Commander Review | Innistrad: Crimson Vow | Part 3 | Green, Multicolor, Colorless, Lands
Innistrad: Crimson Vow has just been fully previewed so now it's time for me to go over the entire set and highlight the cards that I think are most noteworthy for us Commander players. We've covered White, Blue, Black, and Red, and now we finish things off with Green, Multicolor, and Colorless! Let's get started:
GREEN
Ascendant Packleader
Ascendant Packleader provides Werewolf Tribal with another solid 1-drop to curve into Tovolar, Dire Overlord and start drawing cards asap. A 2/1 is very underwhelming, but it does scale up a bit as the game progresses, which is good. There's not a lot of competition for a 1-Drop in terms of Wolves / Werewolves so Ascendant Packleader ends up being one of the best and a good choice to help curve out.
Avabruck Caretaker // Hollowhenge Huntmaster
Avabruck Caretaker is one of the best top-end Werewolves you could add to your tribal deck. The human side is okay, but the werewolf side is insane, giving all your permanents hexproof and pumping up all your creatures each combat. Between this and Tovolar's Huntmaster your 6-drop slots are pretty much figured out.
Cartographer's Survey
In a deck with 36 lands, Cartographer's Survey has a 80% chance to hit at least 2 lands and a 96% chance to hit at least one. How good that is depends entirely on your deck. Green certainly isn't lacking in 4 mana ramp cards; staples like Skyshroud Claim can find two Forests (including dual lands) 100% of the time and they even enter untapped. Those are for basic land types, however; in a few decks that focuses primarily on ramping out nonbasics -- most notably the Maze's End deck -- this might be an interesting option that might be worth running alongside other options like Hour of Promise, Pir's Whim, and Tempt with Discovery.
Cemetery Prowler
Cemetery Prowler combines both super efficient repeatable GY hate with a potent mana discount for just 3 mana. It's kind of crazy to me that it's also a 3/4 with vigilance on top of all this, insane value for just 3 mana. While I don't think it'll edge out Scavenging Ooze as the go-to GY hate creature in Green-heavy decks since Prowler's hate is capped and not instant speed, the fact that it's also an amazing mana discount makes it super appealing and I'm honestly more likely to run it in my decks over the Ooze especially in non-CEDH settings.
If Cemetery Prowler is good in generic Green decks, you can guess how highly I think of it in Werewolf Tribal! This is one of the best creatures in the deck, period. The combination of powerful utility, ramp, and wolf synergy makes for a howling good time.
Cloaked Cadet
Cloaked Cadet's card draw restricts it to just Human Tribal, specifically the Selesnya versions that care about +1/+1 Counters like Katilda, Dawnhart Prime. These decks can reliably trigger its card draw once per turn cycle thanks to cards like Champion of Lambholt and Juniper Order Ranger, which is fine, but it really gets nutty once you start drawing multiple cards per turn cycle, like putting counters on opponents' turns with Mikaeus, the Lunarch. Being usually fine, sometimes great makes the Cadet a solid candidate for Selenya Humans.
Crawling Infestation
Crawling Infestation is a cool callback to Crawling Sensation from Shadows over Innistrad and will likely go into the exact same Graveyard deck. Crawling Sensation is much stronger since it can trigger on opponents' turns as well and all it takes is cracking a fetchland to make that happen, but Sensation hardly sees any play. The only deck that wants both of these is Insect Tribal aka Grist, the Hunger Tide, where both the mill and insect tokens are highly relevant to the deck's game plan. It's a fun casual deck and I'm glad to see a bit more support for it.
Cultivator Colossus
Played by itself, Cultivator Colossus is a pretty underwhelming card, even in Landfall decks that love dumping lands on to the battlefield. Seven mana is a ton for what will often be just a Summer Bloom with a big trampling body. However, when paired with Abundance's replacement effect to grab lands, the Colossus can put all lands in your library directly into play, which can win any number of ways -- an army of zombies with Field of the Dead, tons of drain with Retreat to Hagra, insta-win with Maze's End, etc. The combo is strong enough to warrant consideration in your Landfall decks like Tatyova, Benthic Druid if you're looking for another easy finisher.
Glorious Sunrise
"We have The Great Henge at home."
So the initial reception to Glorious Sunrise has been positive from what I've seen. It's a flexible enchantment that doesn't do any one thing great but is always going to be useful turn after turn. I guess I'm just more down on it than most folks, but this card seems way too fair for 2021 design: five mana for a little boost capped at once per turn cycle? What is this, a White card?
