Hidden Gems

[Slyvester12]

I'd say Leyline of Abundance is still pretty underrated. Tons of decks want to use mana dorks, and Leyline is potentially a free G tacked onto every dork activation. The fact that it can also be used as a mana sink to pump later in the game is a nice bonus, too. EDHrec says it's only in 1% of all decks on the site, but I feel that should be higher.

Also, Thousand-Year Elixir. While it doesn't ACTUALLY give haste, it does for everything other than attacking. The fact that it's an artifact and can work as another haste enabler can really help a lot of decks. Have Cryptolith Rite? Every creature you play basically works as a Command Tower the first turn it's out. Desperately need something like Hermit Druid or your commander (looking at you, Mayael the Anima) to go off, but you know you'll never untap with it? The Elixir's got your back. On top of everything else, it gives you an untap once per turn, so mana dorks make more mana and important effects can go off twice on the first turn they're played. EDHrec has this card at 3%, but I think that should be higher given how many decks care about tap effects on creatures.

[Aetherium Slinky]

Flowstone Slide. This expensive spell is two things for a fatties deck: a creature pump and a board wipe. Cannot recommend enough, has proven to be worth its mana cost. (I play Rosheen Meanderer so it's a little easier to cast but I suspect any Gruul deck wouldn't have trouble casting it anyway.)

[Spinsane]

Words of Wilding is insane in a Korvold, Fae-Cursed King deck and yet EDHRec says it appears in only 1.26% of his decks. The card basically turns any mana-generating sac outlet (Thermopod, Ashnod’s Altar, Phyrexian Altar) into infinite +1/+1 counters on Korvold (Ashnod's also turn into infinite colorless mana). My usual playgroup no longer lets it land or stay for long...

[Akira Foxmind]

I started to use the triple-color clan-charms like Abzan Charm a lot in my (budged-) modern decks. They are moneywise cheap but nontheless flexible as hell.

My favorite one is Sultai Charm. Its main reason is to remove creatures, but handles artifacts and entchantments too. And if there are no targets it just draws/loots some cards. So its never a dead card, but may save some slots in a Sideboard.
Another good example is Jund Charm, which is gy-hate, small massremoval and pump on one card.


I like this flexibility on those cards a lot, especially in formats with 60-card-decks (in commander/EDH they might be not that good though).
Not to mention that everything may happen on instant-speed.

[WWolfe]

Thought this deserved some more discussion since it's been a while since we talked in it.

To restart the conversation I'll go with Gaea's Bounty. It's relatively cheap (a quarter or less) and can search for duals, shocks, or triomes.

ETA- would be nice if it gave you an extra land drop but the ability to mana fix on your normal land drops is nice.

[CleanBelwas]

One card I've been jamming a lot recently and have fallen in love with is wing shards.

You would be amazed at how often people dump their hand pre combat and then swing.

It's devastating against tribal builds who want to play all their lord effects pre-combat.

Also, The owl on the art is delightful.

It's literally a card that will change peoples habits. My playgroup now plays around it. They're learning to play things second main unless there is a specific benefit. They don't want to get got by the owl.

[WizardSpartan]

I love threads like this, as my favorite thing in Commander is building & refining deck and the satisfaction of finding underplayed cards that work beautifully in my decks.

Ravos, Soultender (2%) feels so good even outside of the Command Zone. While he is pretty expensive to cast, he has great abilities. In flier-based decks, he adds to the boardstate, pumps the team, and gives some resilience to removal; in token-based decks, the anthem & recursion is useful; and in recursion-based decks, yet again his 3rd ability works beautifully. I run him in Alesha because he makes her more formidable in combat, can easily be cheated out by Alesha to circumvent his high mana cost (has flying so he doesn't get killed in combat), and provides extra free recursion.

Mistcaller (1%) is probably the highest on my list. So. Many. Decks. Get hosed by this. Here's a small list of stuff this hits:

• Graveyard recursion. Unless you are actually casting the card from the graveyard, this card says no. Ex. Animate Dead, Reanimate, Dread Return, Victimize, and more.
• Creatures that are tutored into play. Ex. Chord of Calling, Finale of Devastation, Green Sun's Zenith, Natural Order, Eldritch Evolution, etc
• Cheating creatures into play from hand. Ex. Braids, Conjurer Adept, Hypergenesis.

It is specifically good in Merfolk decks (obvi), but is also really good in Muldrotha, the Gravetide because she actually casts her spells from the graveyard and can sac and replay it multiple times.

Cursecatcher (1%) is hilarious when people forget about it. Many a time I have played it T1-2 and later in the game it's still sitting there, ignored by my opponents. One of them will either tap out for an expensive, bomby spell (I've countered an Expropriate before ) or will just leave a couple of mana up for an emergency removal spell and Cursecatcher will, well, catch the curse.

