Today, Wizards of the Coast kicked off Preview Season for the highly anticipated set Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate. This set is a sequel in multiple ways, being a sequel to Commander Legends, and also the 2nd Dungeons & Dragons themed set.
WotC showed off a TON of cards during today’s WeeklyMTG Debut Stream for the set. One of the cards shown afterwards shows a fan favorite D&D character with her own Planeswalker card, and it’s incredible!
Tasha’s Hideous Laughter
Welcome Tasha, the Witch Queen to the party! Tasha is one of the new Planeswalkers in Battle for Baldur’s Gate, and boy does she have a LOT going for her. She’s 5 mana in the Dimir colors, and she has 4 starting Loyalty. The first cool thing about her is that she can be your commander!
Now, let’s look at her abilities. She has a passive ability that creates a 3/3 Demon creature token when you can a spell that you don’t own. Her +1 draws you a card, and then you can exile an instant or sorcery from each of your opponent’s graveyards with a Page counter on it. Her -3 allows you to cast a spell from among the cards you exiled with her +1 for free.
There are two main strategies with Tasha, and we’ll talk about some cards for each. The first is to play into her passive ability, and the second is to leverage her activated abilities as frequently as we can, while also finding ways to fill our opponent’s graveyards with spells. Let’s start with the passive.
The Demon Hordes
Tasha’s passive requires us to cast spells that we don’t own in order to trigger making demons. For this, there are some staple spells that we’ll want to include in our deck to make this happen.
For part of our creature package, we’ll want cards that steal our opponent’s cards and allow us to cast them. Gonti, Lord of Luxury, Xanathar, Guild Kingpin and Diluvian Primordial have triggered abilities that give us this.
Thief of Sanity, Nightveil Specter and Thada Adel, Acquisitor are all evasive threats that give us this effect when they deal combat damage to our opponent. We can definitely play some other creatures that steal our opponent’s permanents and spells, but these are definitely required.
Now let’s look at the noncreature spells we’re going to want.
For our noncreature suite, there’s a some really sweet cards in here that we can use. Mind’s Dilation is a way for us to almost guarantee that we’re going to cast a card that we don’t own. Same goes for Knowledge Pool. Cunning Rhetoric gives us a layer of protection against our opponents attacking us.
For some spells, Memory Plunder lets us target a really powerful spell that our opponent casts at instant speed. This can allow us to put a speedy blocker into play if we need it. Siphon Insight fills a similar role, but we can pull these cards from our opponent’s library. It also has flashback which is a nice added benefit. Finally Praetor’s Grasp let’s us tutor our opponent’s library for their strongest spell and we can play that.
Let’s look at the other strategy for Tasha, which is using her abilities.
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Stomp the Yard
So for our second avenue of value, we’re looking to use Tasha’s abilities. There’s a few ways that we can go about this, but at it’s core, the deck aims to be a control shell. Discard spells like Dark Deal or Siphon Mind hit all opponents. We also want to use Windfall effects to help refill our hand but fuel our opponent’s graveyard.
We’re also interested in using counter magic in this deck, which will stop our opponent’s plays, and allow us to get play them with Tasha. The other kinds of spells that we could be playing are mill spells that mill half our opponent’s library, or have some other utility. Cards like Traumatize and Cut Your Losses can do a lot of work at most points in the game. Court of Cunning introduces the Monarch to the game, which is great card advantage for us, but also also mills cards as well.
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Key Support Cards
With these strategies in mind, there are some stellar support cards we’ll want to make sure that we include in our 99. To go along with our Knowledge Pool, cards like Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir can lock our opponents out of the game for a near instant win. The Chain Veil and Teferi, Temporal Archmage let us get in more activations of Tasha.
Spark Double lets us make a copy of Tasha for additional uses as well, and we can even copy that copy with Clever Impersonator for triple the action.
Lastly, Snapcaster Mage and Torrential Gearhulk give us additional play with some of our control elements, and our “steal your cards” instants and sorceries.
To fill in the rest of the deck, we want to fill in our removal suite, draw spells, counter magic and other theft effects. We will want a good selection of mana rocks as well, as we’re hoping to cast our opponent’s spells on our turn, but then keep up protection for our stuff.
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Overall, Tasha is shaping to be a super sweet commander, and it gives us hope that Battle for Baldur’s Gate will have some more amazing cards.
