As we enter week two of Tarkir: Dragonstorm previews, the hits just keep on coming. We’ve seen some juicy new main set cards already today, and now we have a full Commander decklist to chew on as well. Last week we got Jeskai, Sultai, and Mardu, and this week we’re kicking things off with Abzan. The Abzan Armor Commander precon deck, specifically.
Fully revealed by popular MTG YouTube channel Commander At Home, this deck is an all-in toughness-matters hoedown. You’ll find plenty of chunky creatures and Walls here, as well as cards that reward you for playing them. While it may lack the explosive potential of the Mardu and Sultai precons, there’s a very solid Midrange Commander deck here for those who enjoy that playstyle. The reprint suite here ain’t half bad, either.
Abzan Armor Commander Deck Face Commanders
Before we get into the new cards revealed for the Abzan Armor Commander deck today, it’s worth having a quick recap of the deck’s face Commanders. We’ve covered both of these cards in the past, but the valuable context they provide is worth a second look here.
Felothar the Steadfast is one of the clearest toughness-matters Commanders Magic: The Gathering has ever seen. It lets your creatures deal damage equal to their toughness, lets your Defenders swing in, and even lets you trade in high-toughness creatures for a grip full of cards. If you put Felothar at the helm, you’ll want to go all-in on the toughness theme with a lot of cheap Walls and synergy pieces like Doran, the Siege Tower.
Betor, Ancestor’s Voice takes a completely different approach. This is a legendary creature that cares both about life gain and life loss, which makes it somewhat unique as far as Commanders go. You’ll find plenty that care about one or the other, but few that care about both. To capitalize on this spicy Spirit Dragon, you’ll want to include plenty of life gain and Lifelink creatures, as well as powerful spells that ask you to pay life. Some self-mill to fill your ‘yard will also go a long way.
Protector Of The Wastes
- Mana Value: 4WW
- Rarity: Rare
- Type: Creature – Dragon
- Stats: 5/5
- Card Text: Flying.
When this creature enters or becomes monstrous, exile up to two target artifacts and/or enchantments controlled by different players.
4W: Monstrosity 3. (If this creature isn’t monstrous, put three +1/+1 counters on it and it becomes monstrous.)
With the face Commanders out of the way, let’s get into the new stuff. Protector of the Wastes is probably the most generic new card in the list, and its inclusion is a bit puzzling in all honesty. This isn’t a high-toughness creature for Felothar, and it’s not a life gain/life loss card for Betor. Really the only thing that makes Protector appropriate at all is the fact that it’s a Dragon.
That’s not to say it’s a bad card, mind you. Permanently dealing with two artifacts/enchantments on entry is a nice effect, and makes Protector a great blink/reanimation target in a range of strategies. If you can lose six life in a turn, getting this back with Betor will be a beating. The chance to repeat the effect via Monstrous is nice too, though it’s a lot of total mana to do so.
Ultimately, while it’s a solid card, Protector of the Wastes is probably one of the first cards I’d cut from the Abzan Armor Commander deck. It doesn’t offer a huge amount of synergy with either Commander, and artifact/enchantment hate is available on a wide range of cheaper creatures in Abzan colors.
Reunion Of The House
- Mana Value: 5WW
- Rarity: Rare
- Type: Sorcery
- Card Text: Return any number of target creature cards with total power 10 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. Exile Reunion of the House.
Now this is a card that synergizes well with the Abzan Armor Commander deck. Reunion of the House is a seven mana mass reanimation spell, limited only by the power of the creatures you choose to bring back with it. In a Felothar toughness-matters deck, this will bring back your entire graveyard more often than not.
The tempo swing you can generate by doing so is insane. In the stock list alone you can grab the likes of Arboreal Grazer and Wall of Blossoms, which net you small benefits while not taking up any of your 10 power allowance. You can then grab a couple of bigger creatures to round things out and feel pretty great about the results.
All of that said, this card is clearly designed with toughness-matters decks in mind, and it will likely underperform everywhere else. If you’re looking for more generic mass reanimation Funeral Room/Awakening Hall is only one mana more to get your whole graveyard, for example. If you’re somehow playing a non-black graveyard deck there may be a case for it, but overall this is one for the Defender decks and little else.