The card is fine, and it's a decent filler for the 99 of basically any Green deck. It's also a great card to jam if you're playing at a lower power playgroup since the once per turn limit prevents it from popping off. But yeah, it's not something I'm going to recommend in terms of improving a deck.
Hiveheart Shaman
Hiveheart Shaman is a weird combination of limited ramp and mana sink. It's got the most potential in 5C decks where you can most reliably ramp with it, but even then you'll quickly run out of ramp opportunities unless you have ways of removing lands from the battlefield like Trade Routes. The mana sink isn't great either. It's a cute card but I'm pretty meh on it.
Howling Moon
Howling Moon is a solid budget filler in Werewolf Tribal. It helps push damage through and should be making at least one wolf token per turn cycle in your average Commander game. It's still a bit too slow for my liking in a fully optimized budgetless Werewolf builds but in any other version it's solid enough.
Howlpack Piper // Wildsong Howler
Howlpack Piper is one of the best Werewolf cards, period. It's essentially Elvish Piper on steroids for the tribe, letting you dump your mana cheating your creatures into play for a significant discount instead of having to cast them so you can guarantee that it'll be night after your turn without losing tempo. Then every time Piper transforms into Wildsong Howler you're drawing another creature to play. Since werewolves can transform back and forth multiple times per turn cycle this can yield a ton of card advantage over a few turns.
This card is exactly what Werewolf Tribal desperately needs. It's easily in the top 5 best werewolves. This card is insane. Run it, love it.
Infestation Expert // Infested Werewolf
If these were wolf tokens then this would be amazing in Werewolf Tribal. Alas, there's not a lot of tribal synergies with insect tokens and the 5-drop slot is pretty tight, so I wouldn't recommend this in Werewolf Tribal. However this is probably good enough for Insect Tribal under Grist, the Hunger Tide.
Laid to Rest
Laid to Rest provides powerful thematic card draw for Green Human Tribal decks like Katilda, Dawnhart Prime, giving you resiliency against board wipes and also extra value from sacrifice stuff like Skullclamp. Triggering off tokens is huge.
Laid to Rest would've been even stronger if it was White instead since it would be playable in Mardu Human Aristocrat decks like Silvar, Devourer of the Free & Trynn, Champion of Freedom. Alas.
Retrieve
Am I missing something or is Retrieve actually a great rate if you can reliably get back two cards when you cast it, which seems super easy to do? I can't think of any close comparisons so I could be off, but it looks good to me. Compare that to say Regrowth or Bala Ged Recovery and you can easily make a good argument for Retrieve to be about as good as either of these in decks that run a high amount of creatures and some fetchlands. I don't think this is the best recursion spell, but it looks really good to me and I'm excited to jam it.
Wolfkin Outcast // Wedding Crasher
Wolfkin Outcast is essentially a 4-drop in Werewolf Tribal that offers resiliency to board wipes when flipped into Wedding Crasher. That's generally a useful effect but honestly I think the deck has far better card draw options: Tovolar, Dire Overlord is obviously big, but I'd also rather just cast Return of the Wildspeaker or similar since werewolves are naturally huge, and then you get a guaranteed hand refill instantly. Outcast is still fine filler in a budget brew but something I'd look to cut in more optimized lists.
MULTICOLOR
Brine Comber // Brinebound Gift
I'm still not sold on this whole Spirits x Enchantress ship but this one tickles my fancy in Aura decks. It's a nice efficient token generator there and the disturb cost is cheap. It's not a great card even in the best suited deck, like Bruna, Light of Alabaster, but it's cute and I like it.
Dorothea, Vengeful Victim // Dorothea's Retribution
Gosh, I want to like this card, but I dunno if an Invocation of Saint Traft that you can cast from the graveyard is good enough for me to run it in Commander. It's a cool card, and it's legendary so it's at least an option in Niambi, Esteemed Speaker Reanimator, but it's just too low-impact.
Runo Stromkirk // Krothuss, Lord of the Deep
We finally get to see Runo Stromkirk and we even meet his Kraken master! This is a super cool and flavorful card that obviously pays homage to the Cthulu mythos, which I'm a total sucker for.
Mechanically, this card is also super interesting and (potentially) quite powerful. This points to some sweet Dimir Sea Monster deck that wants to fill the yard with giant monsters, cheat on their mana costs with Reanimate and similar effects, then copy them for extra value with Krothuss, Lord of the Deep. Alternatively, skip the Sea Monster plan and just turn your best creatures into fellow Krakens with Arcane Adaptation and similar effects so you're making two copies of stuff like Archon of Cruelty and Gray Merchant of Asphodel for ultimate value!
