Storm in the Mountains by Albert Bierstadt (1870). Crested Sunmare by Lucas Graciano.
Recently I wrote about a bunch of weird and fun things you can do with Mirage Mirror. I think I may have come up with an interesting angle on one of the new abilities in that set. As I begin this, I'm really not yet sure what conclusion I'm going to reach at the end. I may have uncovered something really spicy, or maybe it's not much at all. At the start I'm going to guess it'll be the latter, but we'll see how it turns out.
The ability I'm going to try to see if we can "break" is...
Eminence
Each of the 2017 Commander decks has one legendary with the new keyword "Eminence". Eminence ability is an ability that a Commander has that functions whether they are on the battlefield or in the command zone. It should be noted that additional abilities on the card only function when the card is on the battlefield. The Eminence ability is the ONLY one that functions from the command zone.
While there are four decks in the 2017 release, we actually now have five decks that have commanders with Eminence. Let's take a look at them.
Oloro has the Eminence ability that at the beginning of your upkeep you gain 2 life, whether he's on the field or "in the zone". That's great but it doesn't help you beat commander damage, infect or combo decks.
Arahbo allows you to pump one of your cats +3/+3 at the beginning of combat and that boost lasts until end of turn. Because it's at the beginning of combat, that means you won't be able to surprise anyone after blockers have been declared. Because it lasts until end of turn, it means extra combat steps would be especially good for this ability as the pump you give will occur multiple times but sadly - those spells are all in red and you'll be in green & white.
Edgar allows you to put a 1/1 black Vampire token onto the battlefield every time you cast another Vamprire spell. This makes him like a constant Parallel Lives or Anointed Procession but only for your bloodsuckers.
Inalla lets you pay 1 when another nontoken Wizard enters the battlefield under your control. If you do, you may create a token copy of that Wizard that will gain haste and get exiled at the beginning of the next end step. Because it's only until end of turn, this will be more helpful to abuse ETB effects than to amass a huge army.
The Ur-Dragon simply makes Dragon spells cost one generic mana less. Having a built-in Dragonlord's Servant is good given that Dragons cost to cast than your average bear, cat, vampire or wizard. While it's practically necessary for this deck to keep up with the others, it's neither spicy nor easily abused.
So how am I going to suggest we try to abuse Eminence? Simple - just look in the mirror.
It Takes Two, Baby!
When I wrote about Mirage Mirror I looked at temporarily making a copy of another permanent on the battlefield.
The 2017 Commander decks have a new mirror - Mirror of the Forebears. It does much the same thing but is restricted to the creature type of your choice. Both only copy something until end of turn, but these guys can be used in any deck so they will be our starting point.
Today we'll be looking at using these and anything else you can use (i.e. in your colors) to make a copy of a commander that has an Eminence ability.
As you may well know, if you have a second copy of any legendary creature on the battlefield the "legend rule" kicks in.
704.5k. If a player controls two or more legendary permanents with the same name, that player chooses one of them, and the rest are put into their owners' graveyards. This is called the “legend rule.” Only one copy of a given legendary card may be in control by a same player at the same time.
Here's where it gets interesting.
For now let's assume we have no way to keep multiple copies of the same legendary permanent on the field at once. There is no Mirror Gallery in play.
If for some reason I actually decided to cast Oloro and then I make a clone of him I would have to choose either the original or the copy to go to the graveyard. If I chose to lose the copy of Oloro, it would go to the graveyard but would then be removed as a state based effect. I wouldn't have the option of putting the copy in the command zone, as it would go "poof" upon leaving the battlefield. That doesn't really get me any benefit at all.
If I were to keep the copy of Oloro and put the REAL Oloro back in the command zone, a funny thing happens. I will now have TWO Eminence triggers!
With Oloro that only means that I gain 4 life each upkeep instead of 2 life.
