Basri’s Lieutenant – Core Set 2021 MTG Review

Basri’s Lieutenant is quite strong overall, a good supporting player to a board with a lot of +1/+1 counters going on. On its own, it can be a 4/5 with vigilance and protection from multicolored for four mana, which is quite a nice rate of return! It even can buff another creature if they’d benefit from it more, and it also gives you back something when they die. That resilience to removal is a nice touch on an already good card, and a flexible mana cost gives this creature some solid legs. (Also note the lack of a “nontoken” requirement, so protecting this and having ways to reliably get +1/+1 counters can really pay dividends.)

Constructed: 4 (it’s strong, but I don’t know if it’s up to par for Standard)
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 4.25 (the protection means less here, given how few multicolored cards there are, but the body is solid as-is)
Multiplayer: 4
Commander: 4

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

It’s pretty amusing how readily Basri’s Lieutenant fights Ravnica’s guilds and Ikoria’s multicolored monsters. It won’t always help you when there’s some kind of huge mutated monstrosity – or Godzilla – trampling over things, but against anything with creatures of the more usual size in the two to four mana range, his innate stats and additional abilities will often push your side ahead. He also does well against decks that try to remove everything, provided you have an ample supply of +1/+1 counters; if you’re in white, you probably will.

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