It’s becoming old hat to joke that every new Magic set is aimed at Commander these days, but in the case of Foundations Jumpstart it’s hard to argue otherwise. The only other places this set is legal are Legacy and Vintage. While some of the cards in here are certainly good, they’re not that good. This leaves Commander as their natural home in MTG, particularly in the case of Sutina, Speaker of the Tajuru. Not only is this a strictly-better version of a format staple, but it also has some unique flair of its own.
Sutina, Speaker Of The Tajuru MTG
- Mana Value: 2G
- Rarity: Uncommon
- Stats: 2/2
- Card Text: When Sutina, Speaker of the Tajuru enters, search your library for a basic land card, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle. Whenever Sutina attacks, you may return a land you control to its owner’s hand. When you do, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.
For a mere uncommon, there’s a lot to unpack with Sutina. Her first ability fetches any basic land from your deck and puts it right into play. This is the exact same text as Farhaven Elf; a card that sees plenty of play in plenty of green Commander decks. Ramp is always in demand in Commander, and Sutina also provides fixing if you’re in two or more colors. Not a bad start by any stretch.
Sutina’s second ability is where things get really interesting. On attack, she lets you pick up one of your lands in exchange for placing a +1/+1 counter. This sounds like a rough deal at first, but as we’ll get to later there are plenty of positives to it.
Even if there weren’t, that ability would still just be gravy. Sutina, Speaker of the Tajuru is a more than playable MTG card without it. As I mentioned above, Farhaven Elf sees plenty of play already. Sutina is effectively the same card, just with better stats and an extra ability. It even retains Farhaven’s crucial Elf typing, which gives it applications in Elf Typal decks as well. With all the new support coming in Foundations, this is a point well worth remembering.
Sure Sutina is legendary, but in Commander, I’d say that was an upside about as often as it’s a downside. It means Sutina plays worse with Clone effects than Farhaven Elf, but better with legendary-matters synergies. You can grab Sutina with Monumental Henge, for example, or have it count towards your huge Jodah, the Unifier board.
An Instant Commander Classic
So Sutina, Speaker of the Tajuru has a lot going for it, that much is clear. Where does it fit into Commander, though? The honest answer to that is ‘a lot of different places.’ Not to stress the point too much, but the ramp effect is honestly good enough to see play by itself. Three mana is a nice sweet spot since it lets you curve out from a turn one mana dork and ramp a second time to turbocharge your mana. Any green deck that wants to ramp, which is to say most of them, will need to at least consider Sutina going forward.
To be more specific, her land pick-up ability has a dizzying range of applications. Obviously, you won’t want to use it to grab the basic Sutina fetched you, but there are plenty of other excellent targets. Utility lands like Bojuka Bog and Mystic Sanctuary are great picks, for example. You can also use this ability to ‘reset’ your MDFC lands and Channel lands. Lands like these are extremely popular in Commander now due to their flexibility. Getting to drop one as a land early and then pick it up later to use as a spell is a great way to squeeze the maximum value out of every slot in your deck.
If you’re not feeling quite that fancy, you can always just run Sutina in Landfall decks. Assuming she can get an attack in each turn, she can provide you with a guaranteed Landfall trigger even if you run out of lands in hand. With the likes of Nissa, Resurgent Animist and Field of the Dead in play, this can be a much more potent strategy than it sounds.