While gaining twice the life might be twice as annoying to your opponents, I think it's safe to say that it doesn't make Oloro that much more dangerous. Plenty of non-combo, non-voltron, non-infect players might disagree, but the more competitive your playgroup is, the less impressed they are by Oloro's little party trick. Oloro's life gain is good, and in the right built it might be a viable strategy, but it's not game-breaking.
What about our new Eminence commanders?
Twice the Roar
Let's start with Arahbo, Roar of the World.
Oloro might not be game-breaking, but other Eminence commanders have a bigger impact on the battlefield and on combat.
If Arahbo is in the command zone OR on the battlefield, at the beginning of combat, target cat gets +3/+3. If he is BOTH in the command zone AND on the battlefield, that gives you two triggers so you can either give one cat +6/+6 or you can give two different cats +3/+3.
Looking at just the Eminence ability isn't a fair way to evaluate this card, so we really need to look at Arahbo's other ability.
If Arahbo is on the battlefield, whenever another cat you control attacks you can pay 1GW and have it gain trample and +X/+X where X is its power. Before you get too excited - this second ability is NOT an Eminence ability. You can only do it if Arahbo is on the battlefield.
That doesn't mean we don't have some potential here. Let's look at a sample application of this strategy using Arahbo and a cat we'd be smart to add into any Arahbo deck - Skyhunter Skirmisher!
I'm fond of Skyhunter Skirmisher because he's got both evasion and double-strike. Unfortunately, that 1/1 isn't much to start with but if he was a 3/3, instead of doing 28 damage when all is said and done, he would wind up dealing 36 damage. You can see that a little equipment will go a long way with this kind of an approach.
There are a number of 4 power Cats in this deck. Using this double-Eminence trick without any extra pump or double-strike you'd be looking at 20 damage. Evasion and double-strike are key for this strategy and we can only dream about how busted this would have been if Arahbo had been Naya and we could have played extra combat step spells with his little party trick. I think double-Eminence for Arahbo is not necessarily the most busted thing ever, but it's definitely a trick to make sure you have available to close out a game.
I think the best way to play it for Arahbo is to use one of the mirrors as a response when you're ready to swing for a ton of damage and someone targets Arahbo with removal. They target Arahbo with Swords to Plowshares in your first main phase? Use the mirror, make a copy, move the original Arahbo to the command zone, get double the Eminence and swing on that guy for even more damage. In any situation, it's a neat play. If you've got some double-strike involved, you're looking at the potential for a big chunk of damage.
Vampire Mosh Pit
Moving on to the Vampire deck, Edgar Markov lets you create a 1/1 Black Vampire token for each casting of another Vampire spell. That means he can't trigger himself. It also means that any abuse of his Eminence ability is just going to churn out additional 1/1 Black Vampire tokens.
The real question is whether or not there's a way to abuse this?
Wizards of the Coast has taken care of us, including Captivating Vampire in the Edgar Markov deck.
Edgar Markov costs 2RWB so by the time you can cast him, you will probably already have a vampire or two on the field. If you've got 2, Edgar will be your third and if you cast one more Vampire, Edgar's Eminence ability will give you the five that Captivating Vampire requires to be able to start stealing creatures.
Edgar's additional ability allows you to put a +1/+1 counter on each Vampire you control when he attacks. He's a 5/5 with haste and first strike but no evasion.
Additional untaps are easy to get in Mardu, as red has lots of extra combat step spells. Once you have gained enough vampires to use Captivating Vampire, getting some extra combat steps can let you steal extra creatures but I'm not seeing any special synergy with Edgar's Eminence ability.
If you find yourself with a hand full of vampires, Edgar on the field and enough mana available to cause some trouble, it might be worth making a copy of Edgar so you can send him to the command zone, get double Eminence and get some extra vampire tokens. In theory you could have just Edgar on the field, do our copy trick, cast three vampire spells and wind up with 10 vampires on the battlefield. While that's impressive, they won't have haste on their own so you'll want to either have Captivating Vampire out or hope nobody wipes the board before you can cause trouble.
