Myriad can be one of the most powerful abilities in the Commander format. It causes triggered abilities to stack multiple times, sometimes even exponentially. The ability is so powerful, that relatively few cards have it. But there’s a new Commander from Baldur’s Gate that can grant myriad to your other creatures, creating the opportunity for many busted plays.
Duke Ulder Ravengard
There are so many different directions you can take when building Duke Ulder Ranvengard as your commander. But all of them are great because myriad is that good of an ability.
Best Creatures to Give Myriad
The extra tokens you make with myriad will unfortunately not trigger attacking abilities like Etali, Primal Storm. And because the myriad tokens are exiled at the end of the turn, you also can’t take advantage of death triggers like Solemn Simulacrum (unless you play sacrifice outlets). Factoring those two caveats into the equation, you might be thinking, “Well, what can you use myriad with?”
There are two main ways to exploit myriad in Magic: the Gathering:
- Play creatures with powerful ETB (enters the battlefield) abilities.
- Play creatures whose abilities trigger when they deal combat damage.
Powerful ETB Creatures
When a creature with myriad attacks, you’ll make a copy of it for each of your opponents, and each ability of those copies will trigger when they enter the battlefield.
Titans
A myriad of Sun Titans will reanimate a handful of permanents from your graveyard. And extra copies of Inferno Titan will let practically wipe your opponents’ boards away.
Recur Cards From Your Graveyard
With Duke Ulder Ravengard’s help, Karmic Guide can reanimate a chunk of creatures from your graveyard. Goblin Dark-Dwellers can cast multiple instant or sorceries for free. And Ardent Elementalist is the red version of Archaeomancer, allowing you to return instant or sorceries from your graveyard to your hand.
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Card Advantage
Giving myriad to your Recruiters lets you super-tutor your library to easily assemble all of your combo pieces. Myriad does not work well with Wall of Omens because it has defender, but the new card Spirited Companion can attack and draw a bunch of cards.
Removal
Using Duke Uldur Ravengard to make multiples of these creatures, you can clear the board of your opponents’ pesky stax pieces like Rhystic Study, Smothering Tithe, and Smuggler’s Share.
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Damage Dealing Triggers
When Duke Ulder Ravengard gives myriad to one of your creatures, each copy you make of that creature enters play attacking each of your opponents. So, if your creatures have abilities that trigger when they hit a player, they’ll affect each of your opponents.
With Duke Ulder Ravengard, Balefire Dragon basically becomes a one-sided board wipe. Hellkite Tyrant will steal everyone’s artifacts, setting up the original copy’s win condition. And Aerial Extortionist will temporarily remove any permanent your opponents’ control.
While these two cards don’t actually have abilities that trigger when they deal combat damage, they do work extremely well with Duke Ulder Ravengard. By granting either of these cards myriad, you will deal an exponential amount of damage to your opponents. For example, if you have four Angrath Mauraders on the battlefield, they will each deal 64 damage to your opponents.
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Legendary Death Triggers*
I said death triggers don’t work with Myriad because the tokens are exiled at the end of your turn. But there are two exceptions to this. Either, you play sacrifice outlets like Goblin Bombardment or Ashnod’s Altar to kill your creatures before they are exiled at the end of your combat. Or you use myriad to make copies of your legendary creatures because they will die to the “legend rule” when they enter play.
When multiple copies of Ao die, you can pump up your team with +1/+1 counters, making for easy lethal swings. Giving Yosei myriad is almost like a combo; each copy that dies can target an opponent and they are forced to skip their untap step. Lastly, when your myriad copies of Atsushi die, you can a mound of Treasure tokens or play cards from the top of your library.
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