Magic: the Gathering Foundations Review, Part 2 of 3: White, Blue, and Black Cards

After many years, a Core set has returned to Magic. This Standard legal set is 50/50 new cards and reprints, and will remain legal through at least 2029 with annual reprints. A pared down selection of cards will be available in a Starter Collection and Beginner Box aimed at new players, with boosters for the more enfranchised crowd. There is no overarching story, though there will be a planeswalker and legendary creature in each color to serve as its face.

Foundations will release to MTG Arena on November 12th, 2024, and to the tabletop on November 15th.

Last time we covered the mechanics, and this time as usual we won’t be looking at everything, but what we will be looking at, we’ll be looking at primarily but not exclusively with an eye for Commander play.

White

Arahbo, the First Fang

BPhillipYork: This strikes me mostly as some kind of a support for another deck; you can certainly run this as a mono-white commander, and there’s certainly loops you can set up with it, and with something like an Aetherflux Reservoir you’d probably win the game but that’s a pretty vulnerable combo. A a fun addition for Cat tribal or Cat and Dog tribal.

Marcy: Pretty simple mono-white Cat commander, but I think there’s a good possibility to see some (attempts) at tribal in Standard maybe. There aren’t really a lot of cats right now, though, but this set has a LOT of Ajani cards, so…While not meta shaking, new players will probably find it fun and easy to wrap their heads around.

Loxi: Arahbo returns as a simple, yet potent Cat Commanding Cats™. Three mana isn’t a bad cost for an anthem that generates additional tokens just for playing the game. While not particularly groundbreaking, I think this will be a solid inclusion in any Cat typal decks right off the bat. If you’re looking to build a straightforward combat commander and want to embrace the kitties, he might be well suited to take the helm as well.

TheChirurgeon: Cat tribal is definitely a key part of Foundations and I’m here for it. There are a ton of good cats in the set, from classics like Savannah Lions to more recent additions like Ajani’s Pridemate, not to mention Ajani, Caller of the Pride. Cat Tribal isn’t particularly powerful – especially not in Commander, where go-wide weenie decks just don’t get you there, but you can do some dumb things with Felidar Guardian if you’re looking for some infinite combos and they can potentially trigger this guy’s token generation for infinite cat tokens.

 

Celestial Armor

BPhillipYork: Equipment with a few exceptions is just kind of generally bad. It’s nice this gives hexproof and indestructible until the end of the turn with flash, but after that it’s +2/+0 and flying which is basically meaningless. Re-equipping it costs an absurd 4 mana, so once the protection wears off it’s just kind of sitting there doing nothing. If your deck heavily relies on a creature combo piece and that has some synergy with equipment, this might be a decent way to randomly protect it, if you’re going to commit to holding up 3 mana all the time.

Marcy: Been a while since I’ve seen this card for sure, and it’s a very good staple for what it does. Flash protection is always fun to play with, especially if you leave your opponents guessing on what you might have mana open for. The extra benefits of flying and +2/+0 just make it ‘more’ value for 3 mana, but still good value.

Loxi: One of the pieces of building a Commander deck that I find people often end up lacking is protection, and while White tends to have a decent amount of it, the versatility of this card is pretty unmatched. Protection, evasion, and equipment synergies to boot. Often equipment decks tend to have a way to recycle cards from the graveyard as well, making this even more potent when you can get multiple casts with it. I think it’s absolutely an ace in equipment decks, and even in general decks where your commander/key cards are often vulnerable, you can make a solid argument to include this. It’s not as good for go-wide strategies as other protection spells like Divine Resilience (an uncommon from this same set!) will be a better contender there, but go-tall strategies will love this.

TheChirurgeon: This is OK, I guess. Auto-equipping on entry is a lot less useful than being auto-equipped when an eligible creature enters, even if the latter is more annoying in digital clients. That said, Flash goes a long way here toward making this just a solid protection spell you drop in a pinch.