Jaws Of Defeat
- Mana Value: 3B
- Rarity: Rare
- Type: Enchantment
- Card Text: Whenever a creature you control enters, target opponent loses life equal to the difference between that creature’s power and its toughness.
Jaws of Defeat is an interesting little enchantment. As with Reunion of the House above, it’s clearly aimed at decks where the creatures have much higher toughness than power. Each time such a creature enters under your control, you get a nice little burn spell for an opponent’s face.
Jaws is more interesting than Reunion, however, because it has applications outside of just high-toughness Typal. It works just as well with creatures who have higher base power than toughness, for example, so it could serve as a nice bit of extra damage in aggressive black lists. As an enchantment that deals damage whenever a creature enters, it can also be an enabler for many infinite combos.
Gravecrawler loops aren’t exactly a bold new innovation, but Jaws of Defeat is a new way to wipe out a table if you get Gravecrawler, Phyrexian Altar, and a second Zombie together. Most other creature loops in black will work with the card too, which gives it decent utility. You’re still best playing this card in toughness-matters decks for the most part, but it definitely has potential elsewhere.
Tip The Scales
- Mana Value: 2B
- Rarity: Rare
- Type: Sorcery
- Card Text: Sacrifice a creature. When you do, all creatures get -X/-X until end of turn, where X is the sacrificed creature’s toughness.
Tip the Scales is the crown jewel of the Abzan Armor Commander deck as far as I’m concerned. New black board wipes come and go, but Toxic Deluge still remains the best in the format in the eyes of most players. Tip the Scales offers a very similar effect at the same rate, which may make it a new Commander classic.
Granted, Deluge is more universally applicable. You’ll generally always have life to pay, after all, whereas you won’t always have a high-toughness creature at the ready to sacrifice. That said, there are plenty of decks that can easily make use of the card. Cheap high-toughness creatures like Arboreal Grazer allow for easy sweeps, and scalers like Carrion Feeder can take things even further. Even outside of creatures like these, any deck that plays creatures should have reasonable targets for this.
I can easily see Tip the Scales being a new black staple when all is said and done. It even adds sacrifice synergy for Aristocrats decks, which is not a negligible benefit given how popular those are.
Will Of The Abzan
- Mana Value: 3B
- Rarity: Rare
- Type: Sorcery
- Card Text: Choose one. If you control a Commander as you cast this spell, you may choose both instead.
- Any number of target opponents each sacrifice a creature with the greatest power among creatures that player controls and lose 3 life.
- Return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield.
The Abzan entry in the new Clan Will cycle is a great showcase for the Will mechanic overall. If you’re using just one of these modes, the card is underwhelming at best. Flare of Malice is miles better than the first mode and, in a format with Reanimate and Animate Dead, getting a single creature back for four mana is far from exciting.
If you do manage to get both modes here, however, the card is very solid. Taking out your opponents’ biggest creatures while bringing back one of your own is a huge tempo swing, and can really put you back in the driving seat. The life loss is nice too, helping you put on the pressure as you reduce your opponents’ defenses.
There are certainly comparable cards out there, like the underrated Rise of the Witch-King from Lord of the Rings. If you’re not playing green, however, or if you just want to jam in as many Edicts as possible, Will of the Abzan is a fine piece of cardboard.
Arbor Adherent
- Mana Value: 3G
- Rarity: Rare
- Type: Creature – Dog Druid
- Stats: 2/4
- Card Text: Tap: Add one mana of any color.
Tap: Add X mana of any one color, where X is the greatest toughness among other creatures you control.
Arbor Adherent is an interesting new mana dork option from the Abzan Armor Commander deck. ‘Dork’ probably isn’t the right word in this case, mind you. By the time a creature starts costing you four mana, it feels worthy of a more impressive adjective.
That mana cost is really the biggest problem with Adherent as a card. For the most part, you want your ramp to be hitting on turns one to three, to set you up for bigger plays after that. Turn four feels a little late, all things considered. Worse still, Adherent only taps for a single mana by default; you need another creature out to net any more than that.
