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Yet One More Top Ten List from Midnight Hunt

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Hello Amazing People! I hope your day is equally as amazing as yourself! Today I want to take a look-see at another Top Ten cards from Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. Last time I gave you two Honorable Mentions, so let's do that today for a total of 12 cards.

Over the last three weeks I have brought to you three of my Top Ten Lists and since each top ten has 2 Honorable Mentions, that was 36 cards overall.

In this week's dozen, here is the rarity breakdown:

  • Mythic: 3
  • Rare: 5
  • Uncommon: 2
  • Common: 2

Much more even than previously. This is a dense set, so let's grab 12 more cards!

Honorable Mention #1 (#48 Overall). Ecstatic Awakener // Awoken Demon

Ecstatic Awakener // Awoken Demon

I love this common one drop for Aristocrat builds looking for helpful (and cheap) 1-drops. You can spend three mana and sacrifice another creature. Might I suggest a decayed 2/2 Zombie? And then you draw a card, so that's card neutral.

Then the 1/1 flips to a 4/4. You can swing with your 4/4 on turn three if you sacrifice your second-turn play. It's great pressure early, specifically in 20-life formats like Five Color and Limited, and great later since you'll likely have fodder to sacrifice and flip into a 4/4. You can also sacrifice the creature anytime you have the mana, so in response to removal or the decayed destruction trigger, or many other things! The reason it's back here at #48 is because it's not very strong at Commander and it's 40-life format, which is the dominant format at the kitchen table.

Honorable Mention #2 (#47 Overall). Dryad's Revival

Dryad's Revival

This is an awesome card. For just one more mana than powerhouse Regrowth (27,568 decks registered over at EDHREC.com), you net an effect that can be flashbacked for another Regrowth! It's really strong, as it's worth the extra mana for two iterations of Regrowth, not just one. It's really worth it!

#10. (#46 Overall) Can't Stay Away

Can't Stay Away

Everybody enjoys reanimation at the kitchen table. I certainly do. This is two mana on the front side for a Sun Titan trigger that only effects creatures. That's great in aggro builds, self-sacrificing builds, and for lots of options in reanimation ones as well. And then a little later you can flash it back for another recursion. It's great in self-milling builds, and I can think of a half-dozen Esper builds that would love it as well as your typical Orzhov small stuff deck. Enjoy the power of this two for one reanimation spell!

#9. (#45 Overall) Lier, Disciple of the Drowned

Lier, Disciple of the Drowned

This is a very interesting mono-Blue legendary leader to build around in Commander. Your stuff cannot be countered? Check! Your spells flashback? Check! Great! But you cannot counter your foe's stuff? Not Check!

At first, uncounterable might seem like it's good for the head of a mono-Blue aggro build, but the flashback part wants you to run a certain build. Our own Stephen Johnson wrote an article last week on this challenge. Note that you can run interaction that will exile spells on the stack (Mindbreak Trap, Time Stop), delay the spell a few turns (Ertai's Meddling, Delay), or bounce it (Rebound). And your foes can do likewise back to you. Lier is great at combos since you can flash back your cheap card draw to dig and find them and they cannot be countered. He's also strong in many a build as one of the 99. Do you like Lier as much as me? I hope so!

#8. (#44 Overall) Cathar Commando

Cathar Commando

Our highest-scoring common is this flashback 3/1 2-drop with the ability to sacrifice for a mana on any artifact or enchantment, both of which are nice. Let's face it, without flash, this dork wouldn't be here. But with it? It's just one more mana than Disenchant for a much more flexible card. With flash you can flash out a blocker and trade up with an X/3 or smaller butted dork. You can chump block a big beater out of nowhere. You can flash it out at the end of a foe's turn, untap, and then swing out of nowhere on a naked board. I love it so much that I added to my Type Four Stack even though it's just a 3/1 grounded common. You can check out the rules for Type Four here.

#7. Rite of Oblivion (#43 Overall)

Rite of Oblivion

Exile. Target. Nonland. Let's look at those three abilities for the kitchen table. Target means you can hit anything without shroud or hexproof or protection. Some instants like Heroic Intervention or Lazotep Plating exist to stop it, but you should hit anything. Exiling is the best removal option since it gets around regeneration and indestructible.

Nonlands is about as flexible as modern targeted removal gets. The result? A 2-mana incredibly flexible piece of removal, that you can flash back for 4 mana. The only cost is that you have to sacrifice something like a Clue, token creature, Treasure, Decayed Zombie token, and much more to do so. Many builds at the kitchen table can do so, like Orzhov Tokens. You are trading two less important cards on your side of the board for two exiled removals, which is pretty good. But it's still card disadvantage (sacrifice, spell - 2; target 1) so it's back here at #43.