 

Crystal Barricade

BPhillipYork: This is a super fun card because it lets you just blast out with an Earthquake or something like that. People don’t tend to actually get targeted all that often in Commander, but hexproof is nice to have randomly. It may save you from some collateral damage or discard. It’s also a 0 power creature, and white has a lot of draw that’s premised on creatures 2 power or under entering play. That being said, it’s really only worth including if you’re going to get a payoff from the noncombat damage prevention, but there are a ton of ways to get value out of that, Pestilence particularly comes to mind.

Marcy: “You” effects are always a fun time because they aren’t exceedingly common. While this card certainly dies to a lot of removal, that is kind of the point–you have to find a way to target and remove this card if you want to win, and this card might be very strong against Red aggro decks that try to burn your creatures out of the way.

Loxi: Control, Lifegain, and Pillowfort all love this type of effect. While these tend to eat removal like candy, it can be worthwhile to trade a two mana wall for a potentially game-changing kill spell in someone’s hand. Years ago I played Aegis of the Gods with some success, and this is basically a straight upgrade in most commander scenarios outside of Humans/Soldiers.

 

Exemplar of Light

BPhillipYork: That’s pretty solid for an angel. Off turn gain life triggers are somewhat harder to arrange, but not terribly difficult. In some ways the +1/+1s every time you do gain life are a bit of a downside, it makes this angel actually threatening, where its real value probably lies in the card draw. There’s certainly all kinds of Selesnaya counter decks as well though that can just bypass the life entirely and be putting their counters on this thing for card draw, and there’s a decent amount of abilities that put +1/+1 counters on things whenever you like which means you can get a draw on multiple players turns. It’s nice to see white get thematic at least somewhat useful card draw.

Marcy: Most of the time ‘how does lifegain win’ questions are answered by creatures like this, assuming you aren’t running some bizarre combo or simply just running a total so high your opponent can’t overcome it before they mill out. Simple and easy. The added card draw is nice, but ironically, probably one of the only times you want to see a ‘once each turn’ clause, lest you draw your whole deck and lose.

Loxi: The first half was a bit typical, but that last paragraph is what really counts here. Dedicated lifegain decks will have absolutely zero issues rolling in card draw with this, and even most Angel decks will have enough incremental lifegain that you might be able to still get some good value here.

TheChirurgeon: They’ve really been working to give white the ability to draw cards and tying it to lifegain and counters on a creature is a solid way to do that, though only triggering once per turn severely limits the utility of what’s otherwise a 3/3 flyer.

 

Herald of Eternal Dawn

BPhillipYork: I mean, 7 mana is too much mana. Yeah the ability is fun, so if you’re playing on some durdle table, then it’s a neat lockdown, and it would be hilarious to see this popout in response to a Thassa Consult combo. But again, 7 mana. And to really get value out of this you’re holding up 7 mana which is kind of a lot. If you have a decent way to cheat it into play, that’s something, and it may just serve as kind of a holding pattern to keep your opponents from executing their game plan if it’s some kind of combo, but then you’re just asking for your 7 mana investment, or cheated out fattie, to get taken out by removal.

Marcy: A cool card with the ‘You can’t lose/They can’t win’, 7 mana in formats not Commander is often a lot, and this card seems easy to telegraph. If we’re thinking about this deck from a new player perspective, this card likely seems very strong (which it frankly is), the element that makes this card really fun in my opinion is Flash; seeing your loss coming, only for your opponent to have no answer or mana open, and then slamming this on the board before you do lose is a very fun idea.

Loxi: Aside from the obvious synergy naturally with Angel decks as well, what this really has going for it is Flash. The typical issue with Platinum Angel-like effects is that they stall out the board, and while usually this is what you want when you play a card like that, it can often lead to players just digging for a way to get rid of the creature so they can clean you up with a big combo or pump effect.

Natural flash means you can play this much more reactively, forcing someone to already dump that game-ending combo and get foiled by you, with them then having to dig for another answer AND potentially find another win condition. 7 mana is a lot to hang on to, but it can still buy you some much needed time to close out a game if it’s left untouched after it hits the board.

TheChirurgeon: Flash makes this an incredibly nasty card to have in your back pocket and a white solution to decks going infinite. I’m not wild about it costing seven mana, but having that effect on a 6 mana value creature or lower is probably too much.