The ceiling here is, admittedly, fairly high. If you follow this up with even a vanilla 5/5 for five you can tap Adherent for a staggering five mana on the same turn. Four toughness is solid, too, so there’s a good chance it survives a turn cycle. That said, green is absolutely stacked with good ramp options in Commander, to the point where it’s hard for anything this expensive to break through. It’s a nice thematic add in toughness-matters decks, but not one for the green mainstream.
Canopy Gargantuan
- Mana Value: 5GG
- Rarity: Rare
- Type: Creature – Dragon
- Stats: 7/7
- Card Text: Flying, Ward 2.
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a number of +1/+1 counters on each other creature you control equal to that creature’s toughness.
If there’s one ‘kill on sight’ creature in the Abzan Armor Commander deck, Canopy Gargantuan is it. Untapping with this and even just a couple of creatures is likely going to result in an insurmountable board advantage, such is the power of that ability. You don’t need to be playing just high-toughness creatures, either. Regular on-rate creatures will get huge buffs here too.
Seven mana is a lot for a creature that does nothing for a whole turn cycle, so Gargantuan is best suited to being a reanimation target. It’s an ideal target for a Reunion of the House alongside a bunch of walls, in fact. Being a 7/7 flier with Ward 2 at a baseline, it’s also fine to just bring back alone with one of the cheaper reanimation spells.
While it’s probably too slow for any kind of serious pod, Canopy Gargantuan is the definition of a terrifying casual Commander card. If your opponents can’t answer it immediately, you’ll run away with the game no questions asked.
Rampart Architect
- Mana Value: 3G
- Rarity: Rare
- Type: Creature – Elephant Advisor
- Stats: 3/4
- Card Text: Whenever this creature enters or attacks, create a 1/3 white Wall creature token with Defender.
Whenever a creature you control with Defender dies, you may search your library for a basic land card, put that card onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle.
Rampart Architect is, to my mind, sneakily one of the best cards in the entire Abzan Armor Commander deck. At a baseline, this is 4/7 in stats for just four mana. In any deck that’s solid, but in a toughness-matters deck it’s fantastic. The ability to turn all of your Walls into pseudo-Sakura-Tribe Elders is even better.
If you have a sacrifice outlet like Wall of Mulch, you can convert your Walls into extra mana on the spot. Alternatively you can just follow the usual Walls playbook and have them die while blocking an attack. Either way, you’ll end up grabbing pretty much all of the basics out of your deck in no time flat. The fact that Architect makes Walls itself on attack is a nice bonus, and means it’s a card that can be played outside of dedicated Wall Typal brews.
I criticized Arbor Adherent for being a four mana ramp piece earlier, but Architect proves that such cards can still be good if they provide enough additional utility. I could see this card showing up in a huge range of decks actually, from pure ramp to Aristocrats. Extra bodies and extra mana is no joke, after all.
Notable Reprints
That’s all the new stuff, but the Abzan Armor Commander deck also features a wide suite of reprints, some of which are very valuable indeed. In a flavor fail but a mechanical win, Dragonlord Dromoka from Dragons of Tarkir makes a comeback in this deck. This card will run you $11-13 right now, so seeing it reprinted here is great news. It’s solid in high-toughness decks, but it’s also just a nice Selesnya answer to those pesky opponents who like to interact on your turn.
Other high-value reprints include the always-useful Seedborn Muse, currently at around $10, and Towering Titan, at around $9. Muse is a generic green value piece that just so happens to have high toughness, so it’s a great fit for this list. Towering Titan is an absolute bomb in toughness-matters decks like this, and this is the first time it’s being reprinted after its debut in original Jumpstart.
Other nice reprints in the deck include Staff of Compleation at $6, Tree of Redemption at $5.50, and Colfenor’s Urn at $4.50. Urn is another first-time reprint here, which is exciting to see. All in all, you’re getting a nice chunk of reprint value here alongside the new cards. Most of these cards will likely come down a lot following the deck’s release, Titan and Urn in particular, but they’ll still push the deck into ‘good deal’ territory if you can grab it for MSRP.