Gift of Doom (1%) has overperformed in both of my black-based reanimator decks. Even if my opponents know about it, it's basically impossible to deal with while feeling good.
If they counter it, I have successfully baited out a counter in exchange for a protection piece designed to do just what it did.
If they try to kill it while it's a creature, I can flip it in response to fizzle the removal spell.
If they try to kill another creature while it's a morph, I can flip it to (likely) fizzle the removal spell.
If its attached to a creature, it makes the creature much more difficult to remove & also makes it painful to attack into/block its creature.
If its attached to a creature and they remove it (not the creature) then it has done its job.

It gets even better when you are playing with new people, too.

Blood Pet (1%) is crazy good in Meren in particular (shoutout to CleanBelwas, who suggested it to me) but is basically a 0 mana controllable LTB trigger, which a lot of decks love. It also can give you a little mana boost (ex. cast it T1 to be able to play a 3 drop on T2) and is just an awesome little work horse of a card that's great in any graveyard-based deck that wants to smooth out its curve.

Kenrith's Transformation (3%) seems bad, but it's a lot better than people give it credit. Creature removal is almost nonexistent in green, and it does a solid job of it, even ignoring the card draw stapled to it. Once you include the card you get, it becomes really good in my eyes. Removal that immediately replace itself is a powerful thing. Even if someone removes it to get their creature back down the line, you aren't down anything. While it is more of a temporary answer to creatures, as it can easily be removed, it can give the rest of the table a turn or two of breathing room, which could be long enough for them to find their Swords to Plowshares & Assassin's Trophies to finish the creature altogether.

[CleanBelwas]

Blood Pet (1%) is crazy good in Meren in particular (shoutout to CleanBelwas, who suggested it to me) but is basically a 0 mana controllable LTB trigger, which a lot of decks love. It also can give you a little mana boost (ex. cast it T1 to be able to play a 3 drop on T2) and is just an awesome little work horse of a card that's great in any graveyard-based deck that wants to smooth out its curve.

This warms my mono black soul. I LOVE Blood Pet. Such an innocuous little card but actually does so much work if your deck cares about sacrifice at all.

I've even killed people with it. Blood Pet, Mortuary and anything that draws a card when a creature dies like Grim Haruspex. Sac the pet to add a black, stack the triggers so blood pet goes back on top before you draw, draw blood pet, recast it for the black it made. Infinite storm, infinite death triggers, infinite cards drawn if that's your thing (looking at you Psychosis Crawler). And all with this dumb little frog. Love it.

[Aetherium Slinky]

Vedalken Aethermage - a brilliant card in many ways. Regular casting is stupid but the things its cycling ability does are really flexible. It hits both Thassa's Oracle and Laboratory Maniac. It's instant speed, costs pennies, can't be countered (only Stifle hits it), is in monoblue that generally lacks creature tutors and finds you any wizard you can think of in addition to the two best ones I mentioned. Get Azami, Lady of Scrolls to draw more, find Archaeomancer to pick up your favourite spell, do the Venser, Shaper Savant dance to bounce a spell or a combo piece. It just does stuff. In a pinch it is and extra Wizard if you really need that.

[WizardSpartan]

I've even killed people with it. Blood Pet, Mortuary and anything that draws a card when a creature dies like Grim Haruspex. Sac the pet to add a black, stack the triggers so blood pet goes back on top before you draw, draw blood pet, recast it for the black it made. Infinite storm, infinite death triggers, infinite cards drawn if that's your thing (looking at you Psychosis Crawler). And all with this dumb little frog. Love it.

Pog that combo is ridiculously cool! I now hope for a black+ commander in Commander Legends that has a Grim Haruspex-type effect attached to it. That would be super cool and I would be able to include this combo, easy. Fingers crossed.

[WWolfe]

Mortuary is a nice little card in it's own right. I use to run a combo with it, Altar of Dementia, and Narcomoeba in my Sidisi, Brood Tyrant deck but ended up taking it out because Narcomoeba just didn't do all that much on its own.

[stuffnsuch]

Here's what I came up with looking for the best card in each of my EDh decks that I haven't seen played by anyone else:

Power Conduit: I've used him with Arixmethis, Slumbering Isle to get him down two counters the turn I play him, and then another at the beginning of the following turn.  I've used it with Decree of Silence to counter an extra spell.  Devoted Druid can tap for 3 every turn.  Any time you find yourself needing counters removed, it's surprisingly good.

Shadow Rift: Making a creature unblockable for 1 mana is good, having it replace itself is even better, but having the flexibility to also make a creature unable to block instead is what really makes this card undervalued.