 

Raise the Past

BPhillipYork: Yeah this is uh, potentially easily game winning card. Right away this will return Thassa’s Oracle, and in fact the whole old Hulk pile, Cephalid Illusionist and Nomad En-Kor and Thassa’s Oracle and you can bury all three pieces with a Buried Alive, it will even let you protect it with a Grand Abolisher. This is frankly a weird effect for white to get, most of the time mass graveyard animation is black’s thing, and it’s about zombies or finality tokens or something. This not only returns a horde of small creatures, it doesn’t put exile counters on them or anything, so you could even do something like reanimate everything with this, including a Snapcaster Mage, giving the thing flash again instantly. Really a powerful effect at virtually any level of table.

Marcy: 4 mana does a lot of work in decks where White likely runs cheap creatures (Boros, Soldiers, etc.), and in cases where those creatures are not exiled by cards like Sunfall or Lockdown Protocol, this could be a great ‘get back in the fight’ card.

Loxi: 4 mana is a pretty solid cost for this. You pretty much already know what to do with this: either use it to reanimate a ton of cheap dorks for great value, or assemble a combo in your graveyard and get it all back in one fell swoop.

TheChirurgeon: Four mana is a very solid cost for this. Back in my day you had to pay this cost to get back a single creature with Resurrection.

 

Skynight Squire

BPhillipYork: Okay. I mean, fine, it’s bad then it becomes a mediocre beater after you summon more creatures. Yes, it eventually can get pretty big, but if you’re putting lots of creatures into play, unless you are somehow looping them to get more (like sacrificing them an altar to pay for the next one) then you’re going both wide and tall, but not really at the same time. Also it’s a cat, so I guess run it in your cat deck?

Marcy: Really cool little card, and honestly I think just shy of being extremely dangerous as a ‘Scout’ instead of ‘Soldier’. Still a solid beater and in Cat decks, which tend to run a lot of creatures and tokens, this thing might get huge very fast.

Loxi: While it can get pretty big fast and will end up with natural evasion, it’s going to be a bit slow if you aren’t a pretty token-heavy deck. Definitely not bad since it’s got a powerful ceiling, but I’m not slam dunking this into most decks. I find these often come down early and get some solid value, or they come down late and eat removal before they can get going. I think this is a menace for Limited, and I can see this totally going pretty crazy there.

 

Valkyrie’s Call

BPhillipYork: This is a big effect, letting you get more value out of all creatures, or if you have ways to move counters create infinite loops. This also is basically Luminous Broodmoth, and it’s important that both effects give flying or these two would combine to let you just return creatures repeatedly. The Ozolith also doesn’t solve this issue, as it doesn’t actually remove counters, just creates essentially a copy of the same tokens that just left play. Which means your creatures leave play and still have flying. But even given all that the ability to automatically sac and return creatures for value is really big, though 5 mana is also a lot to pay for an obviously threatening enchantment.

Marcy: This does certainly have ‘win-more’ potential and issues, and also costs 5 mana, which means that in a format like Standard, that’s a point of the game where you should probably just be winning, but if there were some way to get this down earlier or cheated out, could be good.

Loxi: These types of effects can be quite powerful, but I often find that they can be a bit win-more in that they require you to already have a good board state and don’t really make it stronger, just really a sort of pseudo-protection. If it’s able to reliably get a few creatures back in your deck, it can definitely be worth the mana, but often I prefer to run more reactive protection spells and reanimation that lets me pick my targets reliably.

Notably, this also could be sick in Kaalia of the Vast or Shilgengar, Sire of Famine, where turning your non-Angels into Angels has actual beneficial implications as well.

TheChirurgeon: This just costs too much to put on the table and once it’s there it isn’t doing anything for you. A five-mana card that doesn’t do anything on its own is almost always going to be pretty bad. The effect is cool but this needed to be cheaper, even if it was creating copy tokens.

 

Blue

Archmage of Runes

BPhillipYork: Well that’s really both sides of the combo on one piece, and this helps enable some stupid buyback combos that will let you draw out your deck. It also incentivizes actually interacting with your opponents, which is important. So this is a decent include in any deck that wants to run a lot of instants, but particularly buildable into a storm or buyback combo.

