"Garruk, Curse Breaker: Why Kill Them When Someone Else Can?"

"Garruk, Curse Breaker: Why Kill Them When Someone Else Can?"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.MD

Since I started writing again this month, I've gotten into the habit of analyzing the planeswalkers we're going to be getting in 2027.

I've deliberately avoided many of the current planeswalkers in circulation, mainly because I feel they have already been covered to death at this point. There are only so many ways you can analyze a planeswalker before you start repeating yourself.

Now that I've written about the nine planeswalkers coming in Mystery Booster Commander Edition, I'd like to turn my attention to the last in-universe set of the year, Reality Fracture.

The premise is certainly interesting.

Jace is essentially trying to pull a Hal Jordan—and if you don't know the reference, go read up on Green Lantern. He is attempting to alter reality so that all the terrible things that have happened up to this point simply never existed.

Joining him are planeswalkers who appear in colors opposite to their usual identities.

Opposites, yes.

But as we see later, these opposing colors aren't necessarily foreign to these planeswalkers. In fact, they may represent aspects of their personalities that were already there.

A good example is Garruk.

After being cursed by the Chain Veil, Garruk carried black mana within him. So in Reality Fracture, we get both a green and a black version of Garruk.

Today, I'll be focusing on Garruk, Curse Breaker, a five-mana planeswalker costing three generic mana and two green.

I have several Beast decks that are going to want this planeswalker as support, as well as a redundancy for an existing enchantment I already love: Garruk's Uprising.

Garruk, Curse Breaker's static ability is a significant improvement for this strategy. It simply checks whether a creature with power 4 or greater enters the battlefield under your control, and if it does, you draw a card.

That's a pretty good deal in a Beast deck.

Big creatures are already what you're planning to play, so getting a card every time one of them enters the battlefield can generate a considerable amount of value.

His +2 ability allows you to untap two lands.

That's great for Garruk, especially if those lands are capable of producing more than one mana. Imagine untapping something like Ancient Tomb or Gaea's Cradle.

Now you're not just building loyalty.

You're potentially setting yourself up for an even bigger play on your next turn.

His -3 ability is classic Garruk.

You create a 4/4 Beast token with trample.

A big body that can protect Garruk, attack your opponents, and, thanks to his static ability, immediately draws you a card when it enters the battlefield.

A 4/4 Beast, a card, and a planeswalker that can start generating more mana?

I'll take that.

But then we get to the -6 ability, and this is where Garruk gets a little political.

The ability lets you persuade another player to attack one of your other opponents. When they do, the creatures they control get +2/+2 and trample until end of turn.

You can activate it, point toward another player, and essentially say:

"You know that guy over there? I think you should attack him."

And suddenly their creatures become significantly more dangerous.

If they have a large army, you might even be able to convince them to put the final nail in another player's coffin.

Of course, you could do the deed yourself. Your own creatures can take advantage of the +2/+2 and trample as well.

But where's the fun in that?

I'd much rather have somebody else take out another player for me.

At least when I'm playing with Garruk, Curse Breaker on the battlefield.

I still prefer to bloody my opponents whenever I can.

I'm just perfectly happy to let someone else do it first.

And that's what I find particularly interesting about this version of Garruk. He's still doing the things you'd expect from him—making Beasts, generating mana, and encouraging creatures to smash into each other.

But now there's a little bit of politics involved.

And sometimes, the best way to win a Commander game isn't to kill everyone yourself.

Sometimes, you just need to point Garruk in the right direction and let everybody else do the work.

"Nephilim Epochal: The Lord They Always Wanted"

 "Nephilim Epochal: The Lord They Always Wanted"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.MD

The Nephilim were a cycle of five awesome creature cards that first appeared in Ravnica: Guildpact. They were the ancient gods of Ravnica, predating the Guildpact itself. Eventually, they were subdued and buried.

Then an excavation in the Utvara district awakened all five of them.

And, naturally, they went on a rampage.

All five Nephilim required four different colors of mana to cast and came with powerful abilities. Players have long wished that Wizards of the Coast had made them legendary creatures because they could have been fantastic commanders.

Well, it's far too late for that now.

So what did Wizards do?

They gave the Nephilim a Lord.

That way, you can finally put all of these ancient monstrosities into the same deck!

Enter Nephilim Epochal, a creature that can be cast using all five colors of mana thanks to its hybrid mana requirements.

So what makes it a Lord?

It gives benefits to the creature type it is associated with.

For starters, it can search your library for a Nephilim and put it directly into your hand. That's already a pretty useful ability when you're trying to assemble a very specific five-color tribe.

Then there's the stat boost.

Nephilim you control get +1/+1 for each other Nephilim you control, and they can't be blocked by monocolored creatures.

