Typically at weddings, the bride and groom are showered with gifts, but for the upcoming power play on Innistrad, we are the ones who get to go home with new toys. Crimson Vow releases November 19th, and as with past top 10 articles, we’ll go over what cards are best for you to pick up for the 99, excluding those printed specifically for Commander. Crimson Vow is the counterpart to Midnight Hunt with a large emphasis on Vampires instead of Werewolves, but don’t worry there are some goodies for Werewolf, Humans, Spirits, and Zombie fans as well. Without further ado, let’s get this ceremony underway!
You can get a lot of value out of this little 1/2 as long as you can consistently trigger Training. With each trigger, Savior of Ollenbock can temporarily remove an opposing Creature or set up a reanimation target for later. You can even use his Exile effect politically by offering to reanimate an opponents’ creature when Savior of Ollenbock leaves the battlefield. Whether you’re sacrificing him to get the effect or he gets too large and exiled with a Swords to Plowshares, the effect will still trigger, making it quite a bit better than a dies trigger on its own.
Akin to Mentor of the Meek, Welcoming Vampire will draw you cards when small Creatures enter the battlefield. You don’t need to pay additional mana, but the tradeoff is that the effect only triggers once per turn. Notably, this can be triggered on your opponent’s turns if you have a way to Flash in a small creature or create a token at Instant speed. With Flying it can also act as a chump blocker late in the game after you’ve gotten a few draws off of it. A fantastic pickup for token decks or any with small powered Creatures.
When I saw Consuming Tide, I did a double take and had to read the card twice. This is in fact real! A wrath at four mana value that has the potential to also draw cards could be quite the tempo swing. Even at its floor, just removing the majority of threats on the board is worth it, but the ceiling of drawing three as well pushes this card over the top. Yes, your opponents will get to keep their best nonland permanent, but it does get rid of all other nonland permanents. This could leave your opponents with a tough choice between a color-fixing mana rock and their only blocking creature.
4. Fell Stinger
Just like Mulldrifter, Fell Stinger will become a ubiquitous creature for card draw in creature focused decks. Having Sign in Blood on a recurrable body means with the right deck composition you can resolve a few draws from this Scorpion. Fell Stinger also has Deathtouch which means it can also stick around as a potent blocker if you can Exploit another creature. This deck will shine the most in token decks, but will generate a lot of value for any decks that can abuse its enter the battlefield trigger.
Curses can do quite a bit of work in Commander, both politically and in terms of accruing value or securing a win. Curse of Hospitality has a lot going for it in regards to political plays and generating advantage. Yes, it will benefit your other opponents similarly to the C17 curse cycle (Curse of Opulence, Curse of Disturbance, etc.), but it will also incentivize those opponents to send more Creatures towards the cursed player to benefit from the free card advantage (and additional damage thanks to Trample). You may not get the mirrored benefit the same way you would with the C17 cycle, but exiling cards from the cursed players deck that may not be cast can act as pseudo-removal. This one will likely need some testing to see what it’s really like, but I expect it would be net-positive the majority of the time.
Cards with cumulative payoffs can be quite the upset, and that’s no different for Change of Fortune. You will need to discard your hand for this one, but if you’ve managed to stack up a few discards prior with Faithless Looting or similar cards, you’ll be able to get quite a bit more out of this personal wheel. Of course, having some way to benefit from the cards in your Graveyard makes this card even better, so it’s a solid pickup for Reanimator and Spellslinger strategies alike. You could even pair this with Into the Night (also from Crimson Vow) to draw an absurd amount of cards.
We all know Green doesn’t need more toys, but that doesn’t stop Wizards of the Coast from printing more gas. Cartographer’s Survey is an interesting ramp spell which lets you put up to two Lands into play (yes, any Lands), but is limited to the top seven cards of your deck. If you have 36 lands in your deck, you’ll hit two lands about three quarters of the time so you may want to increase your land count above that if you’re looking for more consistency. This is a shoe-in for any Landfall decks and should be highly considered if you have some potent non-basic lands critical to your strategy.
Having more Sneak Attack effects that let the creature stick around like Elvish Piper, and now Howlpack Piper is never a bad thing. The activated cost is slightly higher and it is gated to Sorcery speed activation which may make this piper a secondary pick, but increased redundancy and a relevant Werewolf transform may make this one worth finding a spot for. This can also be a good swap if you have a deck featuring the Instant speed effects that you want to power down to play a slower paced game.
Three mana value rocks are a newer design space that Wizards of the Coast has been exploring in recent sets. Rather than create another auto-include like Arcane Signet, the idea with three mana value rocks is that they can do something additional to make them a bit more interesting. Foreboding Statue is one of these design experiments that’s worth trying out. First of all it fixes for any color, giving it a lot of flexibility, but it also transforms into a sizable 5/5, which can be key for the middle of your game, or act as a life saving chump blocker closer to the end. When the statue has flipped, it’ll still generate mana so you still get the benefit as long as it doesn’t get swept away with a wrath.
Running some amount of Graveyard hate in your Commander decks is always a good idea, and there are already quite a few efficient options with both Tormod’s Crypt and Relic of Progenitus topping the list. Even though these exist, it’s still nice to have more redundancy in this effect, especially if you find yourself facing down reanimator strategies frequently. Lantern of the Lost also acts as spot removal for a particularly problematic card that may have been recast from a Graveyard just one too many times (I’m looking at you Spore Frog).
There we have it, the top ten (really eleven) pick ups from Crimson Vow. Naturally this list skipped over a lot of the tribal all-stars that were printed for Vampires, Zombies and Werewolf decks, so you should definitely spin through the set if you have any decks in those tribes. There are tons of other fun cards in this set and some interesting Commanders to build around, but this list should make up some of the must haves for Commander players. Were there any cards you’re excited about that you were surprised didn’t make the list? Drop a comment below with your thoughts or reach out directly to me on Twitter or in the Chimera Discord. Hope to see you out at Chimera’s next Commander night, which is every Tuesday starting at 7pm. Happy brewing!