Marcy: Seems great for spellslinger decks, but not entirely sure it has a place. Again, the cost here is ‘fair’, but Magic isn’t really a ‘fair’ game anymore; for 5 mana to get a 1 mana discount, you probably could have just locked down your win with cheaper and more flexible cards.

Loxi: Windmill dunk into Izzet Giants, and truthfully this can slot into basically any spellslinger deck really well. This can set up for a pop-off turn on it’s own. If we have any old Hearthstone players in the crowd, this makes me think back to Gadgetzan Auctioneer and Miracle Rogue, and boy does that make me want thirty of these.

TheChirurgeon: Pricey, but very good. Drawing on every instant/sorcery cast is a huge effect.

 

Curator of Destinies

BPhillipYork: Pay 6 to draw 2-3 cards is fine, you get a 6/6 beater on top of it. I’d say the real value here lies in finding some way to repeatedly have it come onto the battlefield with flicker effects. If you can pull that off it’s a pretty neat little card to use to go through your deck, but in some kind of Azorious deck then you’re full on casting this for 6 mana which is a lot. As a generic value card in my opinion it really doesn’t do enough. Also I sort of hate these “choose an opponent” effects because your tendency is to choose the weakest player on the board, who is the one least likely to know which pile to choose, and take the most time hemming and hawing.

Marcy: This is Fact or Fiction on a 5/5 uncounterable body with evasion. Sure, it costs 6 mana. Again, your game would need to reach a point where this entering shifts the match, but I’m trying to envision newer players using this set, and I think this card tracks as a ‘wow, look at this!’ type of card.

Loxi: Historically I’ve only ran these types of cards in Big Blue strategies or Sphinx decks. The mind games of how you set up your piles are always fun to use though, and it can get you a well sculpted hand if you’re tricky with it. I think this will be really solid there, or if you really want to go that old-school control style of just beating people down with one chunky flier as your win condition. It’s also going to win a lot of Limited games, this is everything I’d want and more in a draft.

TheChirurgeon: I mean this is fine. Stapling Fact or Fiction to a creature is OK – it usually means drawing 2-3 cards, depending on what your opponent wants to do – but it’s not really a playable card on its own, plus it relies on being an instant. That said, as Marcy pointed out it’s a 5/5 with evasion so it’s a top pick in Limited.

 

Drake Hatcher

BPhillipYork: That’s a neat card. Not really good, for like, commander, but neat. It’s fine if you’re doing a prowess deck I guess, but doesn’t really pop off like those decks usually need to. Generating more drakes is a fun little thing.

Marcy: Prowess is already great, Prowess with Vigilance is good too, but Blue feels like an odd color. Also, the extra ability? This is a lot for 2 mana.

Loxi: Prowess can still be strong in Commander, but in general this feels a bit more focused towards 60-card constructed play. I’m not sure I’d play this in normal spellslinger, but if the spells you’re slinging often can buff the power of this as well, it’s not a bad way to get a few tokens rolling.

FromTheShire: Called shot, this thing is going to be a house in at least Standard and Pioneer. This curved into Kaito, Cunning Infiltrator so it can’t be blocked and hits for 2 plus it hangs back to protect him? It’s going to be a thing. It’s just a ton of value and keywords stapled onto a 2 mana creature.

 

High Fae Trickster

BPhillipYork: Fun to do the like flash out something that gives flash, obviously you’re probably not going to be able to cast a lot more stuff with flash after you spend 4 mana, but just having flash is really powerful. It lets you react rather than initiate. One of my favorite commander wins was a stupid 7 player table where I had flash and waited till someone else tried to win and a counter war was fought then dropped Thassa’s Oracle and Demonic Consultation on top of the stack, everybody was out of counters.

Marcy: Flash enabling flasher is always good and sneaky to work into a deck. Pretty solidly costed for what it enables, too.

Loxi: Flash is good if your deck benefits from playing at instant speed.

