Gatecrash prerelease is right around the bend, and if you’re like I am, you’re growing pretty anxious to try the new cards out. Luckily for both of us, today represents a head start. You see, I have a present for you.

It’s spoiler time!

Null and Void

Commander has always been a place for enormous creatures to shine, and as a result, most people play a bunch of them. People all have their favorites, but the fact of the matter is that you can only smash with Dragon Tyrant so many times before you want to try a fresh beatstick.

As of today, you never need to worry about running out of new creatures again:

As a 7/7 flyer, The Lord himself is certainly nothing to sneeze at, but the real fun begins when you start smacking the table around and finding out what sorts of goodies everyone else brought along. Of course, the idea of playing with whatever creatures your opponents have isn’t a new one; Mind Control effects have let you do that for years. In fact, decks have been built around cards like Empress Galina that use others’ cards almost exclusively, and Lord of the Void slots right in.

Sharing Is Caring

• Commander (0)

• From the Top (5)
• 1 Lord of the Void
• 1 Knacksaw Clique
• 1 Telemin Performance
• 1 Ornate Kanzashi
• 1 Nightveil Specter

• Still Kickin’ (7)
• 1 Debtors' Knell
• 1 Geth, Lord of the Vault
• 1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
• 1 Scion of Darkness
• 1 Necromancy
• 1 Mimic Vat
• 1 Diluvian Primordial

• Kleptomania (4)
• 1 Volition Reins
• 1 Confiscate
• 1 Blatant Thievery
• 1 Take Possession

• Taste the Rainbow (2)
• 1 Mycosynth Lattice
• 1 Celestial Dawn

• Playing Favorites (2)
• 1 Infinite Reflection
• 1 Mirrorweave

• Another Go (17)
• 1 Misinformation
• 1 Drafna's Restoration
• 1 Guiding Spirit
• 1 Dimir Machinations
• 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• 1 Tunnel Vision
• 1 Hinder
• 1 Lapse of Certainty
• 1 Memory Lapse
• 1 Spin Into Myth
• 1 Banishment Decree
• 1 Ether Well
• 1 King Crab
• 1 Griptide
• 1 Repel
• 1 Submerge
• 1 Vanishment

• Like One of Your French Girls (10)
• 1 Jace Beleren
• 1 Howling Mine
• 1 Temple Bell
• 1 Font of Mythos
• 1 Otherworld Atlas
• 1 Whispering Madness
• 1 Minds Aglow
• 1 Skyscribing
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Increasing Ambition

• Just the Essentials (13)
• 1 Austere Command
• 1 Akroma's Vengeance
• 1 Decree of Pain
• 1 Wayfarer's Bauble
• 1 Azorius Signet
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Orzhov Signet
• 1 Everflowing Chalice
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Darksteel Ingot
• 1 Thran Dynamo
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Dreamstone Hedron

• That’s the Country for Me (39)
• 1 Arcane Sanctum
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Rupture Spire
• 1 Transguild Promenade
• 1 Creeping Tar Pit
• 1 Celestial Colonnade
• 1 Sunken Ruins
• 1 Fetid Heath
• 1 Mystic Gate
• 1 Darkwater Catacombs
• 1 Skycloud Expanse
• 1 Underground Sea
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Tundra
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Scrubland
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Marsh Flats
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Flooded Strand
• 1 Moonring Island
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 1 Isolated Chapel
• 1 Dimir Aqueduct
• 1 Azorius Chancery
• 1 Orzhov Basilica
• 1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Volrath's Stronghold
• 1 Strip Mine
• 1 Kor Haven
• 1 Haunted Fengraf
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Windbrisk Heights
• 1 Vesuva
• 1 Plains
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Island

Buy This Deck

First, I want to note a couple of other newcomers from Gatecrash that offer new angles of attack.

Nightveil Specter plays a cute miniature Lord of the Void, but between the ability to grab other card types and the fact that Mycosynth Lattice and Celestial Dawn allow you to circumvent color issues, it certainly deserves a slot of its own.

I liked Memory Plunder just fine, but the chance to take something from each opponent makes a comparison to Diluvian Primordial something akin to that between a handgun and a hydrogen bomb. Let’s just say I expect this card to generate almost as many disgusting plays as Rite of Replication, and I intend to be responsible for many of them.

Whispering Madness is a great tool to keep everyone’s hands full, and when Sen Triplets is your commander, that means you have a whole lot of cards to play with. This little number inspired me to fill the deck with more group-hug-style draw spells, and it thus resulted in the addition of fresh theme.

