permanents and then allowed them to come back. 

This massive ability could then be looked at in a lot of different ways.

Brago Defense:

Clamping down on opponents has always been an Azorious thing.With Brago this particularly annoying tendency is increased ten fold.

One of the obvious things to do is to exile creatures with Oblivion Ring,Detention Sphere Banisher Priest and Fiend Hunter. However  , when Brago does his thing and there are better target for these "Banishers" then by all means redirect and  banish a whole set of other creatures or permanents.

Frost Titan , Dungeon Geists and Claustrophobia pretty much works the same way. You could choose another creature to lock down and not allow it to stand up. 

Tumble Magnet used to be limited to 3 activations. If it gets exiled it comes back and you could tumble a few more things with it again. As opposed to it just being a useless piece of metal on the field.

Creatures like Hoverguard Sweepers or Colossal Whale would really just love to keep on Bouncing things while providing you a meaty creature to attack with next turn. 

Lavinia of the Tenth would be a Mass Effect Detain on creatures with mana cost 4 or less. A really great semi-lock considering that most creatures would not be able to block Brago from attacking and triggering again.In which case Lavinia would return and detain again and again.

And if there are blockers now , wait a few turns...there won't be any left.

Brago Support:

So in case you don't have your key cards at hand yet what better way to do things than to have a bunch of permanents to help you get them. 

Wall of Omens and Ichor Well Spring for example allows you to draw cards with Brago's activation.

Sphere of the Suns which like tumble magnet is also limited by the amount of counters on it comes back with 3 fresh counters to be used on the next turn.

Speaking of Counters, How cool would it be to use Jace Beleren to draw one card when you cast him and then use him to draw another card when you bounce him with Brago? Pretty cool right? Now imagine doing this for the other Planeswalkers...Elspeth , Knight Errant comes in producing 6 tokens per turn!

Then from the M15 set comes an awesome Life gainer/ Resetter in the form of Resolute Archangel. It doesn't matter how much your opponent throws at you each turn because this particular angel would just come back into play and reset your life total to 40 in every EDH game. 

There are tons of token producers in White and Blue , one of my personal favorites come from the New Phyrexia set. The Splicers Wing and Blade which could give you a 3/3 Golem each time they come into play. Pretty neat because you can add more damage into a rapidly expanding army. 

Sun Titan could potentially trigger twice on your turn by attacking(returning a much needed permanent) and then being exiled and returning for another Trigger. Diluvian Primordial could also cause a lot of havoc since there will be a lot of spells that you could possibly use(preferably in the late game).

Brago Offense:

On the offensive side , well there seems to be no lack of big monsters this side of Blue and White but with all the clamp down from controlling creatures it is only a matter of time before your opponents succumb. For me though , if I had Brago , I would savor the moment by well just simply destroying things.

Spine of Ish Sah makes a case for smashing things albeit one by one.

If you are really impatient in dealing aggro damage then you could have Clone or Phyrexian Metamorph come in as a copy of pretty much the biggest creature and go to town with them. Godzilla level leveling ensues.

One of the things that I would love to do is to have Brago equipped with this card...Whisper Silk Cloak.Why? Sure Damage that is why! I mean you have a commander that attacks and triggers and short of Mass Removal there is no way your opponents could stop his triggered ability! Yup. Brago will definitely keep me waking up in the evenings.