Building a Commander deck in MTG is a delicate balancing act. You need to carefully measure out your threats and proactive plays against your interaction, ensuring your deck can win while also preventing your opponents from doing the same. To this end, MTG cards that fill multiple roles in a single slot, like Planar Chaos’s Stonecloaker, are worth their weight in gold. This forgotten classic has a ton of utility in turn-to-turn gameplay, while also providing a potent combo enabler when needed.
Stonecloaker MTG
For an MTG uncommon from 2007, Stonecloaker has an awful lot of text. Its most important ability, however, is undoubtedly the self-bounce one, which opens up a ton of possibilities. Getting to re-play value creatures like Loran of the Third Path or Solemn Simulacrum is pretty solid in itself, letting you eke out an advantage in grindy games. Alternatively, since Stonecloaker can come down at instant speed via Flash, you can use it to rescue a key creature or Commander from removal.
On top of this, Stonecloaker also offers up some nice incidental graveyard hate. The rate here isn’t particularly efficient, but the instant speed means you can snipe reanimation targets out from under opponents, or disrupt graveyard-based combos. It’s worth noting that Stonecloaker can bounce itself with its other ability, so you can treat it as repeatable graveyard hate in a pinch. This is too slow a strategy for most decks, but heavy Control or Ramp lists might just be able to get away with it.
Blink And You’re Dead
Stonecloaker is worth running for its general utility alone, but it gets even better when you factor in its infinite combo potential. The best of these just requires Stonecloaker and Aluren, and nets you infinite spell casts and infinite enters/leaves triggers. Simply cast Stonecloaker for free with Aluren, bounce it to its own ability, then rinse and repeat. Depending on your colors, there are all sorts of ways to convert this into a win, from Impact Tremors to Altar of the Brood.
Stonecloaker opens up similar lines with Intruder Alarm, provided you have creatures that can tap for at least 2W. Each time you cast Stonecloaker you’ll untap everything with this setup, letting you cast it again right away. If you can set up your board to generate more than 2W, through cards like Enduring Vitality, this combo can generate infinite mana as well.
If you’re a Dinosaur fan, Stonecloaker goes particularly hard with Zacama, Primal Calamity and Panharmonicon. With Panharmonicon out, cast Zacama and untap all of your lands twice, tapping them for mana in between. Next, cast Stonecloaker and bounce both it and Zacama with its doubled trigger. Provided your lands can tap for at least 4WRG, you’ll have enough to re-cast Zacama and keep the loop going, eventually generating infinite mana. You can then sink this into Zacama’s abilities to get rid of most opposing creatures, artifacts, and enchantments, while gaining infinite life in the bargain.
Banger At A Bargain Price
Considering how many different use cases it has in different Commander decks, Stonecloaker is a seriously underplayed card right now. According to EDHREC data, just 6.37k decks run it, which feels far too low. While some Commanders, like God-Eternal Oketra, do make decent use of it, it barely sees play anywhere else. Given how hungry decks are for graveyard interaction and value nowadays, Stonecloaker could almost certainly be doing a lot more work.
Fortunately, correcting this injustice and adding Stonecloaker to your own deck is easy thanks to its low current price. You can pick up near-mint copies of the card for just $0.10 right now, or $0.80 if you want to splash for a foil. At this rate, the card is an easy pickup if you want to work its combos into your decks, or even just add it to your general Commander collection.
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