The monocolored restriction can be made particularly interesting with cards like Darkest Hour. In that case, all creatures become black, essentially making the entire battlefield monocolored.

That could make your Nephilim army very difficult to block.

So let's say you somehow manage to get all five original Nephilim onto the battlefield.

That's five Nephilim plus the Lord.

Each original Nephilim could potentially get a +5/+5 boost.

That's not bad at all.

And, of course, there's another possibility.

Changelings.

Because Changelings have every creature type, they can join the Nephilim party as well. Add some inexpensive Changelings to the deck and suddenly you have additional bodies contributing to that enormous stat boost.

Oh, and Nephilim Epochal can search for those Changelings too.

So now the deck isn't limited to simply finding the five original Nephilim. You can use your Lord to assemble an entire Eldritch-looking army.

And honestly?

That's exactly the kind of nonsense I enjoy in Commander.

The original Nephilim may never have become legendary creatures, but Wizards has given us another way to bring these ancient gods together.

Five colors.

Five ancient monsters.

One very helpful Lord.

Casting Eldritch monsters is my jam, after all.

"Feroz, Ulgrotha’s Warden: Birds, Bans, and Bant Stax"

"Feroz, Ulgrotha’s Warden: Birds, Bans, and Bant Stax"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.MD

Feroz, Ulgrotha's Warden was a good person.

He was a wizard, a teacher, and, perhaps most importantly, the husband of Serra.

Yes, that Serra.

The Serra who had her own realm.

The Serra who created angels.

That Serra.

Feroz, as his planeswalker card proclaims, is the Warden of Ulgrotha. He protected the plane from threats such as Baron Sengir, as well as incursions from other planeswalkers. Those incursions eventually became the reason he created Feroz's Ban—at least, that's how the lore tells it.

So, on to the card.

Feroz is a six-mana planeswalker in Bant colors, requiring three generic mana and one each of green, white, and blue. He enters the battlefield with five loyalty counters.

His +2 ability creates two 1/1 blue Bird creature tokens with flying.

These are probably the albatrosses associated with Feroz, and honestly, getting two flying bodies every time you activate the ability isn't a bad way to protect your planeswalker.

But his second ability is the one that really excites me.

It's a 0 ability.

You draw a card, and then you may put a permanent card with mana value 4 or less from your hand directly onto the battlefield.

Yes, you can put lands into play this way.

But that's hardly the most interesting thing you can do with it.

There are so many permanents with mana value four or less that could benefit from being cheated directly onto the battlefield. Creatures, enchantments, artifacts...

Maybe even some Stax pieces.

Boooo.

But let's be honest: if you're playing Bant and your planeswalker is giving you a free permanent every turn, someone is probably going to find a way to make the most annoying permanent possible appear on the battlefield.

And then we get to his -7 ability, which allows you to create Feroz's Ban.

It seems more anti-creature than anti-planeswalker to me, but hey, this is just another Stax piece to add to the collection.

At least it follows one of Feroz's most important beliefs: summoning creatures for battle is immoral.

He apparently believes that so strongly that he's willing to make sure everyone else has a very difficult time doing it.

Birds.

Free permanents.

And a Ban that tells creatures to stay home.

Feroz may have been a good man and a devoted husband to Serra, but as a Commander?

He might be an absolute nightmare to play against.

"Sifa Grent: Blood, Politics, and a Little Bit of Rakdos"

 

"Sifa Grent: Blood, Politics, and a Little Bit of Rakdos"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.MD

I can just see it now.

The smile on the faces of those blood-sucking, Aristocrats-loving players who finally have a planeswalker commander in Rakdos colors, giving them another way to build their favorite blood-soaked sacrifice decks.

And honestly?

I can't blame them.

Sifa Grent originally came from the plane of Grixis. Her spark was ignited when the Demon Malphegor attempted to steal it so he could escape that sliver of a plane.

Because, of course, Grixis was originally just a small piece of Alara.

Sifa was also Dack Fayden's archnemesis in the comic book series.

Rest in peace, Dack.

Oh, and you too, Sifa.

Apparently, this all happened before Sifa eventually met her end at the foot of Vitu-Ghazi on Ravnica.

So what exactly would make Aristocrats players happy about Sifa?

Her static ability, of course.

Whenever a creature dies, a target opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.

Bring out the dice, counters, or whatever other recording devices you use, because there is going to be a lot of upticking and downticking going on in games with Sifa.

And notice that it simply says whenever a creature dies.

Let's say each of your three opponents has at least one creature on the battlefield. You then cast Fleshbag Marauder, forcing everyone to sacrifice a creature.

Even Fleshbag Marauder itself ends up in the graveyard.

That's four creatures dying.

Four life lost by your most hated opponent.

Four life gained by you.

Interesting.

Very interesting.

Sifa can also get surprisingly political.

