Any time a given population has an influx of new people, it’s inevitable an information exchange will occur. Whether it’s moving to a new town or joining the local knitting club, the more new individuals interact within an existing community, the more likely it is you’ll see both groups take something from one another. For newcomers, joining a new community creates an opportunity to learn about the values and interests of those already there. This can range anywhere from learning why a town approaches expanding services the way it does, to understanding the general atmosphere of a new company you’ve come to work at, to gaining a deeper understanding of the common focus of the group.

In Magic context, this correlates to new players taking up the game and engaging with the Magic zeitgeist writ large. Whether it’s various discussions about new sets, gaining experience with playing, or general conversation about what makes it so appealing, there are numerous avenues in which neophytes integrate into the broader Magic ecosystem. But it also applies to the myriad subcommunities within, allowing people to drill down and find which likeminded players share their particular interests most. This could be, for instance, anything from being invested in the lore to really getting into the high-level decisions around competitive tournament play. By and large, however, the largest shifts in recent years has been the massive influx of people into Commander and experiencing what is, clearly, the most appealing iteration of Magic these days.

Yet as the very nature of an exchange implies, the influx of new voices to a group is generally not a one-way affair. New people bring with them new viewpoints and new opportunities that can serve to improve the health and vigor of the group in return. This in turn causes the existing system to adapt to those contributions. Often this can be for the better, but that’s not guaranteed. Granted it’s also highly subjective as to what constitutes positive versus negative changes, with some percentage of the group always resistant to any change, while others are more than happy to disrupt the status quo. Humans are complicated like that.

You see this within the Commander sphere too. Newcomers to Magic, for instance, often profess they didn’t realize or understand Commander isn’t controlled by Wizards of the Coast at all. Why would they? It is their game and they’re pumping out unique product for it every few months at this point. Likewise, existing Magic players who have broadened their gameplay from other format styles into Commander bring with them their own assumptions and preconceptions on how a game of Magic should be played – and the type of cards which should be used. One byproduct of this is an entirely new subset of EDH (cEDH) that caters to speedier, more aggressive, and more optimized gameplay – which to some runs contrary to the entire spirit of the format’s intent. But even irrespective of that slice of the format’s adherents, it’s been objectively noted several times over that thanks to influences such as theirs, alongside the slate of Commander-friendly or Commander-specific cards being printed, the format is getting faster and there is more homogeny with which cards get used.

There is little I can say with respect to the power level or speed of your own Commander group other than that it’s something to be handled on a local level. There is no centralized way to enforce how thousands of people play a casual format and too much variance nowadays with respect to the spirt of the format (even among its current stewards) to have a unified and easy to apply model that everyone would subscribe too. This is a side effect of its success.

What I can continue to vent about, though, is the notion of having too many decks feeling the same. It’s an understandable tendency. There is a natural pull to use the same cards to achieve the same outcomes as often as possible, be it to reach a certain power level or to create as close to a repetitive set of behaviors with your deck each playthrough. The problem is that the format’s founding philosophy revolves in part around being able to use cards that won’t get played elsewhere or those that have sat unused for the last decade. To limit oneself to the same small pool of relatively new cards every time for the purposes of optimization just seems short-sighted from an experiential perspective.

This tendency certainly ramped up in recent years alongside the rise in format popularity, the proliferation of Netdecking sites, and the plethora of Commander precon decks out there nowadays. But I’ve been bemoaning overreliance on “staple” cards since this series’ very beginning…almost a decade ago. And I will continue to do so until I turn blue.

Well, bluer anyway.

As one example (and far from even the worst offender), take something as utilitarian as a Fleshbag Marauder. It’s a pretty straightforward sacrifice card without much pomp and circumstance, entering the battlefield only to (almost always) immediately die and take other creatures with it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the Marauder. But it’s also now been in 3 different Commander products, giving it outsized odds to appear in decks compared to nearly every other similarly costed forced-sacrifice cards Black has to offer that aren’t full board wipes. There are nearly a dozen to choose from! Let’s see more of them!

So in that spirit, let’s do that with this week’s pick.

Today we have: Vona’s Hunger

Name: Vona’s Hunger

Edition: Rivals of Ixalan

Rarity: Rare

Focus: Creature Destruction

Highlights: Just as Wizards likes to routinely remind its players that not every card printed is intended for the same audience, format, or play style, so too is that the case among its ever-growing litany of set mechanics. Some of them are designed very much to be draft friendly. Others, particularly among supplemental sets, are designed expressly for Eternal format such as Legacy or Commander. While R&D undoubtedly likes to insist that most of their keyworded mechanics can function in nearly any format of your choosing, in practice many such cards tend to be weaker or even ineffectual outside of their intended avenue of Magic gameplay.

However, occasionally we are pleasantly privileged to witness the opposite: a game mechanic that actually becomes more auspicious to use outside of its original parameters. Generally this happens when a mechanic has a limitation or restriction of some kind that either gets removed or easier to overcome as the scope of its use changes. One of the best examples within the last few years is Ixalan’s Ascend mechanic.

Ascend, introduced in (and so far exclusively to) Rivals of Ixalan, represented the story of different factions racing to the heart of the lost city of Orazca in their respective frenzied quests to claim its prize of the The Immortal Sun. Ascend reflects that growing power and influence via trying to obtain the “city’s blessing” – i.e. having 10 permanents on the battlefield. Once gained, you maintain that blessing for the rest of the game. Its cards then provide suped-up card effects should you have that status.

Effectively, it’s sort of a battlefield version of Threshold.

In your typical duels, whether in Limited, Constructed, or even casual, 10 permanents isn’t always guaranteed to happen, giving such cards an intended push and pull of immediate versus late game usage. In slower formats, namely within multiplayer, the odds of having 10 permanents on the battlefield while still being in the thick of the game is far more likely.

With something like Commander, it’s almost guaranteed to happen for most people within the first 5-7 rounds. And its players can reap the rewards of that reality if they so choose with cards like Vona’s Hunger.

At the base level, Vona’s Hunger is a three mana Instant which forces opponents to sacrifice creatures. This sort of speedy spot sacrifice card has long been part of Black’s arsenal of responses, going all the way back to Tempest’s famous Diabolic Edict. Yet even without any power-ups, Vona’s Hunger establishes itself as a useful multiplayer card as it’s already an improvement over its contemporaries. Unlike the Edict or similar cards such as Foul-Tongue Invocation or To the Slaughter, Vona’s Hunger forces every opponent to sacrifice a creature – not just a specific player. This can be especially handy at times when opponents may only be sitting on a handful of creatures (such as their Commander), or if they have creatures which are hard to target or kill due to protections of some kind. While you aren’t able to specify which creature an opponent will sacrifice, there are plenty of opportunities throughout an EDH game where even taking out just one of a handful of an opponent’s prized creatures will be painful for them – and therefore advantageous to you.

Of course, that’s if you don’t have the city’s blessing. If you do, the calculus changes considerably.

Assuming you would qualify for the city’s blessing (which, again, happens more often than not), the effect of Vona’s Hunger leaps from each opponent sacrificing a single creature to half their creatures. Half! If they have at least 3 creatures, it immediately becomes the best iteration of such cards. The usefulness largely speaks for itself. Through merely playing Commander as a format, Vona’s Hunger essentially becomes a mini Pox-like board wipe, except it can be done at practically any point – such as in response to a combo spell or combat – and it’s more affordable to acquire.

All for just three mana.

Let’s see Fleshbag Marauder do that.

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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