For myself, and many of the Commander players that I play with, one of the format’s most exciting aspects is finding an obscure, but powerful card that no one has ever seen before. Suddenly, your new tech is revealed at the table, and everyone needs a few moments to read the strange forgotten text you dredged up from 20 years ago. Once they do, they realize they’re royally screwed.
While many of these moments have happened in the past, it’s certainly a lot less common nowadays. Commander is so popular that most of the major tricks have been rediscovered at this point. Despite this, there are still some cards that seem incredibly underplayed for what it does. If you want to completely stump your pod with a card they’ve never seen before, allow me to introduce Debt of Loyalty.
Debt of Loyalty
Printed 28 years ago in Weatherlight, Debt of Loyalty is an extremely flexible instant that has a reasonable floor, but a massive ceiling. This card functions a little worse than it reads at first glance; in order to take control of a creature, it needs to Regenerate using the effect granted by Debt of Loyalty. Even with this small stipulation, the card is an absolutely incredible deal for three mana.
To be explicitly clear, this effect will last until the end of the turn. If the creature Regenerates at any point during that turn, you gain control of it. The exact wording for Debt of Loyalty is below.
“Regenerate target creature. You gain control of that creature if it regenerates this way.”
Wizards of the Coast
Responding to a boardwipe and stealing an opponent’s Commander for three mana is absolutely lethal. You can effectively hold the centerpiece of their strategy hostage, preventing them from even recasting it for Command Tax.
That said, in a boardwipe situation, you’re likely better off just taking whatever the biggest threat is on the board. You’ll have a massive problem, and the rest of the table will be clear. Unlike most spells that take control of a creature, removing a permanent won’t fix the problem, either. Debt of Loyalty turns any destruction-based removal spell thrown out by an opponent into a Mind Control for you.
While that’s the best use of Debt of Loyalty, you can also just use it as a protection spell. You can give your own creature Regeneration to beat a removal spell, after all. If you have a Commander that’s central to your strategy, this double-use could prove incredibly useful.
So, at worst, this is an overcosted protection spell, and at best, this is an undercosted Mind Control. There are no drawbacks to Debt of Loyalty, which suggests it could, and perhaps should, see play in a variety of different Commander decks. According to EDHREC, this is far from the case.
This Card Sees No Play
Debt of Loyalty sees, at most, about 10% play in any individual Commander deck. For a card this powerful, the fact that it’s so underplayed suggests that there might be an opportunity. Most of the decks that this card sees play in have a ‘take control’ theme. Commanders like Merieke Ri Berit, Sen Triplets, and Rubinia Soulsinger do play this card, but in very small quantities.
Debt of Loyalty could be thrown in any white deck, bonus points if you have some synergies with it, but the Commanders that will likely benefit from this card the most are ones with more restrictive color identities. Debt of Loyalty has an even stronger impact on a deck with a smaller card pool available to it. There are plenty of protection effects in white, but very few, if any, that can also take control of an opponent’s creature.
In terms of currently popular Commanders, Y’shtola, Night’s Blessed is a strong home for Debt of Loyalty. The card triggers Y’shtola thanks to being three mana, adding additional synergies to the deck. Feather, the Redeemed, can also give extra points to the card, allowing you to continually rebuy it if you’re forced to use Debt of Loyalty as a protection spell.
For the most part, however, there’s not a lot of knowledge as to where Debt of Loyalty shines because no one’s playing it. It’s a massive opportunity to get ahead of the curve and start playing some new tech in your Commander deck.
Debt of Loyalty Finance
Despite being relatively unknown, Debt of Loyalty is not the cheapest card in the world. This card has only ever been printed in Weatherlight, and its traditional variant goes for about $9.17 in near mint condition, but ranges for anywhere between $7.50-$11. Because the printing for Debt of Loyalty is so old, there is no foil variation of this card in existence.
At the time of writing, this card seems to be getting cheaper due to a lack of demand. Better yet, if you’re looking to save a few bucks, Debt of Loyalty gets cheaper for worse-conditioned variants. That said, the cheapest available copy of Debt of Loyalty is $5.84 at the time of writing, and that’s in damaged condition. Looking at recent sales, $5.31 is the cheapest that this card has sold for over the past week. At the time of writing, there’s, understandably, very little demand for this card. Only a few copies of this card tend to change hands on most days.
For an effect that can have a drastic effect on the board state, Debt of Loyalty remains a great deal. If players start to become more aware of this card and demand increases, it could potentially become more expensive in the near future. The future is impossible to predict, however, so it’s impossible to know whether Debt of Loyalty will become a white EDH staple in the future, or if this will remain a secret tech card to surprise your friends with.
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