Cards such as Spin Into Myth pair perfectly with Lord of the Void, allowing you to guarantee you find a creature, steal particular creatures you need, or get rid of a problematic creature permanently when the Demon exiles it with its trigger. On top of that, the spells pair much better with Sen Triplets than you might expect. The creature will end up back in the opponent’s hand, where you might be able to steal it, but even if your opponent recasts it, you’re gaining an advantage. First, the recasting will tie up your opponent’s mana so that Sen Triplets can take full advantage of the rest of the player’s hand, and moreover, it’ll stop the player from drawing any answers to your board before you’ve finished taking all of his or her cards.

Lord of the Void’s certainly powerful here, being the best theft effect in the deck and all, but if you really want to take advantage of this shiny new mythic, you have some more options to explore.

For instance, regardless of what creature Lord of the Void recruits, it’s going to leave the other six cards exiled. Mill decks have generally had trouble in Commander because of the large deck sizes and multiple opponents, but ever since Rise of the Eldrazi was released, things have been nigh impossible. Almost half of the decks you find around kitchen tables will have an Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre or Kozilek, Butcher of Truth to ruin your day, not to mention all of the people packing Elixir of Immortality. Worse yet, the most common reason you’ll find a deck not looking to shuffle up its graveyard is that it’s built to abuse the zone, at which point filling it for your opponent seems like a poor strategy.

Many of these issues evaporate if you swap in Lord of the Void for Nemesis of Reason and exile people’s libraries instead:

Lost Marbles

• Commander (0)

• One-Shot (6)
• 1 Bitter Ordeal
• 1 Dimir Machinations
• 1 Nightmare Incursion
• 1 Praetor's Grasp
• 1 Sadistic Sacrament
• 1 Stolen Goods

• Repeater (8)
• 1 Lord of the Void
• 1 Crumbling Sanctuary
• 1 Knacksaw Clique
• 1 Ornate Kanzashi
• 1 Nightveil Specter
• 1 Raven Guild Master
• 1 Thada Adel, Acquisitor
• 1 Thoughtpicker Witch

• Old School (2)
• 1 Extractor Demon
• 1 Selhoff Occultist

• Swim with the Fishes (5)
• 1 Attrition
• 1 Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
• 1 Phyrexian Plaguelord
• 1 Decree of Pain
• 1 Life's Finale

• For the Kill (5)
• 1 Eldrazi Monument
• 1 Junkyo Bell
• 1 Ascendant Evincar
• 1 Gravitational Shift
• 1 Sadistic Hypnotist

• Bright Ideas (6)
• 1 Minds Aglow
• 1 Stroke of Genius
• 1 Braingeyser
• 1 Reprocess
• 1 Distant Melody
• 1 Slate of Ancestry

• Tidy Up (2)
• 1 Relic of Progenitus
• 1 Leyline of the Void

• Teach You a Thing or Two (6)
• 1 Vampiric Tutor
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Beseech the Queen
• 1 Increasing Ambition
• 1 Demonic Collusion
• 1 Liliana Vess

• Turbo Charge (19)
• 1 Crucible of Worlds
• 1 Phyrexian Altar
• 1 Ashnod's Altar
• 1 Black Market
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Wayfarer's Bauble
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Everflowing Chalice
• 1 Darksteel Ingot
• 1 Thran Dynamo
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Dreamstone Hedron
• 1 Illusionist's Bracers
• 1 Rings of Brighthearth
• 1 Crypt Ghast
• 1 Gauntlet of Power
• 1 Caged Sun
• 1 Doubling Cube

• Down to Earth (40)
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Cabal Coffers
• 1 Vesuva
• 1 Deserted Temple
• 1 Petrified Field
• 1 Thawing Glaciers
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Esper Panorama
• 1 Grixis Panorama
• 1 Terminal Moraine
• 1 Marsh Flats
• 1 Verdant Catacombs
• 1 Bloodstained Mire
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Scalding Tarn
• 1 Underground Sea
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Sunken Ruins
• 1 Creeping Tar Pit
• 1 Volrath's Stronghold
• 1 Nephalia Drownyard
• 1 Tolaria West
• 2 Island
• 15 Swamp

Buy This Deck

Gatecrash continues to deliver on exciting Commander cards with Illusionist’s Bracers, as previewed by Mike Cannon in his first article on the Mothership. The card’s already received plenty of discussion, but I’ll note that using Oona, Queen of the Fae to hit two opponents at once or go in for the kill on one is awesome, and the card’s not too shabby on a Sadistic Hypnotist or Phyrexian Plaguelord either. The other newbie’s a bit more controversial.

I know right now a bunch of you are screaming, “You can’t use Crypt Ghast! It has a white symbol in its text box!” That may or may not be true. You see, extort is the first ever keyword ability to lock colored mana into its definition, so extort cards don’t technically have the symbols in their rules text. The Commander Rules Committee is currently deciding what to do about it, and you can expect a verdict before prerelease.

