I always found Lorwyn, the sunny,
brightly-colored side of Magic's first and so
far only double block, to be just as scary as
Shadowmoor. That may confuse some of you, but
think about it: the changelings are these
strange creatures that don't speak but watch
other creatures carefully and mimic their faces
and activities alike. The elves have a special
group of warriors called "winnowers" who go
around killing people who they think are too
ugly to live. I allow that my opinion may be
partially shaped by the novel, whose opening
passages see someone get attacked by a tangle of
vines with fey sentience, and someone else
stumble across the corpse of a flamekin who'd
been tied to a tree and slashed to death.
In Shadowmoor, then, Rhys became much less
sinister and threatening on a personal level,
but much more so in gameplay. He's fairly slow
to come online against red or black decks, and
requires a lot more conditions than tournament
play usually supports, but in any environment
where you're likely to have enough mana for him
to do his thing or can protect him for long
enough (or EDH/Commander, where both are true),
he can become downright unfair. Not only is he
in the right colors for archetype-defining cards
like Rampaging Baloths and Captain of the Watch,
but - and I hate to go here - have you ever seen
him in play at the same time as Doubling Season?
Today's card of the day is Rhys the Redeemed
which is a one White or Green mana 1/1 Legendary
with two token production effects. The
first costs three plus tapping and puts a 1/1
Green and White elf warrior token into play
which is a reasonable cost for a reusable token
ability and helps to support the second effect.
For six mana plus tapping it copies each
creature token you control which can be very
powerful with mass token production and
supporting effects. The low base cost with
powerful effects makes this an excellent
Commander and at the very least it can be used
in any Green or White deck with tokens as
support.
This is one of those cards that's absolutely
stellar in EDH, and relatively mediocre
everywhere else.
A mass populate on all your tokens is huge in
late game, but even in green, 6 is still
expensive for an effect you can't pop off right
away. Making 1/1 elf warriors is cool, but still
a little expensive for the price of admission.
That said, going back to EDH, where you can ramp
your arse off, it's really hard for most
opponents to catch up when you're generating
lots of various sized tokens then doubling them
(or tripling with the enchantments available).
