Secrets of Strixhaven's "Power Five" Commander Cards

"I cast Channel" has to be the most exciting phrase I've heard in Commander in a long time.

The cycle of mono-colored prepare creatures spoiled for the Secrets of Strixhaven Commander precons lets you cast very powerful spells without having the actual cards. Some of these cards are rarely seen due to cost and card availability — victims of the Reserved List — and one of them is banned from the format altogether.

Let's look at the best ways to trigger the new prepared mechanic so you can cast these powerhouse cards, and theorycraft which commanders they might find a home in.

Eiganjo Dynastorian (Replenish)

If you've never cast a Replenish with a graveyard full of Sagas, you're missing out on witnessing an explosion of value. Due to the card's Reserved List status and high price tag, chances are most people haven't.

Eiganjo Dynastorian has perhaps the easiest prepare condition to meet of this cycle. If you're in a dedicated Enchantress archetype, cards like Champions from Beyond and March of the Canonized create X disposable 1/1 tokens and leave an enchantment behind, triggering your enchantment synergy cards in the process. Springheart Nantuko is a green enchantment creature with bestow that generates a token with each land that enters the battlefield under your control. Other considerations for generating lots of tokens for cheap in an Enchantress deck are Bitterblossom and SOLDIER Military Program.

Since the prepare trigger is just attacking with two creatures, you don't need to worry if they survive or connect to do damage. Just sending two tokens to their doom will do the trick, and then you can fire off a Replenish in your second main phase.

Cards to Consider

Suggested Commanders

Terra, Magical Adept is my favorite Final Fantasy "yes, I'll have all the Saga creatures please, waiter" deck. Her enters trigger does wonders to fill your graveyard over the course of the game. Lots of Sagas have self-mill effects as one of their chapters, including powerful ones like Awaken the Honored Dead and slower ones like The Tale of Tamiyo.

The Master of Keys is a giant flyer with built-in self-mill and he grants escape to each enchantment in your graveyard. He enables a powerful marriage of Enchantress and Graveyard archetypes. The Tale of Tamiyo and Tymaret Calls the Dead stick out as two saga enchantments that are cheap to cast and start your self-mill strategy quickly.

Sagas aren't the only way to go with Replenish; standard top-tier Enchantress commanders like Sythis, Harvest's Hand can benefit from a late-game Replenish to undo all the removal your opponents worked so hard for all game.

Dirgur Focusmage (Braingeyser)

A Reserved List card that has been power crept in every possible direction, Braingeyser is still a great hand refill when you need it. Dirgur Focusmage even helps your Spellslinger strategy even before she casts her prepared spell; she reduces all your instant and sorcery spells' casting cost by 1, which notably includes her own prepared Braingeyser.

The hoop you need to jump through to prepare Dirgur Focusmage is casting a spell with mana value 5 or greater from your hand. The "from your hand" restriction is important as it reduces its deck flexibility somewhat: casting spells from exile won't trigger the Focusmage's prepared state. The real reason it has this drawback is to ensure that its own Braingeyser doesn't reprepare it, since you're technically copying the spell and casting the copy from exile when you cast it. Despite this, casting from exile as a deck theme still provides good synergy. With Passionate Archaeologist and your commander in play, every Braingeyser cast with help from the Focusmage is another X+2 worth of damage to each of your opponents.

Ember Island Production is a recent five-mana variation of Irenicus' Vile Duplication. You can make a nonlegendary token copy of your commander, a creature you control, or any creature an opponent controls. Clones have become better and better inclusions as creatures get more power crept, and sometimes having the same creature as one of your opponents can swing the advantage back in your favor.

Temporal Manipulation and other Time Warp-style cards are all five mana or greater, and I probably don't need to sell you on the value of taking an extra turn. You can cast Dirgur Focusmage on turn three, Temporal Manipulation on turn four, then cast her prepared Braingeyser on your extra turn for X=4, assuming you hit all your land drops (remember, her mana cost discount applies to her own Braingeyser). Not the worst sequence of turns to have, but it might quickly put a target on your back.

Cards to Consider

Suggested Commanders

Spellslinger decks that can use the cost reduction's benefit are key here. Notably, decks like Tellah, Great Sage check the mana spent on noncreature spells, so cost reduction can sometimes be a bad thing. There are more Izzet Spellslinger commanders than I could possibly list, so to make this short and sweet I'll just say the magic words, 'Vivi Ornitier,' and keep it moving.

