I am a longstanding advocate of Wizards experimenting with new mechanical in-game concepts. On the one hand, it’s a necessary imperative with a game of Magic’s nature: it must continually innovate or it will die. That is the inherent flaw of any collectible project, and doubly so with CCGs specifically. To stop swimming in the lake of new ideas invites stagnation and the eventual demise of its fanbase – though Magic at this point has more than enough card variety that it could survive being decommissioned for many years providing countless hours of gaming goodness to those still wanting to play. Much of that is thanks to ceaseless tinkering over more than a 25 year lifespan.
On the other hand, repeatedly coming up with new ideas inevitably leads to complexity creep – which is saying something given the game in question. The basics to Magic: the Gathering are relatively straightforward, but once you start digging into the underlying rules framework, explore the nuances of gameplay timing, and encounter even just a few of the game’s countless possible corner case card interactions, it quickly becomes evident that to say Magic can be complicated is an understatement. To combat that, therefore, Wizards tries to slow-walk their more creative ideas and space them out in a way such that it doesn’t overload the system (or its player base), opting instead to rely heavily – sometimes too heavily – on minor iterative changes over sweeping ones.
Just browse through the last 5 years of sets and see how many touted set mechanics are merely minor variations of +1/+1 counter manipulation, for instance, and you’ll get a good handle on what that entails.
Ergo, when something truly different comes along it’s only natural that it gets quite a bit of attention. Some of them become massive hits across the Magic spectrum while some are famously mixed, finding niche fandoms with some players and passed off as too gimmicky or detracting to be worth the effort in others. This can range from ideas like the Planechase planes or Archenemy decks on the casual side, to the introduction of the planeswalker and dual-sided cards, to things like Innistrad’s Meld mechanic or Ikoria’s Mutate mechanic. Forsaken Realms’ inclusion of dungeons as part of sort of gameplay side-quest hoop jumping is probably the most recent example.
Yet easily one of the most disruptive introductions in quite some time came with the introduction of Ikoria’s Ten Companions. A set of 10 dual-colored creatures with varying statistics, costs, and abilities, each Companion offered the same tantalizing hook: if you built your deck a certain way you’d be able to summon a card from outside the game once and cast it. The deck building demands ranged wildly in terms of the difficulty and reward, such as only having cards of certain types or mana costs. The intent was to be a creative way to tie into Ikoria’s world of creature bonding and push an avenue of mechanically caring about deck construction in a way that’s rarely done via cards. Outwardly, it was a fun and harmless-seeming concept, and there were high expectations it would be an enjoyable facet for players to experiment with.
Except that’s not at all how it went.
First, the game had to immediately deal with the fallout of the adorable otter, Lutri, the Spellchaser. Lutri’s deck building requirement was to have a deck where every nonland card is singleton – no duplicates. In other words, a Commander deck. What initially seems like a heavy restriction for normal Magic construction and a boon for casual players fit perfectly into the rules for Commander. Which essentially meant that there would never be a reason every Blue / Red Commander deck wouldn’t include Lutri as a free 101st card. It was all upside, and far too easy. This prompted the EDH Rules Committee to ban Lutri before the card was even released. Yorion, Sky Nomad, while still legal in EDH, was also dead on arrival since it wasn’t possible to accomplish its deck build in the format.
Then came Lurrus of the Dream-Den, which was banned in both Legacy and Vintage shortly after the set was in circulation. This was especially notable given how rare bans are done in Vintage. But Lurrus’s combination of easy to accomplish deck build requirements in that setting and the card recursion rewards provided was simply too potent to ignore. Likewise, Zirda, the Dawnwaker was banned in Legacy mostly due to combo abuse with a few specific cards (i.e. Grim Monolith).
A month after that Wizards then took the even more drastic step and issued functional errata – something it famously loathes to do in the modern Magic era. Instead of being cast from outside the game, Companions now can be summoned into your hand for 3 mana and then cast normally. This makes them more costly to cast and immediately tempered their appeal to those looking to use them for competitive ends. It was a wild debut, and although it’s only been about 18 months since their release, talk of them even among casual players has cratered.