I think the ability to go from nothing to a wide board is pretty good and if you've got Anointed Procession out to give you additional tokens and a haste enabler for your team you could really have something. Again - this isn't game-breaking but if you ever need that extra help to go wide, double Eminence might be worth it, especially if you're responding to someone trying to remove Edgar to keep you from blowing up in the first place.
All of the Wizards
Inalla's ability is similar to Edgar's but there are some key differences.
If Inalla, Archmage Ritualist is on the battlefield or in the command zone, whenever another nontoken Wizard enters the battlefield under your control you may pay 1. If you do, create a token that's a copy of that Wizard. The token gains haste. Exile it at the beginning of the next end step.
Inalla's other ability lets you tap 5 Wizards and target opponent loses 7 life. With a Paradox Engine on the field and the right shenanigans that could add up pretty quick but Inalla's minions don't stick around, they get exiled at end of turn.
While having extra Wizards is nice you probably are going to want to focus on ETB effects because they're just going to get exiled. If you're gearing up for a big turn having an extra Inalla in the command zone will let you triple up on wizard ETB effects instead of just doubling up on them. With the right wizards that could be the difference between winning and losing, but my gut feeling is that the precon is going to want some significant rework if you're going to pursue this strategy.
Rather than go into examples of wizards with strong ETB effects here, I'll get into it later on. Let it suffice to say that there are infinite combos and game-breaking strategies to be had as blue gives you the best chances to really abuse this tactic. You'll have access to Clever Impersonator, Cackling Counterpart, Clone, Stolen Identity, Sakashima the Impostor, Lazav and much more.
Dragons on the Cheap
The Ur-Dragon makes all of your dragons cost 1 less. While that's good, it's unlikely that double (or triple) Eminence is going to translate into a win. It might translate into more dragons, but you'll still have to take care of all those pesky issues like ramp and card draw.
Even if you imagine using all the blue effects you can muster together to save 3, 4 or even 5 on every dragon, that doesn't translate directly into a win. Furthermore you'll have to navigate the many color requirements those dragons will come with. In a 5 color deck if you have a clutch of red dragons in your hand and only 3 red mana sources on the field, it won't matter how much cheaper they'll be. You'll still need to find a way to come up with that red mana.
The key thing about The Ur-Dragon is that his other ability is really where you're going to get the most benefit. Having an extra one in the command zone is OK but having extras on the field is fantastic. This is where playing Sakashima the Impostor as a copy of your commander will get really powerful. Whenever one or more of your dragons attacks you can draw that many cards and put a permanent on the battlefield. Doing that once is strong. Doing it twice (or more) is fantastic. Still, it's got nothing to do with Eminence so I feel like this is the weakest commander for abusing this new ability.
Wiser Minds than Mine
I am far from an expert on Wizards. Honestly, I have something of an aversion to the tribe, no thanks to a player at our LGS who spent much of 2016 playing mono-blue Wizard Tribal and locking down games with Patron Wizard and other oppressive tap-to-counter shenanigans. I've got enough PTWD (Post Traumatic Wizards Disorder) that I was pretty annoyed when they spoiled Wizards as the one of the C2017 tribes.
Knowing your limitations is important, so rather than try to expound upon the ways that Inalla could be abused with extra Eminence triggers, I brought the question of Double Eminence to the good folks on reddit at /r/EDH. I was hoping to find out if there was anything I might have missed in what I had written up to that point on Inalla or any of the other Eminence commanders.
They quickly and aptly mentioned easier ways to get extra Eminence triggers. Redditor "MhmmmmAwkward" immediately pointed out that Strionic Resonator is an auto-include if you're pursuing this strategy.
