MTG Foundations Jumpstart may not be part of the main set, but it’s chock full of awesome cards for Commander players. There’s a boatload of sweet legends to build around. From life gain payoffs to typal powerhouses, these Commanders offer a wide array of themes for you to choose from.
Furthermore, some of these legendary creatures are quite powerful and efficient. In fact, one cEDH enthusiast managed to make top 16 of a competitive event with Plagon, Lord of the Beach as the general of choice!
This Starfish Wizard provides a lot of value at very little cost. Whether you’re a cEDH fanatic or are simply looking for your next fun Commander project, Plagon has a lot of potential regardless of the power level of the pieces around it.
What Plagon Brings to the Table
- Mana Value: 2U
- Rarity: Rare
- Stats: 0/3
- MTG Sets: Foundations Jumpstart
- Card Text: When Plagon, Lord of the Beach enters, draw a card for each creature you control with toughness greater than its power. W/U: Target creature you control assigns combat damage equal to its toughness rather than its power this turn.
With the way the cEDH variant is constructed, it’s easy to see why Plagon would be such a house. From Dauntless Dismantler to Drannith Magistrate, there are plenty of cheap, disruptive creatures you can play that have higher toughness than power.
Part of the reason this build has legs is because the types of cards listed above are naturally strong inclusions by themselves. Rather than going out of your way to include clunky, mediocre cards for the sake of getting more value out of Plagon, you’re simply playing strong interactive creatures in the early game.
At the same time, because Plagon is capable of drawing a bunch of cards if you have a lot of high toughness creatures in play, you essentially get to free roll zero-mana creatures like Phyrexian Walker and Ornithopter. These cards are low impact on their own but help Plagon generate extra value out little cost.
You won’t always want to play Plagon on curve. Instead, you’re more likely to want to build out a board, using Plagon as a way to refuel your hand later on.
Plagon’s presence makes all of your interactive elements better. Cards like Force of Will and Force of Negation, while strong, require you to burn resources to cast them for free. Fortunately, having access to a card advantage engine in the Command Zone is quite helpful.
Cards Keep Flowing
- Mana Value: W
- Rarity: Uncommon
- MTG Sets: Modern Horizons, Strixhaven Mystical Archives
- Card Text: Exile target creature you control, then return it to the battlefield under its owner’s control. Rebound (If you cast this spell from your hand, exile it as it resolves. At the beginning of your next upkeep, you may cast this card from exile without paying its mana cost.)
Where things get really interesting is when we focus in on the role of blink effects. Unlike Arcades, the Strategist and other “toughness matters” Commanders we’ve seen in the past, Plagon can draw you a bunch of cards at once.
This opens the door for efficient blink effects like Ephemerate and even Cloudshift to enable lots of shenanigans. You can easily go completely ballistic with Displacer Kitten in play. Throw in some elite mana rocks like Sol Ring and Mox Opal that can both accelerate you towards Displacer Kitten or trigger it on the cheap, and you’re in business.
It should also be noted that the blink package provides you with infinite combo potential. For example, Naru Meha, Master Wizard when paired with Ghostly Flicker allows you to infinitely blink out Naru Meha and another creature or artifact of your choice.
All you have to do is put Ghostly Flicker on the stack, copy it with Naru Meha, and choose Naru Meha as a target with the copy. From there, when Naru Meha reenters, the original copy of Ghostly Flicker is still on the stack to copy all over again.
With access to Alter of the Brood, this combo will let you mill out each of your opponents and win trivially. There truly are a lot of avenues you can go with Plagon at the helm.
Plagon Powered Down
- Mana Value: 2UU
- Rarity: Rare
- Stats: 0/17
- MTG Sets: Zendikar Rising
- Card Text: Spells your opponents cast that target Charix cost 2 more to cast. 3: Charix gets +X/-X until end of turn, where X is the number of Islands you control.
The nice thing about Plagon, too, is that it’s easy to craft your deck to meet certain power level standards of a given pod. So far, we’ve focused on Plagon in a cEDH setting. However, if you want to build a Plagon deck in a more casual environment, just put your emphasis on creature combat.
There are a lot of sweet creatures with very high toughness that wouldn’t make the cut in cEDH as they’re too expensive and not a priority. Take Charix, the Raging Isle, for instance. If you eliminate infinite combos from your Plagon deck and instead work towards maximizing Plagon’s final ability (which lets your threats deal damage based on their toughness), Charix becomes a slam dunk inclusion.
With enough creatures that have zero or one power, Expel the Interlopers becomes an elite board wipe. Dusk/Dawn is in the same boat. These types of sorceries don’t really have a home in cEDH. Nonetheless, they’re perfect in slower Commander games dominated by creature board stalls.
Plagon showcasing its worth in cEDH frankly was not on my bingo card, but it goes to show how versatile the potent Starfish can be. For anyone looking to build a new Commander deck, consider giving Plagon some more time in the spotlight.