Her +1 ability allows you to goad two creatures at once. That means those creatures can't attack you—or a planeswalker you control—but they can attack everyone else.

Now imagine that you've goaded two enormous creatures on opposing sides of the table. Maybe they're both 8/8s.

Suddenly, you're forcing one player to send their giant creature into another player's giant creature.

They could trade.

They could take each other out.

And if both creatures die, that's two more life lost for an opponent and two more life gained for you.

Hmmmmm.

Protective and political.

I like it.

Then there's the -6 ability, which gives you a form of impulse draw while disrupting everyone else.

Each opponent exiles the top two cards of their library.

Hopefully, you just exiled a piece of the combo they were building.

Or maybe that board wipe they were hoping to draw.

Perhaps you just ruined the plans of the player who has been digging through their deck all game with Sensei's Divining Top.

Hahahaha.

That's not card advantage in the traditional sense, but it is certainly disruption.

And when you combine that disruption with the life-drain engine and the political manipulation from her +1, Sifa starts looking like a very interesting commander.

Card Advantage. Disruption. Life Drain. Politics.

Better still.

While I don't normally play these types of decks, I have to admit that if I eventually decide to build an Aristocrats deck, Sifa Grent will probably be at the top of my list for commander.

I may not normally embrace the blood-sucking lifestyle.

But if Sifa is offering?

I might just make an exception.

"Thomil, the Destroyer: Five Mana for a Lot of Sacrifices"

 

"Thomil, the Destroyer: Five Mana for a Lot of Sacrifices"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.MD

Thomil, the Destroyer has the template of Liliana Vess, but with significantly weaker text than that wonderful black planeswalker.

Honestly, I find Thomil a little ho-hum for his mana cost.

Five mana is a significant investment, although in Magic Christmas Land, you can probably find a way to get him onto the battlefield as early as turn three.

His +2 ability creates a 2/2 black Zombie token. That's certainly useful, especially in a deck that wants creatures around for sacrifice effects.

Then there's his 0 ability, which allows you to sacrifice a creature for three mana.

It's essentially a weaker version of Culling the Weak. You're giving up a creature to generate mana, but instead of getting four black mana, you only get three.

Still, in the right deck, sacrificing creatures can actually be part of the plan.

And then we get to the big one: his ultimate summons a Lord of the Pit token.

A monstrous 7/7 flying, trampling Demon that gets hungry during every upkeep.

And by hungry, I mean you need to sacrifice a creature to it.

If you can't—or don't want to—feed it, Lord of the Pit takes seven life from you instead.

In an EDH game, where everyone starts with 40 life, seven damage doesn't sound like an enormous price to pay.

But you are now on a clock.

Once you summon this Demon, you need to win—or at least be building toward a win—before that recurring seven damage starts eating away at your life total.

Fortunately, anyone playing Thomil is probably going to have plenty of creatures that they don't mind sacrificing. Zombies, token creatures, and creatures that want to go to the graveyard anyway could all make Lord of the Pit considerably easier to manage.

That makes Thomil potentially useful support for mono-black token and sacrifice strategies.

But here's my problem with him.

I feel like Thomil is ultimately a watered-down version of Liliana Vess. Liliana is simply more efficient at doing what I would expect a black planeswalker to do, particularly when it comes to generating Zombies and providing value.

Thomil isn't terrible.

He's just not particularly exciting.

I can see him working in the right sacrifice or token deck, and I'm sure there are players who will find some wonderfully evil combinations with him.

As for me?

I hope I can pick up Thomil cheaply enough to add him to my collection.

But I probably won't be building him.

Five mana is a lot to spend for a planeswalker who asks me to sacrifice so much.

"Spider-Man: Brand New Day — 3 Reasons Why It Worked for Me"

"Spider-Man: Brand New Day — 3 Reasons Why It Worked for Me"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.MD

“Superhero fatigue” has been thrown around as a term ever since the Marvel Cinematic Universe decided, perhaps in all its hubris, to expand far beyond the basics of simply entertaining people.

You could say they started taking things too seriously and simply lost the plot.

You could also say they managed to lose it on multiple levels.

So I went into Spider-Man: Brand New Day with an open mind.

I honestly enjoyed No Way Home, especially seeing three different Spider-Men interact with each other, but I also knew going into this movie that there were probably going to be some sad parts.

So why did it work?

Why did I leave the theater feeling entertained?

I think there are three reasons.

1. You Didn't Need to Do Your Homework

Aside from perhaps watching No Way Home as a refresher, there was no need to finish an entire assignment just to understand what was happening in this movie.

They carried forward the consequences of the previous film and made sure there were enough callbacks to remind you where Peter's story had been.

Even something as simple as the coffee cup from the donut shop works because it connects back to Peter's last encounter with MJ.

You don't need to remember every single MCU project that has come before this one.

