With 3,679 options at the current count, it’s pretty much impossible to keep track of all the different Commanders available in Magic these days. As a result, many of the more unique options have fallen through the cracks, becoming obscure over time as they’re buried by popular newcomers. Storvald, Frost Giant Jarl is a perfect example of this principle in action.
Storvald, Frost Giant Jarl MTG
In addition to granting Ward 3, which basically functions as Hexproof, to your entire board, Storvald also packs an incredibly interesting Titan trigger. This lets you scale one creature up to a 7/7, and another down to a 1/1, allowing for all manner of possibilities. Outside of messing with combat, this can make your opponents’ creatures vulnerable to cards like Beguiler of Wills and Exorcise.
Storvald’s ability gets a lot more interesting when you focus on growing your own creatures. Setting creatures to 7/7 can let you draw seven cards with Cold-Eyed Selkie, or tap for seven mana with Kami of Whispered Hopes. You can also unlock potent non-creature synergies, too, dropping The Great Henge for cheap consistently, or digging through your deck rapidly with Greater Good.
While less obvious, there are still some potent possibilities in shrinking your creatures down to 1/1s as well. Shrinking creatures down lets them slip through alongside Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive, for instance, or survive a board wipe like The Battle of Bywater. This side of Storvald is particularly nice with Delney, Streetwise Lookout, letting you nab extra triggers on normally-huge creatures like Sun Titan.
Speaking of extra triggers, you can push all of Storvald’s synergies even harder with cards like Roaming Throne or Strionic Resonator that multiply its own ability. You can also do this by attacking multiple times, with Finest Hour and Genji Glove, letting Storvald deal tons of damage.
A Forgotten Win Condition
Storvald can absolutely carry fair games with its unique ability, but it also enables Near-Death Experience, one of the more obscure alternate win conditions Magic has ever seen. By setting the stats on either Tree of Redemption or Evra, Halcyon Witness to 1/1, you can then make your life one on demand.
You’ll really only want to pull this move off right before your turn begins, to avoid leaving a window for opponents to ping you out of the game. To that end, running Flash granters like High Fae Trickster and Emergence Zone will let you bring in Storvald on the end step before your turn. This is a pretty mana-intensive option, however, so you might prefer to blink Storvald with Ephemerate or Emiel, the Blessed instead for the same effect.
Time To Defrost?
Despite all of Storvald’s unique, powerful possibilities, the card really hasn’t caught on in Commander in the five years since its release. EDHREC data reveals that only 1,442 players run Storvald in the command zone, in fact, which is incredibly low. In the 99 it sees a bit more success, appearing in 7,990 lists, but that’s still a small number of players enjoying such a funky legend.
Fortunately, their loss is our gain, as it means Storvald is an incredibly affordable card to pick up due to its low popularity. On TCGplayer right now, you can grab near-mint base copies of the card for just $0.39, and the fancier extended art version is only a little more at $1.31. For these prices, Storvald, Frost Giant Jarl is a true MTG bargain, and an ideal foundation for your next budget Commander brew.
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