With the first of Magic: The Gathering’s Aetherdrift spoilers, we’ve seen both the face and alternate commanders for the two EDH decks releasing with this set. One is a zombies deck focused on the plane of Amonkhet, while the other – based on Avishkar – is centered around energy and artifacts.
First we’ll look at the MTG Commander precon deck Eternal Might. Led by Temet, Naktamun’s Will, this deck is all about building and buffing an army of zombies. The commander for this deck has an interesting ability, letting you draw and discard each time you attack, and giving your zombies +1/+1 whenever you draw a card.
With drawing for turn and Naktamun’s built-in card draw, that’s a +2/+2 buff to all your attacking zombies, before you’ve even done any work.
During a press briefing, designer Max McCall told Wargamer that Eternal Might is about “creating lots of zombies, accruing slow advantages, and then having one big turn where – like you see in horror movies – your zombies rise up and kill everybody”.
While not making zombies for you, Naktamun certainly enables this playstyle. All it’ll take is a wide board and one big blue card draw spell to spell doom for the entire table.
The alternate MTG commander Hashaton, meanwhile, plays more into the discard side of Temmet’s effect. This Scarab God wannabe lets you pay three mana when you discard a creature to create a 4/4 token copy of it. How about cheating out a Rot Hulk?
Moving on to Living Energy, we find a Temur energy deck that’s stompier than the other two energy precons we’ve had so far. It’s still doing energy things though, with Saheeli, Radiant Creator accruing this resource whenever you cast an artifact or energy spell.
What she does with that energy is pretty interesting, though. She can create a token copy of a permanent that’s a 5/5 artifact creature, then swing it at the opponent right away. It doesn’t get to stick around, so you may as well chuck it in. I’m trying to figure out what the best thing to copy might be. You have kind of the opposite motivation to something like Sydri, where you want mana-intensive artifacts to animate.
Vehicles are obviously a pretty good fit for this Commander, and your backup – Pia Nalaar, Chief Mechanic – makes that theme even more explicit. She can make you a flying vehicle of any size: limited only by the amount of energy you can pay.
It feels like we’ve had a lot of energy precons, with two in the past couple of years. In fairness, though, at the beginning of 2023 there were literally zero energy commanders, so there was certainly a gulf to fill.
For more Magic news, check out the two planeswalkers revealed for this set. And don’t miss our full Aetherdrift guide or the MTG release schedule.
Source: Wargamer
