The idea for my submission came from a reddit post (or it could've been posted here, I can't remember) trying to
predict the next commander set. We had tribe maters in 2017, we had type matters in 2018 (apart from Aminatou, for some reason), and so why not do zone matters? Now, there are 7 zones in Magic: The Gathering, and only 4 slots for commander precons, but that doesn't matter, because it was pretty clear which ones I would leave out:
- The command zone: This is where your commander (and emblems) go. That is it's purpose. I don't think that there is much that I could design that doesn't mess with a lot of rules.
- The stack: One of the great design rules of Magic: The Gathering is "Don't mention the stack!", this is because alot of players don't know what it is and interacting with it can get confusing. Any other way of wording a card that makes the stack "matter" still kinda runs into the reason this rule is implemented, so I didn't do this.
- The library: This one is less you couldn't do it and more it would slow gameplay, as commander has 100 card decks and who wants to constantly have a deck count with that number of cards?
So, that means our remaining zones are the hand, the graveyard,
exile and the battlefield. That leads me to the designs(all of which are attached at the bottom)
Belbe, Phyrexian Cyborg is my hand matters commander, and it's a colourless one! I've heard a lot of people talk about wanting a colourless commander that isn't a big eldrazi, and so here it is. Her first ability is what I came up with first out of all the commander's abilities. It's probably the most unique colourless specific ability I could think of and leads very well into hand matters, as it's more mana for more cards for more mana! The second ability is inspired by
Belbe's Armor, with extra hand matters flavour ontop. I'm happiest with this one.
Chainer,
Nightmare Incarnate is my graveyard matters commander. Chainer already has a card, but it's pretty old so I thought it acceptable to make a new one (and they included saheeli in C18 so, you know.) Chainer is a primarily black character, but I thought that red and blue weren't too much of a stretch for his character, so I gave him grixis colours. There are plenty of commanders that interact with the graveyard, but less that "care" about the graveyard, so the second ability is to give him something unique to do and summons nightmares, which is super flavourful. The first ability is also flavourful (his opponents are going insane as their creatures die around them) and acts as a good enabler for graveyard
shenanigans.
Friggera, Avacyn's Scourge is my
exile matters commander. I thought I'd take a stab at designing the mysterious fourth
angel sister and it turns out designing an
exile matters and a graveyard matters commander in the same set is really difficult, so this one has been through a few different iterations. What I ended up with is a kinda voltron commander that also cares about the
exile, which I'm not super happy with. The mana cost, the power toughness and the flying and death touch are to link it to Gisela, Bruna and Sigarda as her
angel sisters. The cost reduction is kinda to justify the fact that she's pretty expensive and links her to the theme, and the second ability is the best way I could think of to have her enable the theme without hating out Chainer too much.
Zaliki, Naya's Regent is my battlefield matters commander. I would've liked to make this a boros commander, but I didn't have green in any of my commanders and I couldn't have someone who is linked to Naya and not have them be green too. Zaliki is the last one that I had an initial design for, because, while battlefield matters is easy to design a ability for, a lot of ways to do this don't feel super unique and fun. The design I ended up with is kinda group-huggy, but I think that this is a good "everyone benefits but I benefit more" rather than a bad "I'm gonna drag this game out and eventually someone will win." By caring about the least number of creatures a player controls, it creates a unique playstyle that you won't find with any other commander and makes Zaliki worth playing.
Those are my submissions. I might not be able to access MSE or deckstats in the next week, so if I don't reply to feedback just take this as my final design.
A quick word about art (if anyone cares), I am aware that Chainer is from the original art, I couldn't find anything else of good quality to use as art instead, and it turns out that I am very bad at it. The artist credit on Belbe
might be wrong. I think it is from the book Nemesis, and the illustrator on that book was Mark Zug. so that is what I went with for the credit. MTG wiki is bad at citing it's art sources, ok? I'm not sure if Zaliki's art has been on a card or not, I just googled "leonin art" (even though she is a nacatl but whatever) and that is what came up. Friggera has correct artist credit and definitely hasn't been on a card, so that's fine.
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