Wizards meant well with Companions. But as with so many things, good intentions only mean so much once unleashed upon the world.
Still, there are two truths that got overlooked in the dustup of it all. One is that even with the rules changes, using Companions outside of competitive settings can still be quite fun – either as a way to challenge your deck construction skills or simply because it gives you a unique strategic guidepost to operate from. Second, and more importantly here is that you don’t need to even care about the Companion part of the card for it to be useful. While their secondary effects symbiotically reward the efforts of the first, many Companions are plenty decent enough to, know, actually go in the deck from the start.
And it’s that defense which brings us here today. Because this week’s card can indeed be quite efficacious in Commander – as long as you don’t do anything too abusive with it.
Today we have: Zirda, the Dawnwaker
Name: Zirda, the Dawnwaker
Edition: Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths
Rarity: Rare
Focus: Cost Reduction / Board Control
Highlights: Zirda found its way to this space because seems like a card that could be worthy of some redemption after its initial tourney ban. After all, some tournament cards are famously ill-suited for Commander, and vice versa. The aforementioned Lurrus is a phenomenal example of this: devastating in the formats it’s now banned in but pretty mild from an EDH perspective. Zirda, on the other hand, does have the potential to go either way. It’s all a matter of how you wish to leverage it.
For three mana, Zirda is a 3/3 creature with three different abilities, which already makes it a pretty good return on your mana investment. The first is its famous Companion ability – now with the modified usage rules. Zirda’s deck build requirement states that every permanent in your deck must have an activated ability. (As a reminder, basic lands have an intrinsic activated ability.) This poses an interesting and appealing lure for someone if they wished to build an entire Commander deck around the idea. It’s certainly doable, even in the era of creature design that seems to favor battlefield triggers over activated abilities. With plenty of cards options out there nowadays, it’s certainly not the hardest deck idea to pull off. Should you do so, however, you would be granted the ability to summon the card into your hand for 3 mana at some point in the game. If nothing else, it would be a nice feather in the cap being able to bring in an outside card given that normal “wish” style cards do not work in EDH.
However, Zirda is perfectly serviceable if you don’t wish that restriction upon yourself, thanks to its remaining abilities.
Its second one is a passive ability which states that all your non-mana activated abilities cost up to 2 mana less to activate (without going to zero). This puts Zirda squarely in the family of some famous similar cost reduction cards like Heartstone, Power Artifact, and Training Grounds. While each of those cards bring stories of their own to the table, Zirda is unique in that it does this for all your permanent types, not just creatures or artifacts. This opens the door wide to a plethora of fun Commander-friendly cards with activated abilities that would love to be activated at a much cheaper rate. In turn, it gives you ample opportunity to create decent table responses, card advantage, and even some board control. Zirda’s effect by itself doesn’t do much. But if paired correctly it can take decent card effects and make them – and you by extension – down right criminally efficient.
Just be mindful that going full-on abusive with this combo-making potential can generate a pretty big target on it, you, or both.
Finally, Zirda has a handy activated ability all its own. This one states that for one mana and tapping, target creature can’t block this turn. As with any repetitive combat manipulation effects, being able to prevent a creature from blocking can bring with it some helpful control. This naturally can be used when you go on the attack to prevent someone from blocking with a particular large or dangerous creature, giving you a window to strike. Alternatively, you can leverage table politics and help other players smack each other, all depending on what is best for you in the circumstances.
In all, Zirda and most of the Companions may not have had the summer of fun that was originally envisioned for them (the whole worldwide pandemic thing aside), but that shouldn’t stop you from considering adding one into – or alongside – a Commander deck in the future. This fire fox in particular is already primed for shenanigans, setting itself up as useful addition…whether it’s as number 100 or 101.
350th Showcase Celebration!
In honor of recently hitting 350 Showcase articles, and as a way of offering my own thanks to you all after all this time, over the course of November people were able to enter for a chance at the newest webcomic book written by Cardboard Crack and a $25 store credit to TCGPlayer.com. Well, the tallies are in and I’m happy to report that Ethan H. of PA is our winner. Congrats! And see you at 400! I’m raffling off a pair of fun prizes to one lucky winner!
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