You guessed it, the Commander Review for
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed. I actually have a lot of fun writing these types of articles, so I'm gonna try to evolve this writing to be basic for players just approaching Commander or Casual and a more intensive side for the more advanced players. In case you missed out,
COMMANDER! Review: Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, was the first of its style to take a more practical approach to a card instead of ways it could 'fit' in current metagames and formats. Although new cards are really exciting, they
usually are far from paradigm shifting in eternal formats; Commander in our case. However, I won't ignore the basics, since going
Back to Basics is refreshing and can help gain some perspective.
So let's start our basic review of Mikaeus. He's a 5/5 for 3BBB with Intimidate, a
No Mercy ability against Human creatures and a team lord for whatever tribal you're trying to run, besides Humans. For the Casual format, this is a really exciting card. With Intimidate, this guy is psuedo-unblockable against non-Black creatures, so he can fight really well in those faster 20 life multiplayer games. His pump ability to your non-Human team of creatures is pretty fantastic and is a really cool to add as a top-end spell to your curve of a Zombie or Vampire Tribal deck. What's really amazing about Mikaeus is that you don't really need to be playing tribal, other than just playing creatures. The No Mercy ability against Human creatures is just gravy on top; however, you'll rarely run into moments where that's relevant, unless you're playing against a dedicated Innistrad Block W/x Humans deck or your friend's 5-color Changelings deck from Lorwyn Block. Oh, the memories. The most important feature on Mikaeus grants Undying to all of your creatures. Undying is really powerful in the casual format because of
Wrath of God effects.
Quick aside: Casual has changed a lot since I started playing the format about 5 years ago. Back in the day, if you wanted access to Wrath effects you had to dish out a lot of money (about >$8 for a Wrath of God), so most people played without them. This lead to more cluttered board states and more combat-heavy wins and more emphasis on large creatures that could avoid a $0.25
Volcanic Fallout or
Infest. Magic has printed more Wrath effects in the past couple years than ever before and now they are more available and at an affordable price (ex:
Phyrexian Rebirth,
Life's Finale,
Day of Judgment,
Blasphemous Act; all <$2). Card availability has a huge impact on the Casual format relative to other formats (Vintage and Legacy as well) since most Casual players are using more fun-oriented cards, which are consequentially cheaper.
Since Wrath effects are widely available, they become more prevalent in the Casual format than they have before; which brings us back to Mikaeus. This unhallowed Zombie does everything people predicted and wished
Twilight Shepherd would do back when Shadowmoor was just released; Stops. Wrath effects. Cold. If you've amassed a nice army of creatures on the board and lay down a Mikaeus, your opponents cannot wrath the board without suffering the retaliation of your newly found army with +1/+1 counters all around. This forces your opponents to react to Mikaeus direcly, which also may be a daunting task, since Red decks have a hard time dealing 5 damage to him without committing 2 cards and Black decks can't touch him with their more than likely copy of
Doom Blade in hand. In Casual, cards in hand are very important. Since the format (from a multiplayer perspective) is very tempo heavy, running out of cards is common, especially if your strategy is very aggressive. It's difficult to avoid over committing since your opponents each only have 20 life and with enough pressure, can be brought down to 0 very easily. At the top-end of your curve (the most mana intensive spell you play), Mikaeus can protect your team and be difficult to kill without your opponent committing 1-2 cards to take him out and ignoring the team you've already built.
From a more Commander perspective, Mikaues gives a global Undying ability to your team, which is very interesting and will probably be the only card printed with this ability. Similar to
Cauldron of Souls, Mikaeus gives all of your creatures protection against Wrath effects and also gives them another round of 'enter the battlefield' triggers. For Blink strategies with a heavy Black splash will definitely play Mikaeus since he opens up some design space with sacrifice creature outlets that has strong synergy with
Erratic Portal and
Crystal Shard after you've used the Undying ability and your creature has a +1/+1 counter. Returning the creature to your hand resets the amount of triggers you can use and generates a gross amount of card advantage. The triple BBB in Mikaeus's mana cost is difficult to get to for Blink strategies that generally are U/W/x, so Mikaeus won't make as many waves as you'd expect. Mikaeus also is a new combo piece that tag teams with
Triskelion and shoots all of your opponents' life totals. This combo will make
Tooth and Nail a lot stronger for G/B/x decks (reminiscent of the typical
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker/
Pestermite combo)
What about Mikaeus on the throne as a new general? The only problem with Mikaeus in this format is the fierce competition for the spot as the premier Mono-Black general. I'll talk about two generals that I feel get the most recognition. First up,
Geth, Lord of the Vault.
