Every so often, you come across an MTG card with a text box so striking it makes you sit up and take notice. Whether it’s a card that takes a mechanic to its limits, or warps the rules of the game around it, these are some of the most exciting cards to build around in Commander. This week, Celestial Dawn, a wild MTG lifegain card that very much fits this bill, is back in the spotlight.
Celestial Mantle MTG
As MTG content creator Goblinringleader pointed out in their video on the subject, Celestial Mantle is a pretty unique MTG card. Lifegain cards are a dime a dozen, sure, but a card that doubles your life total is much rarer. In fact, only two other cards in Magic can do so, and neither can do it repeatedly as Mantle can.
By itself, Mantle is already one of the best lifegain cards out there. It’s particularly good with Double Strike, making Voltron Commanders like Light-Paws, Emperors Voice and Wraith, Vicious Vigilante ideal hosts for it. The card is also hilarious with Three Dog, Galaxy News DJ, letting you potentially double your life many times over with a wide board.
Once you’ve got it set up, Mantle pairs beautifully with Hope Estheim to mill huge chunks of your opponents’ decks every turn. It’s also an easy way to fuel Aetherflux Reservoir, since a couple of Double Strike swings should give you enough life to burn the whole table out.
Of course, the elephant in the room here is Celestial Mantle’s huge mana cost. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to circumvent this issue, chiefly by getting Mantle into your graveyard and reanimating it. Retether and Starfield of Nyx are both great options here, and Bruna, Light of Alabaster can even do so out of the command zone.
Dream Bigger
By providing so much lifegain at once, Celestial Mantle also opens up a number of unusual combo lines. If you enchant a Sage of Hours with Light of Promise, for example, then it’ll gain a huge number of +1/+1 counters with every Mantle trigger, allowing for infinite turns.
With Defiling Daemogoth in play, you can even wipe the entire table out at the end of your turn by converting Mantle’s lifegain into life loss. Sanguine Bond and Sorin, Ravenous Neonate can do the same, but these only hit single opponents, so they’re not immediate wins.
Thanks to these combos, and Celestial Mantle’s exciting, splashy nature, it’s actually surprisingly pricey. Whether you want the original version or the Jumpstart reprint, you’re looking at spending around $5 here on the low end. Since the Jumpstart version doesn’t come in foil, the only bling option available here is the original, at around $7, too.
Considering Mantle’s low overall power level, these prices may seem high; however, in the context of low-bracket games, the card can be well worth it. The kinds of big, explosive plays it enables are the stuff great Commander games are made of, after all.
Stick with us here at mtgrocks.com: the best site for Magic: The Gathering coverage. Be sure to check out our deckbuilder for your next big brew, and our brand new MTG Rocks Podcast!