#6. (#42 Overall) Briarbridge Tracker

Briarbridge Tracker

I can see this 3-drop that can be as big as a 4/3 with vigilance in decks like Simic or Bant Clues Matter, Selesnya Tokens, and that's pretty good. But it's just a 4/3 for four that can replace itself and that's not the biggest threat for Commander format and it's 40 life. That's why she's back here at #42 overall, but there is power and synergy here!

Top Five Time!

#5. (#41 Overall) Primal Adversary

Primal Adversary

This 3-mana 4/3 doesn't need a token to pump, and it has the better keyword, trample. You can also pump it up. You can also make that number of lands into 3/3 Wolves with haste, which is good for an alpha strike, but bad otherwise at Commander since your lands can be killed by removal like Earthquake and Damnation. Please note that this plays out as if it had multikicker, but it's an enters the battlefield trigger so it works with blink and reanimation effects. This is also an in-color Wolf and makes Wolves in case you are building a Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves brew. Enjoy it!

What card hit #40?

#4. (#40 Overall) Gisa, Glorious Resurrector

Gisa, Glorious Resurrector

Here you go! The 40th overall card, is Gisa, Take Three. I created a Commander deck around her here.

She was the first Commander I built around, and I love her power. I built around massive sacrifice effects (Slum Reaper), -X/-X Effects (Mutilate) and mass destruction effects (Damnation) to make her work. I had some ways to sacrifice your crew after they arrived to your team (Vampiric Rites) as well as cards like Black Market that are very synergetic with her.

She's very strong in this brew, and I adore her a lot! She is already leading 172 decks over at EDHREC.com, and I get it, since she's really strong. I think very highly of our good Gisa and her potential leading a brew in Commander, since she was the first one, I built around, so you know I called her first when I saw the full spoiler. She's also good in a supporting role in Commander as well, since she can face off on your opposing creatures' deaths and turn them into mass reanimation on your side of things, and you can sacrifice her gathered stuff when it's decayed trigger is put on the stack to things like Ashnod's Altar to power your machine. Love her a lot!

Top Three Time! We have 2 rares and 1 mythic. Where are they hitting?

#3. (#39 Overall) Tovolar, Dire Overlord // Tovolar, the Midnight Scourge

Tovolar, Dire Overlord // Tovolar, the Midnight Scourge

Ah yes, the long-awaited leader of Commander Werewolf Gruul decks! This guy is much improved from Ulrich, the previous default option for the tribe. He is already leading 1189 decks over at EDHREC.com and rising, so he'll be the biggest hit at the Commander table from this set, and you can certainly see why!

A 3-drop 3/3 is on curve. He's a Bident of Thassa for Wolves and Werewolves on his front side and back. You get a free Day becomes Night in your upkeep if you control enough Wolves and/or Werewolves. You get a Kessig Wolf Run option on the back side to really abuse himself. There's a lot to love here, but unlike Gisa, he doesn't add much to a deck he's not leading. You can check out a Commander build for him here written by Stephen Johnson with some ideas for how to flesh him out. Enjoy it!

#2. (#38 Overall) Moonveil Regent

Moonveil Regent

This is our penultimate card is this 4-mana mythic Dragon that flies, and when you cast spells, you can discard your hand and draw cards equal to that many colors in the spell, and then you get the death trigger as well. I love this in a Commander deck that has a 5-drop, since you could cast this on turn 4, and then net the cast trigger and discard and draw 5 the next turn.

It's also very strong in 4-color decks. In aggro decks, discarding and drawing 3 is pretty good, so there are some aggro (or discard or graveyard matters) builds that would make sense with the Regent. This thing scales in power as your color counts increase, if you have that many colors in your leader. A 4-color Commander deck that is built around two partners with two colors each won't like it as much unless they have some reliable 4-mana cards, which are rare. There are tons of five-color cards for triggering a 5-card draw though, so, again, it's better the more colors you have. Good stuff!

And yet it feels very Red. Discard into draw, and damage upon death. The reason this is back at #38 is that it does require the right builds to really make it work, but it'll do game winning work in those spaces. It's even better in five mana builds around Dragon's matter leaders like Scion of the Ur-Dragon and Tiamat and The Ur-Dragon.

#1. (#37 Overall) Sigarda's Splendor

Sigarda's Splendor

This fun enchantment is my #1 on today's list! It's a 4-drop enchantment. When it arrives to the battlefield, note your life total. At the beginning of each of your upkeeps, if your life total rose, then you draw a card. Nice! And then when you cast White spells, you'll gain a life.

I see two major homes for this effect. The first is Orzhov and Selesnya Life Gain in Commander. In those builds, you should easily gain enough life and have enough protection from losing it to things like Ghostly Prisons and Maze of Ith that you'll be fine.

The second home I see for this is mono-White where you'll always be gaining life from your spells, and then have the chance for real triggers of life gain from the stuff you cast. A card drawing engine in White is rare, and this is pretty rare there. Enjoy it!

And there we go! So...what did you think of my Top Ten list? Anything I missed or got in the wrong order? Something that should have hit higher? Just let me know!

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