You just need to remember Peter Parker.

And honestly, that's refreshing.

2. They Kept It About Spider-Man

Unlike Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, or even Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, where the titular character sometimes feels like they are sharing the spotlight with a much larger story, Brand New Day feels like it is actually about Peter Parker.

The movie focuses on how Peter has been coping with everything that happened in the previous film and how difficult it has been for him to move on.

You feel his loneliness.

And that's particularly interesting because Peter is still surrounded by people who care about him. But the people who loved him most—MJ, Ned, and even Aunt May—are no longer able to be part of his life in the same way.

That's a very different kind of superhero problem.

Peter isn't trying to save the multiverse.

He's trying to figure out how to live with what he's lost.

And sometimes, keeping things personal makes a superhero story much more effective.

3. There Were Funny Moments—But Man, the Action Was There!

There were definitely funny moments, but what really stood out to me was the action.

This has some of the best Spider-Man action sequences I've seen in quite a while.

That sequence involving The Hand was particularly cool, and the movie really takes advantage of just how dynamic Spider-Man can be when he fights.

Web-slinging.

Wall-crawling.

Flipping around.

Using the environment.

Moving in ways that a normal human being simply couldn't.

They really went all-in on what makes Spider-Man's fighting style so much fun to watch.

And then there's the fact that we watched it at the Uptown Tempur Cinema in BGC.

Thanks to my wife for arranging all of that!

My back was relaxed, I had all the snacks I wanted, and I was there with my family.

So maybe I'm giving the movie a little extra credit because the entire experience was great.

But that's also part of going to the movies.

You don't just watch the film.

You experience it.

And for me, Spider-Man: Brand New Day was a great experience.

The movie entertained me, gave me a Spider-Man story that actually felt like a Spider-Man story, and reminded me why I still enjoy sitting in a theater and watching someone swing across New York.

For all the talk about superhero fatigue...

Maybe sometimes we just need to let Spider-Man be Spider-Man.

"Worzel, the Protector: Ten Fairies and a Whole Lot of Loyalty"

"Worzel, the Protector: Ten Fairies and a Whole Lot of Loyalty"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.MD

Worzel, the Protector is a mono-white Commander-eligible planeswalker who makes her appearance in Mystery Booster Commander Edition.

She is the sixth planeswalker I've talked about so far, and I think she can be effective even as part of the 99 rather than necessarily being the commander of the deck.

At four mana, with a cost of 1 colorless and 3 white mana, there is certainly a heavy commitment to white. You're probably going to want to play her in a deck that is heavily invested in white, if not outright mono-white.

Whew. That was a lot of white!

Fortunately, that's not really a problem.

White has no shortage of planeswalkers, so there are plenty of options for building a deck around her.

And at only four mana, Worzel is considerably easier to get onto the battlefield than some of the more expensive planeswalkers I've looked at so far.

Now, on to her abilities.

Her first ability is a 0 ability that creates a 1/1 Cat token. But this isn't just another disposable creature token. The Cat can eventually tap to put a loyalty counter on each planeswalker you control.

Well, well.

A creature worth having around!

Not only does it give you another body on the battlefield, but it can also help get Worzel closer to her ultimate while simultaneously helping every other planeswalker you happen to have in play.

That's a pretty useful little Cat.

Her second ability is a -1 that lets you look at the top six cards of your library and dig for either a planeswalker or a basic Plains.

What you choose depends on what you need at the moment.

Are you behind on lands? Grab the Plains.

Are you setting up your next big play? Find the planeswalker you need.

Everything else goes to the bottom of your library in a random order. It's a simple ability, but being able to look six cards deep for exactly one of two things you are likely to want is pretty useful.

Let there be Plains or planeswalkers!

And then we get to her ultimate: -8 to create ten Scryb Spirit tokens.

Ten 1/1 flying Faeries that are, rather oddly, green.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Green.

Which makes me think that Worzel might have a home beyond mono-white planeswalker decks. She could potentially fit into one of those Trostani/Selesnya token decks as well.

Ten flying creatures represent a potential ten points of damage coming from the air, and suddenly that doesn't look so insignificant.

Especially when you remember what token decks tend to do.

Doubling Season.

Second Harvest.

These decks are already perfectly capable of turning a modest army into an absurdly large one. Add ten flying tokens to the equation and things could get very interesting very quickly.

And because Worzel only costs four mana, getting her onto the battlefield and working toward that ultimate isn't quite the investment it would be with a more expensive planeswalker.

I think Worzel is worth considering for mono-white planeswalker-centered decks, but I also wouldn't be surprised to see her find a home in Selesnya token decks.

A Cat that helps your planeswalkers gain loyalty, a little library digging, and an ultimate that gives you ten flying tokens?

That's a lot of loyalty for one protector.