This is an impressive and exciting card at 3 mana. I dunno why it flies, but I'll take it.
Skull Skaab
It's unlikely that your average Zombie Tribal deck will have enough exploit creatures for this to be worth it, but if for some reason it does then Skull Skaab is quite the efficient token engine.
Toxrill, the Corrosive
Toxrill, the Corrosive is causing a bit of a stir in the community as people either love it or hate it. On the one hand, this is a Slug legendary that slimes your opponents, which is super cool. It's also a pretty decent card, being a constant asymmetrical board wipe that clears out opposing creatures while making cute lil' slug tokens for you to sacrifice for value. On the other hand, people hate it because no opposing creature can stick on the battlefield so long as Toxrill remains there, so either you have removal to take it out or you have to wait to play the game.
I'm on the side of loving this card. To me it's not really that oppressive -- this is a 7-drop that basically takes out your opponents board of creatures and then eats a removal spell. It's like a Dimir version of Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, not pumping your own creatures but killing your opponents' creatures better. It's fine, especially at 7 mana.
Speaking of Elesh Norn comparisons: Toxrill shares the same super salty combo! Toxrill, the Corrosive + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Kormus Bell = Toxrill kills all your opponents' lands. I love it.
Toxrill is a sweet card that I'm not salty about. It's a fine commander but being a 7-drop makes it far better in the 99 as a Reanimate target.
Anje, Maid of Dishonor
Anje, Maid of Dishonor is yet another super efficient Blood token generator, this time for Vampire Tribal decks. The activated ability is a nice lategame finisher as well as a backup sac outlet for Vamp decks with an Aristocrat subtheme, or if the vampires will die anyway to removal.
Any Vamp deck can reliably make one blood token per turn cycle and that's already pretty decent, but Anje is going to work best in the Madness Vampire version of the tribe, either led by herself or her original version, Anje Falkenrath, since you can reliably flash in madness vamps (Anje's Ravager) on opposing turns to make multiple blood tokens per turn cyle, plus those tokens let you discard and enable more madness!
Bloodtithe Harvester
Bloodtithe Harvester is a 2-drop with good utility, making it a slam-dunk in Edgar Markov but also the Blood synergy makes it great in Anje, Maid of Dishonor Blood Vampires.
Olivia, Crimson Bride
Olivia 3.0 is an awesome repeatable Reanimate on a stick that excites me. Having flying + haste to immediately start hitting and reanimating, and doing it every combat, makes her worth the whopping six mana. While she doesn't necessarily have to be in a Vampire Tribal deck, it does make her reanimate targets stick around longer if she's not the only legendary vampire on the battlefield. While she's a solid value engine without much effort, you can also easily combo kill if you have Port Razer plus a free sac outlet like Goblin Bombardment for infinite combats.
I think Olivia, Crimson Bride would make for a cool and unique commander for a Reanimator deck. But she's also a fun inclusion in the 99 of Reanimator decks or Vampire Tribal.
Child of the Pack
Another fine budget inclusion in Werewolf Tribal that you eventually cut in more optimized budgetless lists. A mana sink that makes wolves is good, the backside is a small anthem and hits as a 5/5 trample, both good things for Tovolar, Dire Overlord, just not exceptional.
Halana and Alena, Partners
... and they were roommates!
Halana and Alena aka Gal Pals finally appear together on the same card and this version is quite sweet! It reminds me of Xenagos, God of Revels, except instead of wanting to play the biggest creatures to double their power, you want to be pumping up H&A instead to maximize their trigger. This makes creatures that scale with power way better like Marwyn, the Nurturer, Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin, and Viridian Joiner.
Ultimately I think Xenagos, God of Revels is the stronger commander for Gruul Stompy, but H&A provide a new take to it that I appreciate and will now keep an eye on any new Gruul creatures that scale with power.
Torens, Fist of the Angels
Torens, Fist of the Angels is awesome. It's like a legendary Monastery Mentor for creature spells and while growing your tokens takes more effort, the upside is that they permanently grow with +1/+1 counters, setting up even more synergy potential in +1/+1 Counter decks. This makes Torrens a slam-dunk in Human Tribal decks, both as the leader of one but also as part of the 99 of all of them, like Katilda, Dawnhart Prime. But being such an efficient token and +1/+1 counter generator makes him also a staple in Go Wide Counters like Hamza, Guardian of Arashin.