This is a blue card with two powerful midrange/spell heavy archetypes. The decks that want to include this will benefit from playing off instant speed.

Yes, this will often be pretty nifty.

TheChirurgeon: Solid effect, very good to build around.

 

Homunculus Horde

BPhillipYork: This seems good on paper, and it certainly could get entirely out of control, if you can draw cards on each players turn, and draw 2 cards on each players turn. But that’s kind of a win more thing, and on top of it you have to protect a bunch of 2/2s, and 2 toughness is notoriously easy to take out. I still think it’s a fun card.

Marcy: This certainly feels like a card someone is going to break in some Commander deck, but overall I actually think this is really solid. Probably my favorite blue card in the set so far because I love the potential here.

Loxi: Keep in mind that the token also has this ability, so your horde of Mike Wazowski’s multiplies for every turn you can trigger this. It’s really easy for this to get out of hand, so if you have any way to buff them up with something like Biomass Mutation or a way to turn them into copies with Sakashima’s Will or Nanogene Conversion-like effects, they can easily wipe out the board. Just keep them away from any stray Doors.

TheChirurgeon: The tokens also replicating can make this super nasty, though the (smart) second card restriction means you’ll only ever get this once per turn.

 

Kaito, Cunning Infiltrator

BPhillipYork: So this is pretty neat design in my opinion. The obvious play is to have 6 creatures, then drop this and get your loyalty counters, effectively unrespondable emblem. Works really well with decks that are generating draw off Coastal Piracy effects. I do quite like when Wizards tries to make commander viable planeswalkers, and this seems like one of them (and it’s not yet another Teferi). Truthfully though a horde of 2/1 ninjas is nice, I wouldn’t turn it down, but it doesn’t win the game. Also they don’t have any evasion or any kind of ninjitsu or anything, they’re just vanilla 2/1s which is kind of meh to me. Certainly it’s brutal with Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow but there’s better ways to win with her.

Marcy: This is an oddly ‘fair’ Planeswalker, which kind of means that I think it’s not really that great? Like the -9 is… fine?

Loxi: Planeswalkers are notorious for being pretty easy to answer in Commander, but Kaito has a really reliable way to get a lot of loyalty really fast. His +1 is pretty handy in a pinch, but where I think he’ll really shine is playing him into a board where you can immediately get 6 loyalty and ultimate right off the bat. It’s not an “instant win” emblem like some planeswalkers have, but it’s definitely going to get a ton of value from getting tons of tokens for free when other players just play Magic the Gathering as normal.

TheChirurgeon: I like that he’s a ninja enabler for those decks. Seems like a really fun card for getting away with all of your Ninjutsu shenanigans.

 

Kiora, the Rising Tide

BPhillipYork: Well that’s fun. Making big fatties is fun, but of course you’re needing to attack with a 3/2 with no evasion. So hopefully someone is cool with that. Or else you’re starting to go through a lot of effort to give her evasion, and then summon 8/8’s. So if you are summoning 8/8’s and attacking with them, you’ll…. Okay look. Lets say you have her out, and you’ve got threshold, and you attack. Next turn is turn 1. You’ll deal 8 damage + 3 on turn 1 (11). It will take you 8 turns to win the game this way. The sea does seem to have a thing about 8’s though, that’s neat.

Marcy: I could absolutely see this slot into some of the Blue aggro decks that currently exist, because a lot of them pump their graveyard to buff Haughty Djinn.

Loxi: I think Kiora isn’t really Commander material, but I think she’s a really solid inclusion in Merfolk decks. Looting for two on a decent body is fine, but making a free 8/8 with a pretty easy activation clause is icing on the cake, especially since it can come right back if it dies while Kiora can attack safely again. I don’t think she’s anything too crazy, but she’s definitely packing quite a bit of value for a reasonable cost.

TheChirurgeon: Huh, I didn’t realize Kiora got desparked. The threshold ability here is interesting, and putting two cards in your graveyard when she enters means you can hit those threshold totals pretty quickly with any other mill. Hell, I’d consider building something for constructed around her.

