One of Magic’s most unique charms is its age. As the longest-running TCG in the entire world, there are literally decades’ worth of cards for players to explore. While many of the game’s most powerful and iconic ones have stood the test of time, many commons with incredible potential have been forgotten. That’s certainly the case for Tolarian Sentinel, a card that, despite creating a two-card combo with a Game Changer, sees basically no play at all.
MTG Tolarian Sentinel
Tolarian Sentinel offers players a strange tool that can be deceptively powerful. At a baseline, the card is able to protect your most desirable permanents from removal by bouncing them back to your hand. Of course, you can also use this to bounce creatures with powerful ETB effects, like Eternal Witness.
Unlike most repeatable self-bounce effects, however, Tolarian Sentinel doesn’t stop at bouncing creatures. This lets Tolarian Sentinel bounce some unique cards, like Demonic Lore, to create repeatable value while avoiding downsides. Notably, it can also create a deadly mini-combo with cards like Parallax Wave and Parallax Tide. By exiling a bunch of cards and then bouncing the Parallax card while the exile effects are on the stack, your opponent will never get their cards back.
While much less flashy, Tolarian Sentinel can also serve as an old-fashioned discard outlet. Enabling Commanders like Green Goblin and Captain Howler, Sea Scourge, this protection card can be inadvertently repurposed into card draw or cost reduction effects. If you’d rather avoid the discard downside altogether Squee, Goblin Nabob can essentially nullify it turn after turn.
Protection From Everything Forever
Of all Tolarian Sentinel’s use-cases, its most interesting one occurs when paired with The One Ring. So long as you have five mana, this combination will essentially give you protection from everything every turn. Since The One Ring also provides card advantage, it directly negates Sentinel’s discard downside, too.
While the card draw and the protection should give you a massive advantage, this may not be enough to win the game on its own. While you should, in theory, be able to buy enough time to just cast a Thassa’s Oracle, you will need to find a way to protect Tolarian Sentinel. Fortunately, cards like Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots are perfect here, giving your Sentinel Hexproof and allowing it to activate right away.
Outside of this One Ring combo, there are some other infinite combos you can pull off with Tolarian Sentinel, but they require lots of setup. As many may expect, Intruder Alarm can notably break Tolarian Sentinel, creating infinite loops when paired with a card draw engine, a zero-drop, and a mana dork. Frankly, if you’re going for combos like these, there are far better cards to use than Tolarian Sentinel, but rigging something together is an option.
Basically Unheard of
Despite Tolarian Sentinel’s combo with an extremely well-known card, there’s a fair chance that you can pull this off without your opponents being aware of it. With this Human Spellshaper only seeing play in 244 decks according to EDHREC, most players will likely never have even heard of this card.
With tons of supply and no demand to speak of, it’s no wonder Tolarian Sentinel is a budget addition, to boot. The card only costs $0.30 to add to your Commander deck, but the price of The One Ring does complicate things a bit. Despite this, even with a handful of powerful ETB artifacts and enchantments, Tolarian Sentinel can do a ton of work in your Commander decks.
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