On Monday, senior Magic: The Gathering designer Gavin Verhey shared a series of hints about cards in the upcoming Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate set, which releases on June 10. While we’ve already seen some Battle for Baldur’s Gate spoilers, previews officially begin on May 17 at 9am PT/ 5pm BST. Before that, Verhey had ten cryptic clues to share about the set’s contents, which he revealed yesterday in the latest episode of his Good Morning Magic YouTube show.
Verhey’s clues include some curious-sounding critters: a crab ooze horror, and a beastie that has five creature types. There’ll also be a card that Verhey says can, with some clever deckbuilding, give every creature in your deck the powerful keyword ability Undying. And Wizards has also thrown in a non-legendary card that Verhey says he’s been repeatedly asked for. Perhaps some kind of iconic D&D monster?
Though it will launch alongside four preconstructed commander decks, Battle for Baldur’s Gate is a Commander Legends set, designed to be drafted. It’s also a Dungeons and Dragons crossover set, doing for Commander what the 2021 set Adventures in the Forgotten Realms did for Standard. As such, we can expect it to be filled with tons of D&D references – lots of creatures, characters, spells, and magic items that fans of the world’s most popular RPG will be familiar with.
Here’s the full list of Gavin Verhey’s Battle for Baldur’s Gate hints:
- There’s a card that grants protection from creatures.
- There’s a creature with the type Crab Ooze Horror.
- There’s an enchantment that can, if you build your deck properly, give all your creatures Undying.
- There’s a green member of a cycle that started in a previous commander product.
- There’s a card with a Replicate cost that isn’t mana.
- There’s a card that has an ability which begins “Whenever a goaded attacking or blocking creature dies”.
- There is a card we didn’t do in Adventures in the Forgotten Realms that I’ve been asked for repeatedly – and no it’s not a legend!
- There is a creature with five creature types.
- There is a card that has an ability which begins, “Whenever a nonland permanent an opponent controls enters the battlefield”.
- A card named “Delayed Blast Fireball”.
Of course, this is the second set of hints fans have had about Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate. Head MTG designer Mark Rosewater shared his list of teasers last week. You can find the whole thing here, but here are a few choice extracts:
- A lord for Demons, Devils, Imps, and Tieflings.
- A 10/10 creature with flying and trample that you can cast for G.
- Legendary Creature – Cat Devil
- “You don’t lose the game for having 0 or less life.”
- “That artifact becomes a 0/0 Homunculus artifact creature with flying.”
- “Where X is the total mana value of Dragons you control.”
- A new legendary colourless artifact token named Volo’s Journal.
Got all that? Feeling thoroughly teased? You can probably work out the full details on around half of the set’s 361 cards with all that information, we expect. If not, you clearly need to do more swotting up.
If you already know how to build a commander deck, and are well-versed on the best MTG commanders, why not tackle the head-ache inducing concept of The Stack?
Source: Wargamer