 

Lunar Insight

BPhillipYork: Well that’s okay, but you’re probably drawing maybe 4 cards with this? Maybe 5? The more cards you are drawing, the less good your deck probably is tbh. Conditional draw 3+ for 3 mana sorcery is kind of mediocre in blue.

Marcy: This feels… Fine? Commander for sure, at best. This really feels like “Bulk Rare”.

Loxi: It’ll be really dependent on your deck, but think of it this way: the going rate for card draw at three mana is basically Divination, so if you can get three cards for three mana, it’s always going to be a good deal. It all depends on how many permanents you run and how spread apart your curve is, but I think most decks will naturally have a pretty good spread just between mana rocks and support cards that this will often be a decent draw spell. It can be stone useless after board wipes, so be careful running it alongside those.

TheChirurgeon: I agree with Marcy, this screams bulk rare. The going rate for a 3 mana sorcery letting you draw cards is two cards, so you need three nonlands with different mana values to even go above that here and while that works better in Commander where you’re running singleton cards it’s still not likely to be something you do often.

 

Sphinx of Forgotten Lore

BPhillipYork: WTF. WTF is this, a semi-playable sphinx? Crazy. I mean, yes, it’s a bit slower, but more value than Snapcaster Mage (so worse, definitely worse) but even so over a Commander game that’s a decent value source that you can pop out during your end step. I think maybe best use case is another source of extra turns or extra combats, to double every one you already have.

Marcy: Kind of wild that this is “Snapcaster but Weak”, which is where we are trying to go in Standard perhaps with this card? Because you probably wouldn’t use this OVER Snapcaster, but in a format without that type of creature/effect, this could have some impact. The issue, which a lot of these cards have, is that Standard is *very fast*, and this card is not.

Loxi: Snapcaster Sphinx! I think this is quite solid for a lot of decks, a four mana flier with flash is nothing to scoff at, especially when it means you’ll often always get at least one trigger of this at the bare minimum assuming nobody dices it up right away. While it doesn’t have the fast reliability Snapcaster Mage has, it makes up for it in sustained value if it goes untouched.

TheChirurgeon: This is just great. The base body is solid enough on its own but Snapcaster effects are always good, and the ability to flash him in helps avoid Sorcery speed removal. That said, I agree with Marcy that it’s probably too slow for Standard and the attack trigger doesn’t help you nearly as much as Snapcaster did since you can’t respond to a spell on the stack with this guy to snag a counter from your yard.

 

Black

Abyssal Harvester

BPhillipYork: Well that’s neat. Take your opponents creatures, you can only have 1 nightmare out, that seems fair sort of. If it’s just fuel for sacrificial fires that’s a fun way to get it.

Marcy: An odd card because you normally would want to keep eating cards out of graveyards to build up reanimated monsters, but you have to do it on the turn it was put there, and then when you do, you lose any others you had? This feels more like Graveyard hate than it does reanimation.

TheChirurgeon: I like this guy. Yeah you only get one nightmare at a time but the concept is you’re constantly working with the best possible killed creature. It’s too slow and unwieldy for competitive play, but it’ll be a lot of fun in more casual games of Commander.

 

Blasphemous Edict

Marcy: This is cute with the use of 13, but this really feels like the most ‘Commander’ card in the list so far. Certainly hard to use in other formats, but it does give Black a 5 mana board-wipe in Standard, which it currently doesn’t really have much of anything.

TheChirurgeon: I really like this card as a cheap cast alternative to Damnation, or as a second black board wipe. The thirteen number will often just be the same as “all” or something has gone so terribly wrong for you that the card is irrelevant.

FromTheShire: Blasphemous Act is already a Commander staple, and this instantly gets that status as well. Yes there are edge cases where it’s worse, or you have to pay slightly more since it’s not a progressive discount, but forced sacrifice is wildly powerful in a format where creatures are frequently huge, indestructible, or both.

 

Bloodthirsty Conqueror

Marcy: Kind of an interesting reverse lifegain (lifesteal?), on a somewhat fair costed body. Again, a big problem with this set is these are great in a vacuum, but not so great out of it; 5 mana is very expensive and competes with far better cards.

