Hi! I'm in this deck, but my ability works on less than 30% of the cards here. Also, I already have an oversized foil. Please tell me why they chose me instead of Uril, the Miststalker, or Rith, the Awakener?
Umbric
★★★☆☆ (3.7/5.0)(3 votes)
This card can be very good in the right decks, as mentioned before it's not by any means broken or terribly great like some other commanders out there but she does have her uses. For 6 mana and a tap sure that's quite a bit, but it is an ability that can be played at instant speed. Just imagine if they attack with their commander and you put down a Wurmcoil Engine. I don't think it's great. It's just not terrible. Too narrow abilities but they get the job done 3.5/5
1337vanguard
★★★☆☆ (3.2/5.0)(3 votes)
One of the great classic commanders. Though I wonder why she is in this deck.
DarthParallax
★★☆☆☆ (2.1/5.0)(6 votes)
Wrong direction to ask the question Mr. Leet.
1. Uril is crazy. 2. Rith might not be crazy, but Rith is defo part of a cycle, and well- it looks like they're saving reprinting *that* cycle for a little while longer. Almost certainly they want to give us Foils of All 5 of them at once, even though the Wedge Dragons do not show up as foils except as Oversized. That's almost certainly going to be what they start doing for future releases:
Foil up the Legendaries. I was wondering how they'd make them interesting now that they've done Shards and Wedges and pretty much they've said-ish they don't think any other color combinations work for this series.
Mayael is an excellent card, very appropriate for the deck, fits the "Shards" theme in both just plain color combination and in "Legends from Shards of Alara" subtheme, and her particular ability is GOOD for her colors, just like Jeleva's is.
But you do point out an odditiy- which is why were so few cards put in that had enough power to work from her ability?
Mosstodon I cannot think of a very clear reason to forget. I really just can't. Of course they don't want to overload the deck with Rares...and neither do they want to stack it with too many Vorstclaws, which outside of 'just has 5 power for Mayael' would have been a mite disappointing for a Commander pre-con to exist in too high numbers. 1 Vorstclaw itself certainly would have been welcome.
I think they could have looked primarily for creatures from her homeland, though Spellbreaker Behemoth is a Rare and Spearbreaker Gargantuan was also a Rare.
Actually I think that explains it. Gahiji, Honored One is simply a Beast, so all this Onslaught Beast love makes sense for him, but which quite sadly/ironically just happens to seem very much about "Power 4 or greater" *just barely misses* the Mayael mark, by one power, and to help her out you'd need to seek out contrived commons or squeeze more Rare slots in.
I guarantee you if these decks were each afforded 5 more Rares, Mayael would have 5 more creatures, a full extra 1/20 of her deck. (but you wouldn't have 5 other cards)
Thing is, deck space, and the desire to print older cards and old non-creature spells, kind of pushed the room for more "P5+" cards out of the way. If only the wording worked so that Glorious Anthem would actually solve your problem, I'm sure you would have got at least Glorious Anthem to bump all these 4s to 5s, but it doesn't work, so they didn't pretend it did.
Ferlord
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Mayael's ability can hinge between "exceptionally good" to "not worth the mana". Always note that 6 mana is not inexpensive. You also don't activate any "if you cast from the hand" effects. Sorry, Ulamog and Kozilek.
But Naya doesn't truly have any general that really compliments the deck rather than just being the centre of attention. For example, if you made a Rith, the Awakener deck, you'd be very inclined to attack with Rith every turn to make tokens. If you made a Uril deck, you'd be forced to go full Voltron.
But Mayael doesn't need to be there to make the deck work. You can simply play the whole deck without playing her once. It does defeat the purpose of a Commander deck, but it also means that you won't get handicapped when Chaos Warp gets played.
That being said, it would've been fantastic if Hazezon Tamar was reprinted and not on the reserved list. He works decently with Gahiji, and... well, sand warriors are cool.
MattLynn
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
This would have been super flavorful if it had only costed cmc 5, ability costed cmc 5, referenced power 5+...you understand...5 this and 5 that. Similar to Griselbrand and Elderscale Wurm do with 7.
Comments (6)
I'm in this deck, but my ability works on less than 30% of the cards here.
Also, I already have an oversized foil.
Please tell me why they chose me instead of Uril, the Miststalker, or Rith, the Awakener?
1. Uril is crazy.
2. Rith might not be crazy, but Rith is defo part of a cycle, and well- it looks like they're saving reprinting *that* cycle for a little while longer. Almost certainly they want to give us Foils of All 5 of them at once, even though the Wedge Dragons do not show up as foils except as Oversized. That's almost certainly going to be what they start doing for future releases:
Foil up the Legendaries. I was wondering how they'd make them interesting now that they've done Shards and Wedges and pretty much they've said-ish they don't think any other color combinations work for this series.
Mayael is an excellent card, very appropriate for the deck, fits the "Shards" theme in both just plain color combination and in "Legends from Shards of Alara" subtheme, and her particular ability is GOOD for her colors, just like Jeleva's is.
But you do point out an odditiy- which is why were so few cards put in that had enough power to work from her ability?
Mosstodon I cannot think of a very clear reason to forget. I really just can't. Of course they don't want to overload the deck with Rares...and neither do they want to stack it with too many Vorstclaws, which outside of 'just has 5 power for Mayael' would have been a mite disappointing for a Commander pre-con to exist in too high numbers. 1 Vorstclaw itself certainly would have been welcome.
I think they could have looked primarily for creatures from her homeland, though Spellbreaker Behemoth is a Rare and Spearbreaker Gargantuan was also a Rare.
Actually I think that explains it. Gahiji, Honored One is simply a Beast, so all this Onslaught Beast love makes sense for him, but which quite sadly/ironically just happens to seem very much about "Power 4 or greater" *just barely misses* the Mayael mark, by one power, and to help her out you'd need to seek out contrived commons or squeeze more Rare slots in.
I guarantee you if these decks were each afforded 5 more Rares, Mayael would have 5 more creatures, a full extra 1/20 of her deck. (but you wouldn't have 5 other cards)
Thing is, deck space, and the desire to print older cards and old non-creature spells, kind of pushed the room for more "P5+" cards out of the way. If only the wording worked so that Glorious Anthem would actually solve your problem, I'm sure you would have got at least Glorious Anthem to bump all these 4s to 5s, but it doesn't work, so they didn't pretend it did.
But Naya doesn't truly have any general that really compliments the deck rather than just being the centre of attention. For example, if you made a Rith, the Awakener deck, you'd be very inclined to attack with Rith every turn to make tokens. If you made a Uril deck, you'd be forced to go full Voltron.
But Mayael doesn't need to be there to make the deck work. You can simply play the whole deck without playing her once. It does defeat the purpose of a Commander deck, but it also means that you won't get handicapped when Chaos Warp gets played.
That being said, it would've been fantastic if Hazezon Tamar was reprinted and not on the reserved list. He works decently with Gahiji, and... well, sand warriors are cool.