Instill Energy: I don't know why this is so underplayed.  Haste in green is nice, but the ability to untap each turn is awesome.  Your mana dorks tap for double, basically paying for the spell the turn you cast it.  If you've got a big boy that you want to attack with but need to hold up as a blocker, here's psuedo-vigilance.  It's versatile and cheap.

Spectral Searchlight:  This is okay-at-best ramp, but it's a great tool for politicking if you're into that.  How many times has another player had an answer to a threat, but they didn't have the mana to play it.  If you have something scary staring you down with no way to stop it, it's super easy to say, I'll give a mana of any color to anyone that can remove this threat before it hits me.  The rest of the table will have the deal with the threat soon enough, so they're usually happy to step in if you help with the cost.

Soul Foundry:  This can really fill a lot of roles.  From making an essentially free Llanowar Elves every turn (since the one you made last turn pays for this turns activation), to finally getting triggers from Charmed Stray's ETB, there are endless ways to make this card interesting.

Dimir House Guard: Free sac outlet and a tutor.  Why is this not played more?

Awe Strike:  One mana to turn any instance of damage into life gain.  This can really wreck players.  Aetherflux Reservior?  I'll let you pay 50 life to have me gain 50, that seems fair.  Going all in for a one shot kill with commander damage?  I'll be happy to gain 21 life.  Heartless Hidetsugu?  Yeah, I'll gain half my life total instead, hope that's okay.

Sisters of the Flame: A 2/2 mana dork for 3 isn't that exciting, unless you're in red.  Red desperately needs ramp, and it loves getting a lot of little creatures on the board anyways.  (She's played in less than 100 decks on EDHrec?)

Skybind: This is a fabulous way to recur ETB's and can even be used before a board wipe to protect a key creature or, with an enchantment with flash, can save a permanent any time.  White loves enchantments and ETBs, so this would be a great fit in so many decks.

Rishadan Footpad:  Having everyone sac a creature is good, putting it on a recurrable body is great.  Yes, they can pay their way out of it and they choose the creature, but with a little patience or planning, that shouldn't matter.

Inviolability: Most card like this prevent all damage that would be dealt by and dealt to enchanted creature, or just deals with combat damage, but this just prevents all damage dealt to the creature.  This has plenty of ways to abuse.  Maybe you have an attack trigger that doesn't matter if you get through or not, maybe you have a creature with infect, but it will die the first time it tries to swing in, maybe you have a Wall of Glare or the like and just want to block everything, or maybe you're about to play Blasphemous Act.  This is gold in every case.  Even if you just put it on your biggest creature and swing every turn, that's still quite good.

Thundering Djinn:  There are lots of ways (especially in blue) to draw 10, 15, 20 cards in a turn.  This turns that card draw into damage when it attacks.  Even if it doesn't survive, it still gets that damage in, so it can always turn a bunch of draws into damage, but it does have evasion, so it will often get through as well.  There are 17,000 decks on EDHrec playing Psychosis Crawler, and yet less than 300 running this guy.  Obviously, this isn't as good, it only counts card draw on your turn before combat and it only hits one target instead of each opponent, but it can also direct that damage at a creature or planewalker, so it does have a little versatility that the crawler doesn't.

Well, there you go, a hidden gem from each of my decks.  Not many of these should be auto-includes for any color or archetype, but they're all fairly cheap and off the beaten path options that can be really great in the right build.

Let me know if you end up using any of these guys.

[WWolfe]

Awe Strike:  One mana to turn any instance of damage into life gain.  This can really wreck players.  Aetherflux Reservior?  I'll let you pay 50 life to have me gain 50, that seems fair.  Going all in for a one shot kill with commander damage?  I'll be happy to gain 21 life.  Heartless Hidetsugu?  Yeah, I'll gain half my life total instead, hope that's okay.

Awe Strike doesn't work on Aetherflux Reservoir. It only prevents damage from creatures so it wouldn't prevent the damage nor would you gain the life from it.


Edit- fix spelling

[Morganator 2.0]

Reviving this for a quick minute to talk about Flumph. Is it just me or is this an underrated draw spell? First it has flying and high toughness, so it deters small attacks and chip damage. More importantly, it draws you cards when you do get attacked, and you can use this as a political tool. You can convince an opponent to attack you so you both get to draw. Or if someone attacks with multiple creatures you can have a different opponent draw a card out of spite. If you can convince everyone to throw small creatures at you they each get 1 card per turn cycle, but you'll get three. Nice.

I haven't had an opportunity to use it yet, but I've seen a friend use it and it performs well.

[ApothecaryGeist]

Flumph

I remember thinking all that when the set came out.  I haven't seen anyone run it at my LGS.  I haven't put it into a deck yet myself.  Although I'm about to build a flying-tribal deck, so Flumph will likely win a slot.


My LGS players don't dig deep into politics.  I suspect Flumph will often become the target of some spot removal.