When paired up against Geth, Lord of the Vault, we can see a few problems. Mikaeus generates card advantage with your own creatures and Geth generates card advantage using your opponents' creatures. So how can you compare these two cards objectively? The trick is in the color. Black is a very different color to discuss compared to the other 4. A color that's full of mana acceleration, tutors, creature removal, card draw, and reanimation. Nothing sketchy so far, right? However, mono-Black has a few serious problems when we talk about fighting off multiple opponents. The color Black has no monocolored spells that can remove enchantments and only 1 card (
Gate to Phyrexia) that can answer artifacts. What do Mikaues and Geth have to do with any of this? Well, Geth has the ability to use creatures out of opponents' graveyards, which gives him the versatility to handle an assortment of problems. Using Geth's ability to recur a
Qasali Pridemage or a
Manic Vandal can suppress an assortment of problems mono-Black players face. Mikaues, unfortunately can only recur your own creatures through the Undying ability so you don't have 'reliable' access to answers. You can still reach your opponent's creatures through
Puppeteer Clique, but the avenues are narrow.
Geth: 1, Mikaeus: 0
Let's look at another big characteristic behind mono-Black. The utility of
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and
Cabal Coffers. Although only 2 cards in your list of 99, they are probably the two most important cards in the mono-Black engine; usually hunted out with
Expedition Map or copied with
Vesuva.
Nirkana Revenant,
Caged Sun,
Magus of the Coffers,
Extraplanar Lens, and
Gauntlet of Power are other mana generating engines that Mono-Black players often tutor up that fuels whatever engine they are trying to run. Together, they generate an enormous amount of Black mana you can use to lay your entire hand out on the table. The mana ramp that mono-Black players are able to employ is different from the other mono-X decks because Black has access to more efficient card tutors, which makes obtaining the excess mana more efficient and reliable.
This is really strong with Mikaeus since it allows you to overextend without the fear of losing all your guys to a Wrath effect. However, if an opponent plays
Hallowed Burial or
Final Judgment, it'll severely punish you for over extending. Although this pair of board sweepers is somewhat common, you can generally guess which decks are running them and adequately prepare to fight against them. With Geth, the copious amount of Black mana generation fuels the Geth engine and can recur quite a few creatures. Although, this recursion comes at a price. Every time you recur an opponent's creature, you mill them X cards. This can be great if you're planning to fuel the Geth engine, but can be poor against strategies that are graveyard dependent, such as
Sharuum, the Hegemon or
Sedris, the Traitor King. In the counterexample, you can prepare against opponent's graveyards by packing graveyard hate, so the issue isn't irrevocable. It's a toss up which one plays better, since both creatures interact favorably with the excess B mana engines. If I really had to pick just one, I think Geth's ability to interact with opponents' graveyards is more powerful than the upside with Mikaeus.
Geth 2, Mikeaus 0
The other popular general I want to pair Mikaeus against is
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief.
Drana saw a huge surge of players once the card was printed, but recently has saw a decline since Vampire Tribal players found a new home with
Olivia Voldaren. If we use the same criteria between the Geth and Mikaeus comparison, we can look at Mikaeus through a different lens by comparing him to Drana.
By pure card advantage, Mikaeus creates a lot of card advantage just by existing, where Drana requires a few criteria to be met. Your opponents need to play creatures and they have to play creatures that are worth killing. Furthermore, if your opponent's have sacrifice outlets, that will negate Drana's activated ability and she won't get the power buff. Mikaeus's Undying to your team not only gives you a 'buy one, get one free' deal on your creatures, it also applies more pressure on your opponents by giving the buff and the +1/+1 counter, which often will be enough tempo to take out your enemies.
Drana: 0, Mikaeus 1
If we go back and evaluate both generals in ability to use the hyper excessive B mana generation engine (whoa, long phrase), Drana's ability to mana sink available mana and use that mana to win games by 21 general damage, Drana overwhelmingly seals the battle against Mikaeus.
Drana 1, Mikaeus 1
One last piece of criteria is evasion. Since Geth and Mikaeus both have Intimidate, they both have the same type of evasiveness, so there's no noteworthy comparison. When we put Flying against Intimidate, the lines become a little blurred. It's a classic battle between your flying chic and the scary guy. Once in the ring, Drana's activated ability shines again. Normally, there are a lot of fliers in the format, but Drana has the ability to shoot down opposing fliers to clear the skies. Unfortunately, Mikaeus can't clear the board of enemy
Solemn Simulacrums or
Bitterblossom tokens without some help.
Drana 2, Mikaues 1
So you can see, Mikaeus didn't perform too well when put in the ring against some of the common casual favorites mono-Black legends. But this doesn't take away from the fact that Mikaeus is a very unique card and has an ability that is overall very uncommon and, with some effort, can be difficult for opponents to overcome. At the end of the day, where do I expect Mikaues to make the biggest impact? I really do think Mikaeus is poised to take a permanent slot in B/G decks like
Savra, Queen of the Golgari, where the sacrifice outlets are primed and ready and Mikaeus can offer even more late-game card advantage that's difficult for opponents to interact with. A couple other Mono-Black generals I ignored were
Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon and
Maga, Traitor of Mortals if you were curious and wanted to do your own analysis.
HERE's a cool thread of people talking about mono-Black generals if you wanted to look at other opinions. Thanks for looking through that arduous read, until the next Legendary Creature!
Can't get enough Commander content? Check out the Commander series on the
MTG Casual Network Archive!
-David J.
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