Edgar, Charmed Groom // Edgar Markov's Coffin
Is Edgar, Charmed Groom a shriveled up, pathetic version of Edgar Markov? Yes. But you know what I say to the complainers? GOOD!
Edgar Markov was a mistake. The commander is both hilariously overpowered and gives access to all Vampire Tribal colors, homogenizing one of the most popular tribes in the format so it's just Edgar decks all day every day. WOTC shot themselves in the foot with this one. The only way to make a new appealing Vampire commander is to make an even stronger commander and ye gods do I not want to see what that would look like. But hey, at least that precon sold like hot cakes and Edgar Markov's price has shot up to over $100, yay?
So while new Edgar being a crappy overcosted anthem doesn't "fix" old Edgar, seeing him hobbling into the set is at least cathartic to me. Screw you, Edgar. Go rot in your coffin.
Kaya, Geist Hunter
Her title might be "geist hunter" but this version of Kaya is certainly working with them! Kaya, Geist Hunter offers solid value to Token strategies, particularly Spirit Tokens, thanks to her -2 ability being a one-shot Anointed Procession. Her +1 is far less exciting though and she can't protect herself, so I'm not sure how good she actually is, but that won't stop me from trying to live the dream assembling her + Anointed Procession in a deck like Thalisse, Reverent Medium.
Path of Peril
Standard's version of Damn is kinda meh in Commander. It's great against Token decks and it also gets better at high-power tables where decks have super low curves, but I expect that at your average playgroup you'll have better wipe options in Orzhov, the two best creature board wipe colors.
Alchemist's Gambit
Alchemist's Gambit is usually a Final Fortune that is occasionally also a Time Warp. This makes it a staple in Obeka, Brute Chronologist and a few similar decks.
Eruth, Tormented Prophet
Eruth, Tormented Prophet is a 3-drop that essentially doubles your draw potential but only lets you cast those cards the same turn. Yup, this is a Storm card. Storm decks want to win a single turn, so the drawback here is nonexistent, while being a discount Teferi's Ageless Insight in the command zone is quite tantalizing. Eruth has fierce competition for Izzet Storm though, most notably Vadrik, Astral Archmage which came just in the last set. Is she the best? Maybe. I dunno. Definitely a strong card though!
Ancient Lumberknot
It's been a long time since Doran, the Siege Tower Treefolk Tribal got a new addition, but here we are with Ancient Lumberknot. It doesn't offer anything new to the tribe, it's just redundancy for Doran, but it's a Treefolk and redundancy is good so in it goes!
Dig Up
Dig Up is sometimes a Caravan Vigil, sometimes a Diabolic Tutor, and while neither side is impressive the flexibility is real nice, adding a lot of consistency to your deck. People always brew assuming their decks are going to curve out wonderfully but we often forget the many times we have to mull below 7 or get mana screwed / flooded, and a card like this is just perfect for smoothing things out. Yeah it's not gonna replace your Vampiric Tutor but in a budget brew, this is a welcome inclusion.
Old Rutstein
Old Rutstein is a super fair mill engine that gives you a lil' somethin' somethin' each turn. It's respectable but not super exciting to build around. It makes blood and insects, so blood decks or Insect Tribal might snag him as part of the 99, but there's not enough here for me to build a commander around ... unless it's super janky. Old People Tribal maybe? Just old folks, ancient folks. Elder Dragons and whatever. That could be fun actually. Hmmmmmmmmm
Odric, Blood-Cursed
Okay, so Odric, Blood-Cursed is a disappointing card. And if this card wasn't named Odric I doubt anyone would care, but since this is a popular lore character people are gonna be upset.
Hot take but none of the Odrics are that strong and new vampire Odric isn't far off from his earlier iterations in terms of power level. People who say vamp Odric is "overcosted" or "should've had keywords" but don't have the same critiques of Odric, Lunarch Marshal are missing the point.
The problem is that while they're equally powerful cards, Odric, Lunarch Marshal offers direct benefits for the archetype he cares about while Odric, Blood-Cursed does not.
Keywords Matter decks show up in forms like Kathril, Aspect Warper in Abzan or the partners Akroma, Vision of Ixidor & Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh if you want to be in Boros. So they exist, and both would want to run Odric, Lunarch Marshal. Why? Because he spreads those keywords across your creatures. It's not the best card in the deck -- far from it -- but it assists in the deck's goals and fits the theme.
