One of the most noticeable changes in Magic: The Gathering over the last few years has been the increase in the number of legendary creatures. While Wizards is addressing this issue for in-universe sets, Universes Beyond remains absolutely packed with them. More and more legends are coming out all the time, leading to more and more players including them in their Commander decks, where it’s not a drawback at all. In an environment like this, Arena of the Ancients is a very spicy MTG card indeed.
This is an artifact from way back in Legends, where legendary creatures made their debut. It’s also one of the more effective anti-legendary tech cards we’ve ever seen. Despite this, it remains fairly underplayed in Commander. Thanks to an Instagram reel from Theteabeard, however, a lot of players are finally cottoning on to how effective this card can be, and the powerful synergies that it offers.
Arena Of The Ancients MTG
Arena of the Ancients is a three-mana MTG artifact with two distinct effects. For starters, it taps every legendary creature in play when it enters. As mass tap effects in Magic go, this is actually pretty well-costed by itself. Most multi-tap effects require continuous investment of resources to function, like Opposition. There are a few mass tappers in blue, most notably Cryptic Command. Arena’s legendary restriction naturally makes it less universally applicable than that blue classic, but it does have another ability on top of that, and isn’t just a one-and-done effect.
As long as Arena of the Ancients remains in play, legendary creatures don’t untap during their owners’ untap phases. This means that all the legends you tap down with this on entry will stay down from now on. It also works on future legends played, too, though they do get at least one tap before they sink into the Arena’s sands. We’ve seen “freeze” effects like this before, whether on cards like Time of Ice, or through stun counters via cards like Mjölnir, Storm Hammer. It’s rare for such effects to lock down creatures indefinitely, however, as Arena does here.
Assuming there are a lot of legendary creatures at the table, Arena of the Ancients is one of the best versions of this effect in the game. It’s relatively cheap at three mana, and it has a continuous impact on the turns after you play it. On top of that it’s colorless, which means that any deck can run it. With how many pushed new legendary creatures we get nowadays, the chances of this card doing work at a given Commander pod are pretty high.
An Unconventional Stax Piece
At an absolute minimum, Arena of the Ancients is a great tool to shut down opposing Commanders. A lot of the most popular Commanders in the format, like Krenko, Mob Boss and Kaalia of the Vast, need to attack or tap to function. With Arena out, players running these Commanders will find themselves in a very tricky spot.
You can also build around the card to an extent, leveraging other effects to get the most out of its ability. Perhaps the most notable synergy the card has is with Leyline of Singularity. With this enchantment in play all creatures count as legendary, which means all of them get locked down by Arena. Throw in cards like Authority of the Consuls that tap opposing creatures on entry, and creature combat becomes a thing of the past.
Another great tactic with Arena of the Ancients is to break its symmetry. One of the big downsides of the card is that it affects your legendary creatures, including your Commander, as well as your opponents’. If you can find a way to circumvent that, you’ll find it very easy to get in for damage. The most obvious way to do this is with untap effects like Seedborn Muse, if you don’t mind running a powerful Game Changer in your deck.
For a sneakier approach, you can try moving Arena out of play for your turn only. There are a number of ways to achieve this. You can blink it temporarily with something like Hide on the Ceiling, giving you an unrestricted untap then bringing it back to hold down your opponents. If you want to get really fancy, Goblin Engineer lets you loop Arena in and out of your graveyard with its ability, letting you avoid its effects every turn.
Double-Edged Sword
As much potential as Arena of the Ancients has in MTG Commander, it’s not without its drawbacks. For starters, it’s only a card you really want to run in decks with a low legendary creature count, which excludes a lot of great cards from your pool right away. It’s also fairly unreliable. Even in today’s legend-heavy world, there are board states where the card will have little effect, and there are Commanders that can work fine even with it in play.
The card is also in a bit of a weird spot power level wise. It’s a card that feels far too conditional for the upper brackets, and it’s definitely not playable in cEDH. At casual tables, however, it might actually be too good. Casual decks are often heavily reliant on their Commander, which means they can find themselves totally locked down by Arena. Creature combat is also more of a common win condition in casual, so the same problem applies there.
While it’s not nearly as problematic as something like Winter Orb, Arena of the Ancients will definitely feel just as oppressive in some casual pods. This puts it in a similarly awkward spot to cards like Grave Pact: too good for casual, and too weak for competitive. Cards like this struggle to find consistent homes in Commander, which may explain why it has flown under the radar for so long.
With all of that said, Arena of the Ancients is still a fun tech option for mid-level Commander pods. If your local meta is Commander-reliant or legend-heavy, consider giving it a try in your next game.
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