"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.