What does Odric, Blood-Cursed add to Keywords Matter? Well, he doesn't add keywords. He gives you blood tokens. He can give you a lot of blood tokens, which is sweet, it's a bunch of artifacts and rummaging to play with ... but it doesn't directly assist in the main goal. That's the problem with the card: getting blood tokens are nice but it's not what Keywords Matter is about. There's an expectation that a Keywords Matter card will directly reward assembling Keywords, and vamp Odric fails to meet expectations by rewarding something not directly related. If blood tokens could be easily connected to keyword soup then it would be a great card, but they aren't. That's why vamp Odric is a disappointment.
Once people get over their expectations not being met though, vamp Odric honestly isn't that bad. Yeah, he could've come with one or two keywords -- same issue with Odric, Lunarch Marshal -- but he's still decent. I'd recommend it in Boros Keywords Matter. It's not an all-star ... but neither was the previous Odric.
Grolnok, the Omnivore
Grolnok, the Omnivore loves some Self-Mill strategies, letting you cast every card you mill whenever you want. Play as casually or competitively as you want with this: you can pair Grolnok with Hermit Druid and a deck with no basic lands, activate the Druid to mill your entire library, then cast Thassa's Oracle off Grolnok to win the game, or you can just jam a bunch of random self-mill cards and use Grolnok as a happy little recursion engine, up to you.
Solid commander, solid in the 99 of decks like Sidisi, Brood Tyrant.
Vilespawn Spider
Another cute, efficient card for self-mill decks, this time with an activated ability that pays homage to Spider Spawning. But I hate this card. Why? Because UG, making it unavailable to Ishkanah, Grafwidow Spider Tribal. 0/10 Unplayable.
Winged Portent
Winged Portent is amazing, thematic card draw for flying decks, most notably Bird Tribal. But there's a downside ... most Flying / Bird decks can't run this! Sorry, Inniaz, the Gale Force! Better luck next time, Kangee, Sky Warden! This here card draw is only allowed for one Bird Tribal deck, and that's Derevi, Empyrial Tactician, aka the one that nobody likes. Sorry, Derevi fans, but it's true.
COLORLESS
Ceremonial Knife
If your deck really cares about blood tokens that you're willing to shank a guy for it then Ceremonial Knife isn't a bad option: cheap, repeatable, just need creatures to equip and you're good.
Dollhouse of Horrors
Dollhouse of Horrors is a riff on God-Pharaoh's Gift that is kinda meh in my opinion. I don't run Gift that much and while it costs two more, the tokens start off as 4/4's, while the Dollhouse requires you to pay to activate and the tokens usually start as 1/1's. Dollhouse gets much better in Artifact-heavy decks though, especially ones that can untap it so you can activate it multiple times (Voltaic Key) per turn cycle. Or if you're in Construct Tribal. Is it great? Eh, probably not, but it's neat.
Honored Heirloom
Vessel of Endless Rest sees pretty much no play these days. What about a repeatable, instant-speed GY hate version though? Eh, probably not in most cases. But if your playgroup is swarmed with Graveyard decks, dropping an Honored Heirloom will definitely put them on edge.
Investigator's Journal
I feel like people would ask me about this card if I left it out so here it is: I don't think Investigator's Journal is a good card. Spending 2 mana to draw 1 card per turn a finite amount of times is a bad deal. Yes, even for Mono White.
The card is a Clue though, so if you're a hardcore Clue Tribal deck then by all means, but otherwise I'd avoid it.
Lantern of the Lost
Lantern of the Lost is somewhere between a Soul-Guide Lantern and a Relic of Progenitus but ends up being worse than both. Honestly, why not just reprint Soul-Guide Lantern? It fits the flavor of Innistrad and it's a way better card that has tons of Commander demand. Card is a recently printed uncommon and already $3! Reprint please!
LANDS
Slowlands
I love slowlands. They're great in 2C and 3C decks. The odds of them being one of your first 2 lands in a 99-card singleton format is very low, so they almost always enter untapped. Especially if you're on a budget and not running ABUR duals or whatever, slowlands are going to be an excellent way to add consistency to your decks without sacrificing much speed.
Voldaren Estate
Unsurprisingly an instant staple in Vampire Tribal. It's especially important in Edgar Markov, a 3C deck that wants to cast 1-drop and 2-drop Vampires on curve. The blood tokens are a nice added bonus, useful in any Vampire deck but especially so in the Madness variants to take advantage of the discard.
That's All, Folks!
Let me know what cards you're excited for and what decks you'll be playing them in. I'll be back soon with some precon upgrades! Thanks for reading!
