Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools – Commander Legends MTG Review

A nice throwback to the original Weatherlight saga, Tevesh Szat manages to nicely encapsulate his proclivity towards treason in his first planeswalker card, and one that’s not nigh-exclusively tied to Commander as a format. Making two Thrull friends is a good way to protect him, and you can even cash them in for more fuel. Bonus points if you sacrifice a commander, as getting three cards is nice value for a +1 ability. This is, of course, aiming to protect him until his ultimate, where you break everyone’s back and take all of their things. While he doesn’t belong to the “Doubling Season Best Friends” club, Tevesh Szat can go off the turn after he drops with the help of Doubling Season and a small bit of help.

Tevesh Szat is interesting. He can churn out blockers, turn them into card advantage, and potentially just end games. A flexible mana cost, partner, and the ability to be a commander all also work in his favor, and he’ll do a lot of damage at Commander tables, I reckon. While his ultimate is useless in Legacy, you can still have him sit on the board as a source of blockers and card draw; there are probably better ways to spend five mana, but he’s at least not as useless as Jeska, Thrice Reborn is there.

Constructed: 2 (I think 5 mana is too steep an ask for Legacy, based on what you get)
Casual: 3
Limited: 5
Multiplayer: 2.25
Commander: 4.5

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

It was so long between the first time someone wished for a card depicting Tevesh Szat and the introduction of the planeswalker card type that some people had forgotten. And it’s been so long since then, that even more people have forgotten. I didn’t exactly fall into those categories, but I kind of thought it wouldn’t ever happen!

Now that it has, though, I am not disappointed and I don’t think the people who made that wish so long ago would be (hopefully they’re still following Magic). His +2 is a cute reference to Breeding Pit from Fallen Empires, and has obvious synergy with his +1. I also can’t help but notice that we just had a change to the official rules for Commander, and commanders now trigger anything that looks for a creature dying, even if you choose to move them to the command zone – this obviously makes the +1 even better.

While his ultimate more or less wins the game on the spot, it’s quite hard to get there under normal circumstances (barring an awful lot of proliferating and similar abilities). But using him as a commander gives you an extra dimension to that: though it’ll get costly in terms of mana, he can easily come back at a time when your opponents are out of resources to deal with him. Partner also opens up a lot of interesting options in terms of support cards; of course, if you’ve read the Invasion block novels, you might argue that anyone who trusts Tevesh Szat truly is a fool . . .

Constructed: 2/5
Casual: 3/5
Limited: 4/5
Multiplayer: 4/5
Commander: 4/5