It’s only day three of Edge of Eternities spoiler season, and both of the Commander precons have been revealed to the world. We took a look at World Shaper yesterday, while Counter Intelligence just hit the internet today.
Both Commander decks introduced some incredibly exciting mechanically unique cards in their lists. While World Shaper focused on lands and sacrifice, the focus of Counter Intelligence is artifacts and Proliferate. If you have Commander decks interested in either of those archetypes, you’re going to love what these new cards offer.
Surge Conductor
Surge Conductor has an ability that’s obviously powerful. Evolution Sage was a very popular Commander card when introduced, and Surge Conductor offers even more explosive turns in the right archetype. Unlike lands, you can drop a ton of artifacts in a turn without needing additional effects to play them. This allows Surge Conductor to Proliferate a scary amount out of nowhere.
Because Surge Conductor cares about nontoken artifacts entering instead of being cast, you can use mass bounce or blink effects to get a ton of counters on what matters. Paradoxical Outcome on a bunch of tiny mana rocks, for example, can seriously help supercharge any Station effects, or Planeswalkers, while refilling your hand. From that vein, Surge Conductor seems like a perfect fit for Daretti, Scrap Savant EDH decks.
You don’t need a massive artifact theme to take advantage of this, either. In a deck with a healthy number of mana rocks and utility artifacts, Surge Conductor might be able to Proliferate enough to be a worthy inclusion.
Patrolling Peacemaker
Patrolling Peacemaker is incredibly easy to trigger in a game of Commander. This isn’t limited by a ‘once per turn’ effect in any way, so every time your opponent commits a Crime against any other player, you profit.
This means that any time an opponent removes another player’s permanent, you Proliferate. If players even target another player’s stuff, for any reason whatsoever, you benefit. Because Peacemaker enters with counters itself, this is a scaling threat at absolute worst, allowing the floor for this card to be a lot higher than a lot of the more synergy-focused pieces seen in the Edge of Eternities Commander decks.
Surge Conductor’s applications are a bit streamlined, but a card like Patrolling Peacemaker can appear in any deck where Proliferation advances your game plan. This could easily appear in Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice which has remained one of the most popular Commanders ever for a really long time. That appeal, alone, means that Patrolling Peacemaker might have a large crowd of fans.
Thanks to its massive versatility, Patrolling Peacemaker is probably one of the best cards in the Counter-Intelligence precon.
Long-Range Sensor
This card looks rather unassuming, but Long-Range Sensor can get out of hand really fast, especially when partnered with Proliferate effects. Notably, since this card cares about attacking a player and not one or more players, it is possible to get multiple Charge Counters on it per turn without additional effects.
Notably, the Discover 4 payoff is also not limited to a once-per-turn action, meaning that you can cast a ton of spells with Long-Range Sensor with little setup. Even if this card casts one spell per turn cycle on average, it’s providing more than enough value. Casting multiple spells for a three-mana investment is incredible.
Besides Proliferate effects, Long-Range Sensor is likely best partnered with decks that can take advantage of Discover itself. Exile-matters is a common theme amongst a lot of past precons, making this an easy upgrade to decks like Exit from Exile, Paradox Power, and Planar Portal. Long-Range Sensor easily fits into even more Commander 99s for cards like Pia Nalaar, Consul of Revival, Rocco, Street Chef.
All of this is to say that a ton of different decks can take advantage of Long-Range Sensor. As long as you can consistently attack multiple players in the early turns, this will be a great addition to any red Commander deck.
Uthros Research Craft
This last card we’re focusing on from Artificial Intelligence seems like a Spacecraft worth running in any artifact matters deck, so long as it’s not a chore to Station it up to three. Once you turn on its basic functions, Uthros turns into an incredible draw engine for any artifact-focused deck. The larger Station effect is, frankly, rather unimpressive, but this is balanced by Uthros Research Craft essentially Stationing itself after you put the initial three power into it.
Whether Uthros can Station itself after being turned on consistently is a pretty good metric to decide whether or not the card is worth running in your Commander deck. If you can’t realistically station this card to its full potential after unlocking the first effect, you probably won’t be drawing enough cards to run it in your deck.
Proliferate can certainly speed things along, turning Uthros Research Craft into a sizeable threat, but you don’t really need it. The card draw is the main attraction here, and as long as you can reliably take advantage of that, Uthros Research Craft is a good inclusion in your Commander deck.