Today's card is the ultimate answer to combat
tricks-- once the combat begins, each player has
only what's on the table to work with. This
makes it much easier to feel confident about
attacking or blocking, but it also takes a bit
of the strategy out of it. It also means green
suffers the most, since it has almost no way of
killing creatures beyond in-combat pump spells.
But Basandra's activated ability is where it all
comes together. When combat spells are verboten,
attacking into a blocker is pure suicide for the
creature in question. Basandra can then instill
suicidal fury in your opponent's smaller
creatures each turn, slowly picking them off by
luring them in and letting them skewer
themselves on your swords.
This can backfire on you if your opponent
manages to produce creatures bigger than you can
handle, or if you're also running any of white's
wide class of spells that target attacking or
blocking creatures. But you can just choose not
to put those cards in your deck if you're
running Basandra, and white has cards like Path
to Exile and Pacifism that can deal with
creatures outside of combat, so it's a
calculated risk-- perfect for a R/W deck.
Like yesterday's card, Basandra's primary goal
is to cause interesting situations in
multiplayer games. You'll notice that she
protects your commander, and everyone else's,
from Condemn, which lets you stay one step ahead
of the metagame (until and unless the rules
committee addresses that loophole). I'd also
like to see how she performs in 60-card decks,
which also see a lot of spells like the
aforementioned Condemn as well as Dispense
Justice and Wing Shards. If you combine her with
Alluring Siren or Nettling Imp, you can force
all your opponents' creatures to attack you
every turn, which I'm sure there's some use for.
Something to think about, anyway!
Welcome back readers today’s card of the day is
Basandra an interesting new angel from
Commander. In standard, extended and limited
this is unplayable as are the rest of the
commander cards. In legacy I don’t think this
card will see much play five mana is a
little much for a legacy creature that is two
colors and doesn’t have relevant abilities.
Shutting down spells during combat is
unnecessary and forcing opponent’s creatures to
attack is mildly useful. In legacy this card
doesn’t fit a certain deck type and wont see
much competitive play. In casual and multiplayer
this card represents a new red and white
commander who is also an angel a powerful and
supported casual creature type. Messing up
combat tricks in multiplayer and forcing
opponent’s small utility creatures to attack is
great. Combine this card with cards like Ghostly
Prison and its ilk to make opponents hesitant to
attack you or cards like Holy Day to influence
opponents to go elsewhere with their attacks.
Overall interesting angel that will see play as
a commander and can mess up multiplayer games.
Today's card of the day is Basandra, Battle
Seraph which is a five mana Red and White 4/4
wih Flying that prevents players from casting
spells during combat and for one Red forces
target creature to attack that turn if able.
Legal only in Commander, Vintage, and Legacy
this angel isn't bad for five mana as a 4/4 even
though that isn't rare for angel type creatures.
The effect of stopping spells being cast in
combat hinders Red and White quite a bit, but
can be compensated for in the deck design stage
or just by casting in the main phase whenever
possible. The second effect isn't bad
either and works quite well when combined with
creatures that have Vigilance to maintain an
offensive presence in multiplayer games.
Overall this is a solid card for Commander and
Multiplayer, when properly supported, which can
subtly control the flow of the game instead of
going for a more direct approach.
