Commander Legends Exclusive Previews | Araumi of the Dead Tide & Reprints
Hey friends and welcome to our exclusive free preview cards for the upcoming set, Commander Legends. Big thanks to Wizards of the Coast for giving us these free previews! Our four preview cards give us insight into one of the main draft archetypes in Commander Legends, UB (also known as Dimir) Self-Mill. Of the four cards, three are common rarity reprints that you'll see often in draft, while our brand new uncommon is both a signpost, pointing you to the Self-Mill archetype supported by this two color combination, and is also sure to make a splash at constructed Commander tables as well!
UB Self-Mill Core Common Reprints
First, let's go over the reprints. These are commons that will make up the bread and butter of your Dimir Self-Mill deck. First we've got two setup cards:
Deranged Assistant is a great little mana dork. Milling and ramping at the same time is efficient for just 2 mana and is especially impressive in Blue, a color where ramp is pretty rare. Assistant comes out early and helps you ramp out your costlier and more impactful spells while slowly filling your graveyard for later use. This card is also solid in constructed Commander, an excellent budget ramp option in just about any Self-Mill deck.
Crow of Dark Tidings is an excellent creature in limited, acting as an evasive attacker to chip away at opposing life totals. Once it dies you've also milled a total of four cards which is a solid chunk. While it's not a card I'd recommend for constructed Commander, it's a great card in limited and will help you fill your graveyard while also providing a solid body for both attacking and blocking.
Ghastly Demise is a payoff card for all that self-milling you're doing. It's conditional removal but that condition is easily met in our Self-Mill deck, at which point it's basically a half-priced Doom Blade which makes it top-tier removal in limited. Though rarely seen in constructed it's honestly a solid removal spell in any Self-Mill deck and I'd happily jam it in budget brews.
The New Card: Araumi of the Dead Tide
Alright, now that we've covered the common reprints, let's check out the brand new card:
.png)
Araumi of the Dead Tide is our biggest payoff for all our self-milling. In a typical 4-player FFA game, you only need to exile three cards from your graveyard to give a creature in your graveyard encore. She's super mana efficient, having a casting cost of just three mana and not requiring any additional mana to activate her ability. All you gotta do is exile some cards and pay the creature's casting cost.
In limited, Araumi is the uncommon signpost, signaling that Dimir colors are all about self-mill. She's a fantastic value engine, essentially generating card advantage each time you activate her to encore creatures from the graveyard. Since the creature only lasts for a single turn, you generally want creatures with powerful enter the battlefield, leave the battlefield, or death triggers. We don't have the full set list yet, but we already see plenty of fantastic options that you can encore with her, like Fleshbag Marauder to make each opponent sacrifice three creatures, or Mulldrifter to draw six cards. With how easy it is to assemble a powerful Araumi Self-Mill deck, I'd expect this commander to be one of the most consistently powerful archetypes to draft.
So Araumi is great in limited, but does she translate well to constructed? I'd say yes, absolutely. Araumi is very efficient at what she does, and her ability gets way more powerful when you have absolute freedom to choose which creatures will go into your deck to encore. The deck's primary goal will be to quickly and efficiently fill the graveyard with cards like Stitcher's Supplier, Stinkweed Imp, and Doom Whisperer. Then start encoring whatever creature you need for the situation. Is the board filled with scary creatures? Encore Massacre Wurm so all opposing creatures get -6/-6 and if any of them die their controller loses 6 life. Need to draw some cards? Encore Mulldrifter and draw 6. Or heck, do some combination of killing creatures, gaining life, and permanently reanimating smaller creatures by encoring Cavalier of Night.
I think Araumi works terrific as both a Self-Mill Reanimator style commander and as reanimation in the 99 of a bunch of other decks, like Sidisi, Brood Tyrant, Rona, Disciple of Gix, and since she's a Wizard she has potential in Inalla, Archmage Ritualist.
Behind The Scenes
If you're curious about how Araumi was designed, Gavin was kind enough to share a little about the process of her creation:
"This card went through a LOT of different designs. For a long time, it was more of a beater: it milled 2 cards on ETB and then got counters equal to number of different converted mana costs in the graveyard. But given that graveyard decks are often more conducive to longer game plans, a beater wasn’t quite what was wanted. So, this was created! After a lot of tweaks, we ended up at these numbers. It exiles equal to opponents so that the cost scales down with the number of encore copies you get as the game goes on." - Gavin
I'm glad Araumi ended up going from a beater to a reanimator! Granting encore is a way more fun design.
Bonus: Easily Accessible Sample List
Here's a quick example Araumi deck list that I whipped up for you all as proof of concept. I kept this bud-- er, easily accessible. With cards that have high supply, you see.
The idea is to quickly and efficiently fill your graveyard while ramping, drawing cards, and keeping opponents in check with removal. Eventually we win by stealing our opponents stuff with cards like Sepulchral Primordial and Gyruda, Doom of Depths, or by draining them out with Gray Merchant of Asphodel. It's a simple yet effective concept.
Tell Us What You Think!
Is there any sweet spice you can think of to use with Araumi? Let me know in the comments below! Thanks for reading!