A previous redditor I've quoted in the past, "MageKorith", brought up the use of Mirror Gallery and using Sundial of the Infinite to avoid having to exile any Wizard tokens if you're trying to abuse Inalla's ability. Redditor "elephantambush" brought up Panharmonicon, Sakashima and Clone. Clearly there are lots of ways in blue to get lots of copies of creatures and if you're copying creatures that help you get extra triggers, this is going to be fertile ground for some game-breaking stuff.
To fully abuse this plan, redditor "Artex301" came up with the following:
[[Lazav]] + [[Sakashima]] + [[Panharmonicon]] + [[Strionic Resonator]] + Inalla clone + Inalla in the command zone.
Throw in [[Wanderwine Prophets]] and you got yourself a party.
Lazav and Sakashima keep their names but give you extra Eminence on the battlefield. That gives you three plus one in the command zone, one more from Strionic Resonator and if there are ETBs involved Panharmonicon will copy them. Magical Christmasland here we come!
If you are looking at abusing this as much as possible you pretty much have to be in blue, so Ahrabo and Edgar are out. The Ur-Dragon is also not worth considering not because having extras would be bad - just because we're looking at abusing Eminence and his Eminence only cuts your costs. Oloro will gain you tons of life, but as stated before, that's not the kind of game-breaking we're going to explore. It's just not that interesting.
That means we're looking at how to use this plan to break Inalla. We start with casting a single 1/1 Wizard. With the aforementioned strategy we can get five copies of that Wizard and with Panharmonicon duplicating the ETB trigger that means we're going to get 12 instances of that ETB effect.
Let's look at some non-legendary creatures that might be fun if we had 12 ETB triggers to play with.
All of these have good ETB affects. If any of them give you 12 times the ETB triggers, you're looking at breaking a game wide open. If you could then use something like Deadeye Navigator to bounce and do it again, it'll only get that much worse for your opponents. This is, however, our best case scenario so it's not like that's going to happen very often, if at all.
To be honest, I like to think I'd have come up with much of this, but at the point where I reached out to /r/EDH for feedback on my idea, I hadn't even begun to look at artifact support for copying Eminence triggers, not to mention blue clone/copy effects. I might have gotten there on my own, but I am in their debt for the great suggestions they offered up.
One comment pretty much summed up my personal conclusion on Double Eminence. To quote redditor "ekimarcher",
The eminence abilities are designed as a slow incremental advantage that you gain over the course of a long game. The only one that has a really big impact is Inala, she already goes infinite with 1 other card and goes infinite with 2 other cards a dozen different ways. Having multiple triggers of this isn't really huge because you only need 1 of them to do it.
It's a cool idea but I don't think it's really game breaking.
I'm right there with ya, Ekimarcher.
The full discussion I initiated on reddit is at the link below:
Final Thoughts
I'm already planning on building Saskia to be my cat tribal commander once I've played the Arahbo deck a few times. The prospect of combining his Eminence ability with extra combat steps is just too good to pass up on.
If I can achieve "Double Eminence" that gives me +6/+6 on each combat step.
As mentioned earlier, in our first combat our Skyhunter Skirmisher can be a 14/14 with double-strike if we get our Double Eminence and use Arahbo's ability to pump it.
If we can get a second combat, our 14/14 can get another +6/+6 to make it a +20/+20. Then if we can pay another 1GW we can again give it +X/+X so it can be a 40/40... with flying... and double-strike. This isn't really Magical Christmasland either. It's a 1/1, we probably paid 2 to use Mirage Mirror to achieve Double Eminence and we paid a total of 2GGWW to allow it to do 28 damage in the first combat and 80 damage in the second combat. I think 8 mana is a pretty decent rate for the ability to deal 108 combat damage in a single turn.
Double Eminence is definitely a cool idea. I do not think it will be regularly game-breaking, but it is absolutely, positively the kind of trick you'll want to have available and be ready to use for those times when it will mean the difference between a win and a loss. If you play enough, that time will come and if you can pull it off, I'm pretty sure it will feel awesome.
As always, thank you for reading & see you next week!