But I'd be remiss to neglect to mention the original Prismari commander, Zaffai, Thunder Conductor. His magecraft triggers care specifically about mana value 5 or greater spells, and Dirgur Focusmage's Braingeyser can be tuned up to any size — all the way up to 10 or higher, which triggers all three levels of Zaffai's magecraft ability at once.

Stensian Sanguinist (Exsanguinate)

They found a way to put two Exsanguinates into everyone's black-inclusive decks. Thanks, Wizards!

Why run two Exsanguinates? Besides increasing the chance of drawing one, or needing to cast it twice (or more) to close out the game, the massive lifegain from one cast becomes very relevant when it turns into life loss you can immediately dish out. Enduring Tenacity, Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, and Sanguine Bond can turn a single X=10 Exsanguinate into a player elimination.

Stensian Sanguinist is a tricky one to trigger. When you attack, her trigger has you choose one of your attacking creatures, grant it deathtouch, and then you hope the defending player lets it through to arm the bomb in Sanguinist's back pocket. This is a good way to bully the table into blocking your 1/1 tokens with their more valuable creatures, lest they hand you the nuclear launch codes.

Alternatively, creatures with unblockable don't give your opponents the option to stop you. Tormented Soul is the go-to one-mana unblockable black creature. If you're in blue, Triton Shorestalker and Slither Blade are slight upgrades since they can block if needed.

Cards to Consider

Suggested Commanders

A dedicated Orzhov lifegain trigger deck like Sorin of House Markov will usually pack lots of ways to gain life and ways to bring the table's life totals down as yours rockets up. The planeswalker side of Sorin has a -1 ability that functions like a single trigger from Vito, Sanguine Bond, or Enduring Tenacity, except it counts the entire turn. Sorin seems like the perfect pick to use every drop of lifegain that Exsanguinate wrings from your opponent's life totals. You'll want lots of mana ramp to play big X-cost spells. Consider throwing in Debt to the Deathless for even bigger swings in life total.

Rakdos, Lord of Riots's cost reduction bonus gets obscenely powerful with spells that cause all of your opponents to lose life at once. Once the pain train gets on the tracks and you become The Problem in your pod, Exsanguinate can both help you stabilize your life total and trigger Rakdos's cost reduction. An Exsanguinate where X=4 gives you a 12 mana cost reduction for creature spells for the rest of your turn, which means you can start casting your Eldrazi titans for free.

Naktamun Lorespinner (Wheel of Fortune)

A Reserved List all-star, Wheel of Fortune sees play mostly in cEDH lists, but is also the namesake for the archetype known as Wheels. Wheels decks are built around causing everyone to draw new hands while either pinging them for each card drawn, or preventing them from drawing with combo cards like Narset, Parter of Veils and Notion Thief. Yet another archetype that loves Wheeling and dealing is red-inclusive Reanimator decks. They can use Wheel of Fortune to fill their graveyard with expensive creatures to bring them back for cheap, or all at once. The precon decklist it's found in, Lorehold Spirit, also benefits from filling the graveyard by exiling cards from it to generate tokens, but whether that constitutes an archetype of its own is debatable.

Wheel of Fortune is a risky draw spell mitigated by the fact you get to choose when to fire it off. If someone is holding onto half of their deck with a Reliquary Tower, you can actually reduce their hand size with a wheel spell. If you're not the player who's benefitting the most from Wheel of Fortune, make sure you're not kingmaking by refilling the hand of a player with an already-commanding boardstate.

Naktamun Lorespinner has to wait until your upkeep to become prepared, which makes him very similar to Magus of the Wheel who has the same casting cost and an ability that mirrors Wheel of Fortune's effect exactly. As an activated ability, normal counterspells won't work to stop the Magus' wheel effect, but it can stop Lorespinner's. One big advantage to Lorespinner is that you don't have to sacrifice him when you wheel and, with a perfect setup, you can wheel every turn.

Keeping your own hand empty is easier than forcing another player's hand to stay empty, so we'll focus on this method of preparing the Lorespinner. Most discard effects in red have you draw a card before or after, so going card negative isn't so easy. Malfegor and Sire of Insanity are two Rakdos Demons who will gladly help you rid yourself of that bothersome hand. Malfegor makes opponents sacrifice a creature for each card you discarded to his enters trigger, while Sire of Insanity has a symmetrical effect that makes every player discard their hand at the beginning of every end step. What a helpful guy!

