When it comes to pretty much any form of gaming, my instinctual preferences are for long-term planning goals and the ability to prepare for contingencies when my initial choices inevitably no longer work. It’s a strategic mindset that allows me to visualize the logical puzzle before me and piece together possibilities and restrictions in a very clockwork manner towards a worthwhile payoff down the line. Sacrificing short term accomplishments for a more valuable reward towards the end of the game is acceptable – assuming it can be pulled off. It’s the epitome of our Tactician archetype here at the CR, and it fits my ideal game habits like a tailored suit.
(In a game anyway. The real world, not so much…)
This isn’t to imply that I (or anyone) is incapable of playing a game differently; it’s just an indicator of where, if all things were equal, where my preferences push me. Indeed part of the fun of tabletop gaming is being able to try out different styles and behaviors and shake up normal habits.
Ergo, there really shouldn’t be any surprise why a game like Magic: the Gathering would have created a lifelong appeal, and more specifically, why multiplayer Magic quickly became my go-to format of choice. Standard Magic duels provide copious room for tactical maneuvering, with feints and counters. Ultimately, though, a typical two-player bout favors attrition over grand schemes and where aggression is rewarded over intrigue. By and large, Magic duels are battlefield skirmishes. I prefer operating on a larger stage.
Multiplayer Magic provides this. It extends the overall time to play, giving you opportunity for more inventive strategies and concept executions. In exchange, you must also contend with multiple opponents, the infusion of table politics, and the need to adapt to a continually changing board state. From my perspective, there is no better Magic experience than multiplayer because of those facts, not in spite of them. The advent of EDH / Commander introduced new structure and higher life totals into the idea, propelling its appeal to folks such as myself even further. Commander gives you ample time to tinker, to plot, and to experiment, as that is part of its overall purpose.
That being said, although I have individual habits and styles (as does any player), I’m also wholly appreciative of others who take markedly different approaches. Particularly those who have no problem sauntering on in and throwing a proverbial live grenade on the table just to see what happens. That kind of disruption is completely antithetical to my panache, but I also strangely find it quite a joy to see at times. Probably because it is so opposite.
That variety of tone, that change in vantage point when it comes to making decisions, strikes at the heart of the appeal to multiplayer Magic. There is always some new angle to consider, some new wrinkle a player will offer up through their deck choices. So many people can look at the same general problem – How Do I Win – and come up with wildly different solutions, often utilizing a range of cards that you yourself wouldn’t have previously considered.
This week’s card leans into that thought process. Because the initial thought to many would be that it would be a poor choice for Commander. In reality, it’s all a matter of that individual perspective and the expectations you want from it.
Today we have: Killing Wave
Name: Killing Wave
Edition: Avacyn Restored
Rarity: Rare
Focus: Board Wipe / Life Loss
Highlights: Commander (and Magic more broadly) is amazing with respect to deckbuilding creativity, variety of deck themes and ideas, and the general panoply of tactical and strategic possibilities that comes from using your uniquely assembled deck to face other people who are attempting to do the exact same thing. Yet for all of that freedom and flexibility, there are unquestionably certain card types that do tend to repeat more often than not.
Within each color’s core identity there exists certain mainstay notions which help establish what the color is all about. This ensures some philosophical continuity across sets, planes, and the tide of time itself. It’s helpful and comforting to know, for instance, that Blue’s heavy embrace of card draw was as true in 1996 as it is in 2021. The tradeoff to that, however, is that many of the cards that provide those functions ultimately tend to be variations on a theme. The flavor may change from one setting or meta to the next, but in the end there are only so many ways you can say “Draw X cards.”
In Black, one of those main tenants is creature removal, both in terms of specific targeted removal and massive board wipes for when you just want everything dead. Killing Wave is very much in the latter camp, albeit with a very specific exception clause…should someone wish to exercise it.
When it first came out, Killing Wave got a decent reception in the casual community writ large, and with good reason. Its adoption into the Commander format, though, has been a bit more mixed, but also with an understandable reason. Yet whether you find the card favorable or not all comes down to a matter of purpose.
Killing Wave states that for X+1 mana, every creature on the battlefield dies unless that creature’s controller pays X life. Because it is a forced sacrifice versus traditional destruction, Killing Wave devilishly gets around pesky survival traits like indestructibility – hardly something to scoff at. The fact that it also has a scalable cost can make it a worthwhile board wipe in situations where you may not have a ton of mana available but want to use it anyway…or conversely if you do have ample mana available and want to make the inherent lose-lose situation more one-sided.
What puts Killing Wave lower on the board wipe standings for some players it that by its very nature it offers the player an out. It essentially says that a player may keep specific creatures alive simply by paying a life tax. Even if if X were 5 (making it a run of the mill costing six-cost wipe), your opponent could keep creatures safe by paying 5 life apiece. In a typical 20-life game that can be a devastating choice. In Commander 5 life is a more manageable penalty to keep your best creature on the battlefield. That said, even in Commander spending 3-5 life per creature adds up fast and it’s unlikely someone will save everything, ensuring you an amenable way of taking out sizable armies of tokens or other creature hoards.
But will Killing Wave guarantee that the thing you absolutely want dead is dead? No. And to most players that is the intent and appeal of massive board wipes. What often gets lost in that maximal mindset, however, is that you’re still inflicting heavy losses on your opponents either way. If they pay 8 life to keep two creatures alive, or perhaps later in the game 8 life to keep a single creature alive, but sacrifice the rest, then the card still largely accomplishes its purpose. If you can take out 80% of the battlefield and inflict life loss as ransom at the same time, that’s still a very upside card. It just does it with a bit of variation.
Plus, who is to say you don’t use this card primarily as a life loss card rather than a board wipe? What if forcing players to lose 2 life per creature IS your primary goal, and them dying is merely a bonus? When you come at it from that perspective, it’s suddenly just as if not more appealing…
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.
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, I’m raffling off a pair of fun prizes to one lucky winner!
- A $25 store credit to TCGPlayer.com to let you get some all new (or old) cards for your own Commander decks.
- A copy of the latest webcomic book by Cardboard Crack – giving you something to do if you’re still not able to play Commander as often as you’d like these days.
All you have to do to enter is fill out the form below and tell us a little bit about some of your own Magic favorites:
The contest will run through the rest of November – which only has a few days left! – so don’t miss out on a chance to enter. Thanks again, and good luck!
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