Anowon, the Ruin Thief – Zendikar Rising MTG Review

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

Note that this version of Anowon is from the Zendikar Rising Commander decks, and so isn’t eligible for the Standard version of the Rogue tribal deck. It’s too bad, in a way: he’s quite strong, and everyone probably needs a lot of help against Omnath. The global power and toughness boost is fine, particularly since Rogues tend not to be the best in head-to-head combat, but the real attraction is the ability to draw extra cards. Against the right opponent, it’ll bury them in card advantage even faster than Fact or Fiction and Phyrexian Arena. The only wrinkle is that there are more decks than ever before who actually like having things in their graveyard; it’s okay for decks to have a bad matchup, though. (Did you hear that, R&D?)

Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 4/5
Multiplayer: 3/5
Commander: 4/5

Anowon, the Ruin Thief is in the Zendikar Rising Commander subset; he’s not part of the proper set, and so he’s only legal in the Eternal formats and Commander.

Rogue tribal is back again; Anowon offers a fair bit to the player who wants to use sneaky tricks to get their Rogues popping. While mill is oft a double-edged sword, you can get a lot of mileage out of it (and black is the color with some of the best graveyard hate, so there is that!), and the desire to go wide means that the power and toughness buff to all other Rogues is welcome. He scales nicely to multiplayer as a consequence of how he’s worded (for each player that mills a creature card, you get to draw a card), but I think he’s far too fair for utility outside of Commander and casual settings, if for no other reason than mill being a complete disaster in Legacy and Vintage and him coming down too late for a card that doesn’t auto-win the game on his own.

Constructed: 1.25
Casual: 4
Multiplayer: 4
Commander: 4.25