Equipment decks have seen a ridiculous amount of support from recent MTG sets. Thanks to Captain America’s Secret Lair and MTG’s Final Fantasy crossover, equipment decks are more popular than ever in Commander. Even the Sonic the Hedgehog Secret Lair has new equipment cards for Commander.
As if all this wasn’t enough, Edge of Eternities is also introducing new equipment support for Commander players. This uncommon might even see Standard play, but for a different reason entirely.
Honored Knight-Captain
Honored Knight-Captain offers exactly what a Commander equipment deck is interested in. You get multiple bodies that can utilize equipment early, and Honored Knight Captain can repurpose itself as an equipment tutor that puts your card of choice right onto the battlefield. Six mana is certainly expensive in any format, but thanks to the singleton nature of Commander, any tutor effect can significantly increase your deck’s consistency to find key cards.
That said, an important distinction is that Honored Knight-Captain’s tutor effect puts the equipment right into play. If it only tutored to hand, this card would not be very exciting. This can even be done at instant speed, allowing for some particularly wacky shenanigans.
At its simplest, Honored Knight-Captain can tutor a Living Weapon into play in response to an opponent’s attack. Kaldra Compleat, in particular, can block almost any non-Flying creature profitably, repurposing your tutor effect as both removal and a threat. Partnered with some other common equipment staples, Honored Knight-Captain is capable of doing even more.
If Sigarda’s Aid is in play, your tutored equipment also immediately attaches to a creature. This allows Honored Knight-Captain’s tutoring effect to be used aggressively or defensively. Tutoring a Colossus Hammer into play, for example, can tack on 10 damage out of nowhere, while dodging the Flying loss downside of the equipment. This can easily create lethal damage if converted to Commander damage. Defensively, this can be used in conjunction with Swords to give a creature of your choice protection against certain colors, or just Indestructible with Mithril Coat, which notably, can work without Sigarda’s Aid.
For Equipment decks in Commander, Honored-Knight Captain is a clear upgrade, but the card could see some Standard play, as well. Thanks to creating another body on entry, this creature could work well in a go-wide tokens strategy or in a Convoke deck, should that still exist post-rotation. You can even include a powerful Living Weapon-esque equipment spell as a one-of for tutoring purposes.
Beyond the Quiet
Beyond the Quiet is yet another five-mana white board wipe for Standard. Considering that we already have Ultima, is there even a chance that Beyond the Quiet will see play? The shocking answer to that is yes.
There are some key differences between Beyond the Quiet and Ultima that could make either card a compelling choice. The biggest of which is that Ultima destroys all artifacts, while Beyond the Quiet only destroys Spacecraft. If you use artifacts in your strategy that you don’t want destroyed, you may want to play Beyond the Quiet over Ultima, or vice versa if you want to destroy all artifacts.
On top of this, Beyond the Quiet exiles cards, while Ultima destroys them. Because Ultima immediately ends the turn, both cards play well into death triggers, but any additional graveyard synergies can be avoided by using Beyond the Quiet over Ultima.
Whether you use Beyond the Quiet or Ultima will likely be a meta-dependent decision, but Ultima does seem like the stronger board wipe of the two. Regardless, Beyond the Quiet has potential. That said, Beyond the Quiet really only has a chance of seeing Standard play, making it a rather undesirable card in the grand scheme of things.
Lumen-Class Frigate
If you ask us, Lumen-Class Frigate is not a great MTG card. The anthem ability might be interesting to try in Mono-White Tokens decks, where it can do a lot of damage, but just sticking to Caretaker’s Talent is likely better. When creating lots of tokens in a turn that can’t attack and don’t need to block, you can use them all to Station Lumen-Class Frigate, but Stationing 12 power into a 3/5 Lifelinker is just not worth it.
This will, at most, be a subpar way to buff go-wide decks in Standard, but the format has plenty of competition that one-ups this card. Imodane’s Recruiter, for example, is not rotating out. The card could see sideboard play, but we don’t expect this to make a splash anywhere outside of exactly Limited.