Loxi: Exquisite Blood on a body. We recently also got Sanguine Bond on a body, so these cards having more options in creature based strategies is always good to see. This one comes on a really powerful card as well, with great typings and keywords. While often it’ll get played in dedicated lifegain/lifedrain strategies, I think this is a solid inclusion in Vampires or Knights just as a way to get incremental life, since this will often gain you quite a bit of life just from sitting on board and swinging with the team.

TheChirurgeon: Yeah I had to read it a second time to get what it was going for but I like this a lot with the way it basically turns all your damage into lifelink. For five mana this thing is packing a ton of value; it really wants some Vampire or Knight tribal support but I think it’s playable on its own, plus having a second Sanguine Bond combo enabler is a good deal for Commander.

 

High-Society Hunter

Marcy: If you’re staying just in this set, you could sacrifice the card below this 9 times, draw 9 cards, and get +9/+9. Just saying.

Loxi: Not to be a broken record here, but it’s going to be solid in Vampires, naturally. Harvester of Souls has always been a nice inclusion for strategies that often want to be killing your own dudes and everyone else’s in equal measure, so I expect this to be in a similar role. This has a slightly smaller body and trades Deathtouch for Flying, but has a built in sacrifice trigger, which can be often really necessary in sacrifice decks to have in spades.

TheChirurgeon: Huh yeah that’s a fun trick where this guy just eats the same cat over and over every turn.

 

Nine-Lives Familiar

Marcy: This is meant for and will be abused by Aristocrats decks, and other things that want to sacrifice creatures; it will likely be one of the most obnoxious cards in the set.

Loxi: A cute cat you can really just kill nine times. Flavor wise this is hilariously morbid, but gameplay wise this is actually really really good in Aristocrats (Aristocats) decks. Three mana in exchange for nine death triggers and a creature that’s a real pain to deal with is great value, and if you can get it back to hand you can just cast it again for all those counters back. I really like this card and I think it’s one of the best sacrifice fodder creatures we’ve gotten, especially since it’s much more annoying to deal with than Reassembling Skeleton and similar cards.

 

Tinybones, Bauble Burglar

Marcy: Oh hey Tinybones. Kind of funny to imagine running Tinybones Tribal in Standard (there’s at least 1 other creature and an enchantment). This card might actually be really annoying in the current Discard shells that exist, as it gives you things to ‘do’ with those discards, and makes Tinybones a target to remove.

Loxi: A slightly less annoying version of Tinybones, still focused on Discard synergies, but with the helpful Rogue type to find a home in those decks as well. It does open up some interesting strategies with a sort of discard/theft hybrid deck, which is a pretty fun archetype we don’t really have available right now. The downside is that Discard is not very well received by a lot of the community, and I’d wager playing this as a commander is often going to get you mugged by the table pretty fast.

TheChirurgeon: Whenever Tinybones isn’t on the card, the flavor text should be asking “hey, where’s Tinybones?”

 

Zul Ashur, Lich Lord

Marcy: Two mana with ward for a 2/2 that lets you cast Zombies, really nice little card. Not sure this would be a Commander on it’s own, but certainly feels like it would go great in a Zombie themed commander deck.

Loxi: For an absolutely crazy rate of 2 mana, this is a fantastic support piece for Zombie decks. The Ward on it isn’t anything crazy, in a 40-health format, but getting to reanimate something every turn is going to add up really fast in terms of both board state and card advantage. I’ve found that, similarly to a lot of the other mono-color legendaries of this set, she won’t really be the most exciting commander, but she’ll fit really well into pretty much any deck in her archetype you want.

TheChirurgeon: I really like this. It’s not a full Zombie lord but it’s a powerful effect and for only two mana it’s not throwing you off your curve. I don’t know if you want her as a Commander, but I want her in any Zombie deck I’m building.

 

Next Time: The Set’s Red, Green, Multicolor, and Colorless Cards

That wraps up our look at the white, blue, and black cards of Foundations. Join us next time as we review the remaining red, green, multicolor, and colorless cards, picking out our favorites, and talking about the future build-arounds.

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