We’ve had a lot of great new mechanics over the years in Magic: The Gathering. Foretell is a mechanic that allows you to exile a card from your hands for two mana, and then cast that card on a different turn, often for a lower cost.
It’s fun because it allows you to avoid hand disruption, and it also feels a bit like morph, which is one of the best mechanics in Commander too. How good is it actually though? Well, let’s look at the cards.
The best foretell cards for Commander
First of all, let’s address the elephant in the room. The two best cards that have the word foretell on them, but don’t themselves have foretell, are Ranar the Ever-Watchful, and Dream Devourer. Ranar is the most popular foretell commander, and they’re a blue and white 2/3 with flying and vigilance that allows you to foretell your first card each turn for free. They also make 1/1 Spirit tokens when you exile stuff from your hands, so that’s great.
Dream Devourer, on the other hand, is a mono-black card that reads, “Each nonland card in your hand without foretell has foretell. Its foretell cost is equal to its mana cost reduced by two mana.” Plus, whenever you foretell a card, Dream Devourer gets +2/+0 until the end of turn. The issue here is that these two require a different commander, which is annoying.There are two more cards that are also basically essential. Cosmo Charger allows you to foretell cards for one less mana, and also allows you to do it in other players turns. That’s great stuff. Then you’ve got Sage of the Beyond, which makes any spell you cast from somewhere other than your hand cost two less to cast. These two cards combine to make your deck far more mana-efficient.
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The best cards with foretell for Commander
There are loads of good cards with foretell, but we’re just going to focus on the three we think are essential. First up is Alrund’s Epiphany, which is a seven-mana sorcery that gives you an extra turn, and also creates two 1/1 Bird tokens too. It’s stupidly powerful, so make sure you’ve got a copy.
Doomskar is also incredible. It’s a five-mana sorcery that destroys all creatures, but if you foretell it, it only costs three mana instead. There’s literally no downside in having a three-mana board wipe, and thus, it should be in your deck, even if you are going to be heavy on creatures.One good reason to make sure you do have a board wipe is because of Cosmic Intervention. This is a four-mana instant that only costs two if it’s foretold. It reads, “If a permanent you control would be put into a graveyard from the battlefield this turn, exile it instead. Return it to the battlefield under its owner’s control at the beginning of the next end step.” Oh look, now there’s no reason not to kill all of your stuff off, that’s fun, isn’t it.
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