We are officially getting bombarded with Lorwyn Eclipsed spoilers, and so far, the set is chock full of intriguing build-arounds. From important typal upgrades to powerful legends, Lorwyn Eclipsed should have a lot of EDH players very excited.
Of all the new Commanders that have been revealed thus far, there’s one in particular that stands out due to its uniqueness. This Bird Bard is cheap, flexible, and when paired with the right support elements, threatens to put your opponents on the backfoot in short order. It even synergizes nicely with some forgotten Constructed one-drops, giving it extra utility.
Abigale, Eloquent First-Year MTG
For a measly two-drop, Abigale, Eloquent First-Year has a lot going on. In constructed, despite its small stats, having Flying, First Strike, and Lifelink goes a long way towards helping this creature matter. As we’ve seen with Deep-Cavern Bat in Standard, a simple evasive creature that gains life can be surprisingly difficult to race.
Nonetheless, the real meat of this card comes from its enters ability. In most cases, your best way to maximize Abigale, Eloquent First-Year’s trigger is to target one of your beefy creatures with it. While this does force the creature you target to lose all abilities, the Flying, First Strike, and Lifelink counters it gains will often outweigh whatever abilities you were forced to give up.
Interestingly, in some instances, you can even use this clause to your advantage. In Standard, curving Monoist Sentry into Abigale, Eloquent First-Year puts your opponent under a ton of pressure. By getting rid of Monoist Sentry’s Defender ability, you now get a four-power evasive monster ready to attack on turn two. Add in some other big creatures with downsides you can remove, such as Rot-Curse Rakshasa, and you’ve got yourself a gameplan.
Moving to a Modern setting, things get even spicier if you can land a copy of Death’s Shadow. From there, following up with Abigale will set you up to attack for 13 damage in the air. If you choose to build around this Bird Bard in EDH, any number of creatures from Phyrexian Soulgorger to Rotting Regisaur make for solid additions.
What makes Abigale, Eloquent First-Year so cool, though, is that you also have the luxury of targeting opposing creatures. Shutting down an opponent’s Commander permanently is a great way to avoid putting it back in a command zone. Until an opponent can remove it with their own card, they might be stuck. You can even use the newly printed Eventide’s Shadow to get rid of any beneficial counters that Abigale grants to your opponents.
Building Around Abigale in Commander
As appealing as Abigal, Eloquent First-Year’s trigger is, it’ll take more than targeting a single creature to get the most out of it as a Commander. The good news is that there are plenty of cards that can help you get extra mileage out of the two-drop.
First and foremost, consistent blink effects like Teleportation Circle and Conjurer’s Closet let you keep abusing Abigale’s triggered ability. This way, you can keep playing big threats to the board. Support pieces like Resourceful Defense allow you to transfer your beneficial counters from creature to creature as they die. You can even use Xu-Ifit, Osteoharmonist as a tool to reanimate your big creatures for your Commander to distribute counters repetitively.
Of course, once you get your engine rolling, life gain payoffs from Haliya, Guided by Light to Well of Lost Dreams pull you further ahead on resources. With all these factors combined, Abigale, Eloquent First-Year makes for a sweet Commander option to lead your squad.
Abigale in the 99
As impactful as Abigale can be in the command zone, it can still make a difference in the 99 of a handful of different Commander decks. Given that Abigale costs only two mana and specifically puts three counters on any of your other creatures, it serves as both an enabler for Tayam, Luminous Enigma and a card to resurrect with Tayam’s activated ability. Meanwhile, Abigale makes for a great creature to play prior to Raffine, Scheming Seer, since it’s hard to block and wears +1/+1 counters well.
Unfortunately, Abigale’s color identity does come back to bite it, since it restricts the number of decks where you could otherwise include it. That said, there have been discussions about a potential rules change to the Commander format regarding cards with hybrid mana costs which could open the door for this card. For now, though, we’ll just have to wait and see if any alterations to the rules come about in the near future.
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