A key reason EDH took off during its nascent years was the ideology of being able to use cards – both new and old – that tended to get overlooked or underplayed in the much more dominant competitive dueling environments. Cards which were otherwise relegated to more laid-back kitchen table Magic. It allowed average players to dig through their collections and pull out long dormant cards to use again (or for the first time). What was once a card that was completely dismissed for being too weak or narrow could suddenly become a powerhouse in the right deck. New Commander-centric card designs have obfuscated that ideology somewhat with new convents to this play style, but it’s still very much a central tenant behind this form of Magic.

Of course, the opposite is also true. Indeed, one of my favorite traits to Commander is that some of the game’s most visible and valuable cards often don’t mean all that much in this format. Tarmogoyf? Dark Confidant? Force of Will? Sure, these are all fine cards capable of being used in EDH, but their efficacy and status are highly diminished in a setting that’s much longer, more unpredictable, and has you facing down several foes at once. Even the all-powerful Black Lotus, when you get down to it, wouldn’t be a make-or-break card since coming out swinging too fast can actually put you on the defensive against the rest of the table more than give you a leg up. Its ban has more to do with its Power Nine status and price than relative power in format.

Recently, I was reminded of a massively popular Red card that’s also part of this same list of hyper popular, hyper useful dueling list: Sneak Attack. By nearly every metric Sneak Attack is an amazing card. It’s super efficient, easily abusable, and your opponent never knows exactly what is going to come down the barrel of the gun at them. With the right creatures in hand, Sneak Attack can be a game-ending card in short order. I know; I’ve used it myself.

And yet Sneak Attack doesn’t necessarily back the same level of ferocity and fear in Commander. Largely because its so darn emblematic of the added challenges Red faces in a multiplayer environement.

Ask anyone who has ever regularly played a heavy Red deck in a multiplayer setting and they will tell you that there are two major hurdles that the color has to always contend with. The first has to do with overcoming its inherent color pie weaknesses. Every color in the game is naturally strong against some colors and card types while being weak against others. Red, for instance, is traditionally good at dealing with artifacts and small-to-medium sized creatures. On the other hand, it tends to struggle against enchantments and particularly large creatures. The lattermost has gotten some help from Commander-specific cards in recent years, as has the push of Red’s ‘rummaging’ mechanic to aid in card acceleration, but like any color it isn’t all-powerful.

Which ties directly into the second area where Red needs to overcome the structural disadvantages it faces in multiplayer. Red is most adept at tackling a single opponent quickly. Its image is, quite literally, one of explosiveness and expediency. When it comes to speed and aggressiveness, Red is the go-to color. Which means that the best method at overcoming its aforementioned weaknesses is to act swiftly and decisively at simply defeating your opposition before they can become too entrenched or set up their own combo moves. However, Red’s explosiveness is entirely dependent on an ample supply of ammunition. With multiple opponents, a slower overall format pacing, and much higher life totals to whittle down, Commander makes it that much harder for the color to lean into its strengths. Simply put, in Commander it’s fairly easy for Red to run out of gas if you’re not careful.

Case in point: Sneak Attack and its more recently, more balanced brethren. These cards let you drop a creature out for a quick attack, but the creature doesn’t survive more than a single turn. Against 3 or 4 other players that’s simply not a sustainable approach.

However, if you’re one intent on lobbing creatures at people (and why not?), luckily there exists other options that are similar in nature and far, far, far cheaper to obtain that are actually capable of doing an even better job than their famous siblings. Cards such as this week’s pick.

Today we have: Flameshadow Conjuring

Name: Flameshadow Conjuring

Edition: Magic Origins

Rarity: Rare

Focus: Creature Copying

Highlights: Magic Origins continues to be a particularly memorable and standout core set. It shouldn’t come as s surprise, really, as Origins in many ways was supposed to be a sendoff of sorts to the entire idea of core sets. It was going to be the final core set the game did, so it makes sense that they decided to do it with some style. Sure, they changed their minds a few years later and brought core sets back again (briefly, it would seem), but that doesn’t detract from some particularly fun and entertaining cards Origins put forth at the time. You know, in addition to the flipwalkers. Flameshadow Conjuring is one such card.

Though it may not be as devastatingly fast and brutal at flinging creatures from your hand at your opponent’s face as Sneak Attack, from the vantage of Commander Flameshadow Conjuring may be even more of a dangerous weapon for one simple reason: it’s not the original creature that’s being sent on a suicide mission across the battlefield.

For four mana, Flameshadow Conjuring is an enchantment that sets up a particularly valuable trigger for whenever a nontoken creature enters the battlefield under your control. Yes, sadly this generally means that you’re probably hard casting your creature (the horror!), but Flameshadow offers up decent inventive for paying just a single extra mana in the process. Similar to a few cards that grant the newly birthed creature Haste for one Red mana, this card takes a slightly different (and far more advantageous) approach. Here, it states that when you have a creature card hit the battlefield, by paying one extra mana you gain a copy of that card with Haste for the turn. This allows you to do what Red adores – throwing their creatures at the enemy as quickly as possible – while at the same time not needing to endanger the actual creature itself. The enchantment-based trigger also ensures that the effect can be used more than once a turn and isn’t easily removed (compared to, say, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker).

Suddenly there’s a purpose to quick-copying smaller creatures for some possible small damage against an undefended opponent. Using it on larger, more imposing creatures gives you the opportunity to attack without concern for its safety immediately after sinking a bunch of mana into it. Having a token copy allows you to not feel bad if the creature dies or is otherwise dispatched without incident. The one extra mana allows for a completely ephemeral and expendable creature while still giving the real version some longevity, be it on a future attack or used for defensive purposes.

Allowing a creature to attack with wild abandon while also keeping it safely alive to fight another day? For one mana? That’s win-win over its more famous predecessor. In Commander, Red can use any advantages for playing the long game. Doubly so when you’re also saving money in the process.

Keep an eye out for us to be regularly featuring other more accessible-but-worth-it Commander cards going forward. In the meantime, we’ll keep the light on for you.

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