Spotlight Challenge 1 Initial Review—Zeno Rage

Here's the challenge Zeno Rage is taking lead on:

Design a cycle of mythic rare legendary creatures to be the marquee cards for a new launch of Commander decks.

Let's take a look at the initial submission.

Corraich is a 'free commander' meaning that you any red-white Commander deck you run can have this dwarf legend in addition to one of 13 other possibilities. Interesting.

Corraich fails the vanilla test, but many legends do, as a result of their regularly epic abilities. While he's on the field, and your other commander isn't, and your other commander is a dwarf or warrior—so Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer—his ability kicks in: Your dwarves get an extra combat step every round. And your vigilance creatures too.

As written, this is bad. There's only one legend I can pair Corraich with that turns on his ability, and those two legends don't even support the same strategy (dwarf tribal versus metalcraft).

So what's got potential here?

Players will appreciate support for their favorite under-supported tribes (though this audience is necessarily smaller, or the tribe wouldn't be under-supported), and making that work in Commander where there might not be enough cards in that tribe (there are 35 {RW} dwarves) by pairing it with another tribe is a promising solution. Simply widening Corraich's untap effect to warriors gives the card symmetry the aesthetics demand, and also makes him vastly more relevant (there are 231 {RW} warriors).

Getting a second commander is neat. It makes sense that legend can't be as strong as any staple Commanders without adding a cost, but if the best part about having that second commander is that your deck is now 98 cards instead of 99, or that you can cast a 2/4 for four when you need it (at the expense of increasing the cost to re/cast your good commander), we're wasting players' enthusiasm.

Caring directly about what commander you pair with a free commander sounds good, but we need to be careful not to eliminate choices for the player. I'm also not sure checking that the other commander remains unplayed is half as cool as checking that the other commander is fighting in tandem with her lieutenant.

Faire Unquale is also a lieutenant commander. Spoiler alert: the whole cycle is. And rightly so.

Faire's ability is immediately super black-green, both looking for elves and valuing death. It lets you cast an elf  for free, either a card from your hand or your other commander—if it's an elf. Since elves are so well-supported, that gives us 4 choices for primary commander (or 9 more if we sacrifice tribal synergy for some kind of combo synergy or just because).

Not many elves are expensive enough to get excited about casting them for free. Maybe our elf sacrifice lets us summon any green creature?

It definitely makes things tricky that our commanders all have to be all the colors of our deck, rather than some, but there's no obvious way around that restriction. Still, it does make me wonder if tribal is really the best way to take the lieutenant cycle.

"Sacrifice a commander" is not something I expected to see any time soon, but it does work for both High Monarch Oona and her primary commander—Oona, Queen of the Fae or Wydwen, the Biting Gale, most likely, though we get 20 options if we don't insist on a fellow faerie… which is much more reasonable for this member of the cycle than the first two. Of course, it's not actually relevant what you sacrifice, since it's an on-board Shunt and no one will ever intentionally walk into that.

So we've got a 4/4 flyer for five that gives all our faeries hexproof? Much stronger than our first two designs. Could be a commander on all its own.

I like the idea of a legendary faerie that messes with opponents' spells, but I'm not sure that's Oona's idiom. I certainly don't imagine her sacrificing herself to save her minions.

I was going to say there are no red hydras, but there are 9. Neat. Only Ulasht, the Hate Seed can be Tiersa's hydra mentor, but 19 others can share her lead with a single head.

Why do I need a hydra in my command zone (Ulasht) or in my exile zone (???) to enjoy Tiersa's ability?

As cool as a bard that sings about hydras is, if I were a hydra fan, I'd be a little disappointed the commander for my new hydra commander deck isn't a hydra. Seems fine for dragons, or something else we've got five times as much of, but frustrating here.

Why's my soothing bard so haphazardly violent?

Like Oona above, Geist of Saint Traft gets more representation in Traft, Saint of Angels. This version costs {1} less but only has hexproof as long as your other commander is an angel, and you don't play it. Saviors of Kamigawa rewarded players for not playing cards and it's arguably the worst set of its era. Players like to play cards. You don't have to reward them beyond the normal for it, but don't penalize them for it without a very good reason.

This Traft doesn't give you a free angel to beat your opponent with, but it does make your army essentially unkillable. The fact that you have to spend mana to recast all those cards your saving keeps this ability from being unbeatable, but I'm still not sure how much fun it would be to play against.

Bruna, Light of Alabaster is the suggested pairing, but there are 24 non-angels you can settle for.

---

So does commander damage add up between my two commanders, or do I track them separately? I assume whenever I cast one, the cost to cast either next time goes up by {2} and I'm not tracking those increments separately?

I suppose these decks could come with effects that let you put non-legendary creatures into your command zone during play, to help meet most of our conditions, though that raises even more questions about playing them and whether they become commanders or not. Almost surely not worth it, unless they're worth it on their own and the synergy with these commanders is icing on the cake.

It's fine to make a cycle loose in terms of allied-versus-enemy colors, or of single-tribe-versus-double, or of what conditions your effects require, but you do need some common thread. I would try to make at least one of those line up. And I'll suggest that among those, the condition seems most relevant to the lieutenant cycle's identity.

Zeno Rage, I think you've got two interesting ideas for Commander cycles here: A cycle of lieutenants, and a tribal cycle. I'm not sure they're compatible. I'm also not seeing evidence that you're considering what kinds of decks these cards make practical, which in turn makes me wonder if you're getting enough feedback from your fellow artisans. Fortunately, you've got a whole week to iterate, request ideas, and beg for evaluation from your peers.