As for the actual list, it’s going to take you a while to deck multiple opponents unless you have a whole lot of mana doublers, so I’ve opted to kill the remaining players with damage. Oona’s tokens can become pretty large, but tutoring up Lord of the Void will probably get things done faster.

This is a pretty unique role for the Lord, but it’s still not front and center; time to take full advantage of Lord of the Void’s trigger condition!

Trigger Happy

• Commander (0)

• Sixty-Four-Hit Combo (10)
• 1 Savage Beating
• 1 Fireshrieker
• 1 Grappling Hook
• 1 Rage Reflection
• 1 Avatar of Slaughter
• 1 Aggravated Assault
• 1 Breath of Fury
• 1 Hellkite Charger
• 1 Seize the Day
• 1 World at War

• Character Clones (12)
• 1 Stolen Identity
• 1 Sakashima the Impostor
• 1 Sakashima's Student
• 1 Vesuvan Doppelganger
• 1 Vesuvan Shapeshifter
• 1 Cackling Counterpart
• 1 Evil Twin
• 1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1 Quicksilver Gargantuan
• 1 Rite of Replication
• 1 Infinite Reflection

• Hand-Drawn (10)
• 1 Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
• 1 Sturmgeist
• 1 Tandem Lookout
• 1 Lu Xun, Scholar General
• 1 Shadowmage Infiltrator
• 1 Thieving Magpie
• 1 Coastal Piracy
• 1 Mask of Riddles
• 1 Sword of Fire and Ice
• 1 Sword of Light and Shadow

• Utterly Destroyed (9)
• 1 Balefire Dragon
• 1 Rustmouth Ogre
• 1 Ashling, the Extinguisher
• 1 Mordant Dragon
• 1 Cephalid Constable
• 1 Umezawa's Jitte
• 1 Oblivion Stone
• 1 Decree of Pain
• 1 Cryptic Command

• Taunts (6)
• 1 Lord of the Void
• 1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
• 1 Mindleech Mass
• 1 Scion of Darkness
• 1 Silent-Blade Oni
• 1 Wrexial, the Risen Deep

• Critical Hit (4)
• 1 Necropolis Regent
• 1 Trench Gorger
• 1 Sword of War and Peace
• 1 Godo, Bandit Warlord

• Shield Break (4)
• 1 Akroma's Memorial
• 1 Vela the Night-clad
• 1 Sun Quan, Lord of Wu
• 1 Whispersilk Cloak

• First Blood (3)
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Anger
• 1 Urabrask the Hidden

• Loading Screen (3)
• 1 Wayfarer's Bauble
• 1 Darksteel Ingot
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum

• Full Bar (38)
• 1 Crumbling Necropolis
• 1 Transguild Promenade
• 1 Rupture Spire
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Creeping Tar Pit
• 1 Lavaclaw Reaches
• 1 Sunken Ruins
• 1 Graven Cairns
• 1 Cascade Bluffs
• 1 Darkwater Catacombs
• 1 Shadowblood Ridge
• 1 Underground Sea
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Badlands
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Volcanic Island
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Bloodstained Mire
• 1 Scalding Tarn
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Dragonskull summit
• 1 Sulfur Falls
• 1 Dimir Aqueduct
• 1 Rakdos Carnarium
• 1 Izzet Boilerworks
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 1 Izzet Guildgate
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Volrath's Stronghold
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Shizo, Death's Storehouse
• 1 Spinerock Knoll
• 1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
• 1 Mystifying Maze
• 1 Island
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Mountain

Buy This Deck

If you’d asked me a couple of days ago if there were anything better than attacking your opponents over and over again while drawing cards, I’d have said “no.” Now that’s a distant third. Say you have Aggravated Assault and Urabrask the Hidden on the table. Attacking with Lord of the Void will let your new recruits join the fray right away. Next, encode something onto it.

Attack with Lord of the Void, steal your Inferno Titan, make a copy of Lord of the Void. Attack again, make another Lord of the Void, steal your Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Solemn Simulacrum . . . I think you get the idea. And that’s not the coolest thing that’s going to happen either!

Do you remember this diamond in the rough?

Pair it with Lord of the Void and a Lightning Greaves, and suddenly, you’re churning through creatures until you miss a Lord trigger. Add to that the fact that most Commander decks are stuffed to the gills with enters-the-battlefield triggers, and things should become well and truly out of hand in short order.

Unavoidable

I know I’ll be paying an awful lot of blood tithes to our new demonic overlord come prerelease (January 26), and I hope you can get just as much fun out of it. In the meantime, keep an eye on the spoiler, and get brewing!

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