Cards to Consider

Suggested Commanders

Realistically, emptying your hand completely isn't something you want to do unless your deck plays mainly out of its graveyard. Mardu Reanimator lists can do just that, bringing creatures back from the graveyard with flashback spells like Sevinne's Reclamation and Unburial Rites, or by using creatures with unearth like Priest of Fell Rites. Kaalia of the Vast works well here to drop either Malfegor or Sire of Insanity into play for free, then on the following upkeep your Naktamun Lorespinner will be prepared with his wheel, and you can refill your hand with Angels, Demons, and Dragons for Kaalia's future attack triggers.

When all else fails, run a commander that has a way to discard cards printed right in the text box. Hazoret the Fervent lends itself to playing cards from the graveyard. Red is full of good flashback options and other forms of graveyard value like Feldon of the Third Path, as well as Goblin Welder and similar Trash for Treasure effects to turn your early Mind Stone into an early Portal to Phyrexia. Seismic Assault is another great include to keep the burn going after refilling your hand, enhanced by damage doublers and triplers like Fiery Emancipation.

Yavimaya Bloomsage (Channel)

Unbans are exciting. Although Channel remains banned, Yavimaya Bloomsage is not, and she can cast Channel for you.

Channel's applications are vast. In the Quandrix Unlimited precon where Yavimaya Bloomsage comes from, there are a variety of X-cost spells enhanced by Channel's life-for-mana exchange, but one limitation in that deck is that there are no quick ways to bring your life total back up. A Channel-powered spell or ability should win you the game, but consider having a backup plan like The Endstone to bring your life total back to a baseline, or casting Exsanguinate to get a life cost rebate. Be wary of counterspells in general after Channel resolves and you go for your haymaker.

The condition for preparing the Bloomsage's Channel is the most specific of the cycle: at the beginning of your end step, you need to control a power 6 or greater creature that can be targeted (creatures with shroud need not apply). Her trigger will give the creature a +1/+1 counter, then if its power is 7 or greater, Yavimaya Bloomsage becomes prepared.

Her prepare condition is very susceptible to removal. Instant-speed removal can stifle this trigger and cause it to fizzle, making you wait another two turns to be able to cast her prepared Channel. If instant-speed removal wasn't available, your opponents can use sorcery-speed removal instead while you wait for your turn to come back around. To avoid this, consider running Vedalken Orrery to cast your game-winning Channel combo before your opponents can wrath your Bloomsage away. If you're in Simic colors, you have even more options with Leyline of Anticipation, Valley Floodcaller, and other flash-enabler cards.

Cards to Consider

Suggested Commanders

A deck that has a home for the most high-impact X spells is Zaxara, the Exemplary. Zaxara lists already run Hydras, X spells that draw cards, X spells that gain life (obligatory Exsanguinate mention), and X spells that ruin your opponents' day like Mass Manipulation. Triggering Yavimaya Bloomsage's prepared trigger will be easy when you cast a Voracious Hydra on turn five for X=3 and choose the "double the number of +1/+1 counters on Voracious Hydra" mode. Counters synergy cards like Branching Evolution enhance every part of your gameplan: Hydras you cast, as well as the free Hydra that Zaxara gives you whenever you cast an X spell, become twice as big, and Yavimaya Bloomsage's own end-step trigger will grant two counters to any creature instead of just one.

If you'd like to Channel-Fireball your way to a win like it's 1993, Rosheen, Roaring Prophet is a great commander for that gameplan. Red has direct damage X spells like Fireball, better ones like Crackle With Power, and card advantage spells like Zenith Festival. Green has potentially massive hydras like the ones found in the Quandrix Unlimited precon, and one of them, Lifeblood Hydra, can repay you some of the life investment. Damage doublers and triplers like Fiery Emancipation and City on Fire are highly recommended so that you don't need to pay more than around 20 life to get the job done. Don't bet the whole game on one single spell resolving.

Powering Down

I hope you enjoyed this closer look at the powerful prepared cycle of iconic spells from Secrets of Strixhaven Commander. Later during spoiler season, we will cover the rest of the five-color cycle of Alpha cards that Mark Rosewater teased. Assuming that Channel ticks off the green box, and Ancestral Recall and Lighting Bolt tick off the blue and red boxes, we still are waiting for a white prepare spell (Balance?) and a black prepare spell in the main set release.

Don't wait for release day — try these new cards out now on EDHLAB's Playtester feature, or in a multiplayer game via the Play Online page.

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