Alara was one of my favorite blocks of recent
times, but I'm not actually busy petitioning
Rosewater and the other designers on Twitter for
a full-scale revisit. For one thing, I thought
its story reached a reasonable conclusion; for
another, there's absolutely nothing that stops
us from playing with cards from the original
Alara block. And for a third thing, New Alara
lends itself very well to cards like this in
multicolor-themed special releases. Why does
this guy have four colors? Why does this guy
have such crazy good combat stats? Why is
cascade so devastating? Well, it's the Maelstrom
- that's what it does. The promise of turns
where you cast half your deck in one turn and
you don't quite know what's going to happen, but
you know it's going to be huge, is plenty of
reason to stop asking so many questions and
break out the Vivid lands.
Cascade might be, alongside storm, one of the
most dangerous mechanics they’ve ever printed.
Every spell you cast gets you a free spell on
top of it, and so to give every spell cascade
makes you a very dangerous player, indeed.
Yidris is a bit of a weird commander; he
requires that he be out for a turn before you
get benefits from him (usually), but the benefit
is massive. Two spells for every one you cast
has the potential to ramp out of control very
rapidly, and it's not impossible that you get
ahead to an absurd degree on the back of one
spell. Trample means you're likely to get
through at least once, and Yidris doesn't need
to live for his ability to activate.
Yidris is a very scary commander; if you're
going to use him, make sure you can protect
yourself, because people will be gunning for you
as soon as they see him.
