In every MTG preview season, there are cards that don’t get the attention they deserve. More so now than ever before. With so many new cards flying at us all at once, this is pretty much inevitable. It does make the subsequent weeks and months more exciting, however, as under-the-radar gems come to defy expectations and define formats. One new MTG card that I feel fits this bill perfectly is Hazel’s Brewmaster, a spicy four drop from the Bloomburrow Squirreled Away Commander precon.
Hazel’s Brewmaster MTG
- Mana Value: 3B
- Rarity: Rare
- Stats: 3/4
- Text: Menace. Whenever Hazel’s Brewmaster enters or attacks, exile up to one target card from a graveyard and create a Food token. Foods you control have all activated abilities of all creature cards exiled with Hazel’s Brewmaster.
The stats on Brewmaster may not inspire much confidence, but graveyard hate is always welcome in Commander. This is where I see this card being played the most. Of course, one exile a turn isn’t going to stop a serious graveyard deck. But it can slow one down, and even snipe key reanimator targets when needed. Whether you use this exile effect or not, Brewmaster will also make you a Food each turn. This can be crucial for certain decks.
Most Food decks in Commander run green, which has access to plenty of powerful Food generators. For those without access to green, however, Brewmaster is now one of the most consistent Food producers available. My Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar is very much looking forward to including it, for example. Getting Food on the board has a lot of specific synergies and even more non-specific ones. Cards like Mirkwood Bats and Reckless Fireweaver can win games off the back of Food coming down, after all.
If Brewmaster’s text ended there, it would be a solid card for multiple Commander decks. Luckily for all you combo fiends out there, however, it has one more ability.
Fresh Local Combo Pieces
Like a sentient version of Agatha’s Soul Cauldron, Hazel’s Brewmaster grants the activated abilities of every creature exiled with it to all of your Food tokens. Bizarre flavor implications aside, this is an incredibly powerful effect. Food tokens don’t have summoning sickness, which means they can use abilities from Brewmaster’s pool right away. This allows for some very spicy infinite combos.
Take Devoted Druid, for instance. A famous combo component, this card can tap for green mana, and untap by placing a -1/-1 counter on itself. Once exiled with your Brewmaster, all of your Food tokens will gain both abilities. Since Food doesn’t have a toughness value, you can tap one for green mana, slap on a -1/-1 counter, untap it, and repeat as many times as you’d like for infinite green mana. Then all you need is a Torment of Hailfire or Walking Ballista to win on the spot.
If having another card in your hand to finish the game sounds like too much work, consider Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker instead. Exiling this Kamigawa classic with Brewmaster will let the Food it makes on entry tap to make a hasty copy of Brewmaster, which will then make another Food, which can tap for another Brewmaster. With cards like Entomb and Buried Alive to get Kiki-Jiki into the graveyard early, this can be a very consistent turn four win condition. So much so that even the notoriously hard-to-please cEDH community is considering it.
If infinite combos aren’t your thing, Brewmaster has plenty of fair applications too. Just exiling a Gilded Goose gives you a stellar Food/mana engine, for instance. Basically, this card is a sleeper hit and, in my eyes, a future Commander classic.
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