Okay so look, core sets are usually fine. Hardly ever great for anything but Standard, lets be honest here. 2019 Core Set was slightly better with the inclusion of cards like Crucible of Worlds, but ultimately we didn't get a massive amount of playables. Wizards certainly have fixed that with Core set 2020, and I'm so happy. I thought what we might do is go through the coolest legendary creatures, then maybe the Planeswalkers for Oathbreaker and then the other stuff. This will be only the cards I think are going to see play and not all of them as core sets always have a fair chunk of stuff we just don't care about.
SICK NEW COMMANDERS
I can't begin to tell you exactly how strong Kethis is, but I will certainly try to. This is going to be a very awesome deck with a lot of awesome tricks that you can pull off. Don't forget, Dominaria gave us Kamahl's Druidic Vow, Primevals' Glorious Rebirth, Yawgmoth's Vile Offering and Urza's Ruinous Blast in this colour combination. Also bear in mind that the cards you cast from the graveyard are cast, they don't gain a remove from game text. So even though we need a legendary creature or planeswalker to play these amazing spells, we get a reduction on them and especially with Kamahl's Druidic Vow doing so much work, that's one amazing legendary engine! So how might we build it? Maybe a self mill deck making sure we run all of the above spells plus some ramp would be my first thought. Perhaps in a semi self sacrifice shell as well so we can keep up using the ability each turn.
I LOVE playing spells and I love playing janky awesome combo decks. Kykar fits that bill EVER so well. Whenever we cast a spell, we create a 1/1 Spirit token. That means we can maybe *YAWN* go wide oh excuse me, that sentence was so boring I almost fell asleep. Wait, you mean I can sacrifice those for a red mana? Any spirit then becomes a red mana? SIGN ME UP INTO JANKY HEAVEN! Our kill conditions could be a mix of low cost can trips, Brain Freeze, Empty the Warrens, Ignite Memories and Grapeshot. Going off is made a lot easier because each non-creature spell we cast before the storm spell will effectively add a red mana to our pool, meaning we have a large pool of mana we can funnel through something like Mycosynth Lattice to effectively use it as though it were mana of any colour. Other than that, Gemstone Array, though costly and inefficient, is another way to "launder" your mana.
Okay look, we know this isn't Omnath, Locus of Rage but this new Omnath has an extra mana symbol! I think the new Omnath is good, but not amazing as it only hits a single target. I'm not sure why it wasn't made to be all other players, maybe to stop it being broken in Two Headed Giant? Omnath Elemental decks are already strong, but now you have an additional finisher that may actually assist in cleaning out a player with a massive complicated board state while being able to swing in and kill another. Also, being able to re-cast this Omnath for value in or out of the 99 seems like a VERY real prospect. Or you know, blinking it or bouncing it in your Animar, Soul of Elements deck. Gross.
SING IT WITH ME! We don't need no Panharmonicon creature. WIZARDS! Leave that ETB alone! Yeah, to late I guess now that we have a new Panharmonicon on a stick. I can't help but think that having Panharmonicon was fine because you couldn't play it whenever you needed it, you had to dig with it. But not anymore you don't, just play Yarok and make your table cry with stupid VALUE.
JUDGE BLOG TIME! Please check how Panharminicon scales for reference before you play BOTH in your group.
Actually, this is BETTER than Panharmonicon as Yarok triggers on ANY permanent, not just creature or artifact. So what is we Zendikar's Roil plus Risen Reef plus Yarok, the Desecrated and Amulet of Vigor. Yeah, this sounds like a whole mess of "fun" and a great way to combo out with a really stupid win con like Laboratory Maniac.
IN THE 99
To be honest with you, I'm not sold that Golos can dethrone Sisay, Weatherlight Captain as my go to 5c commander. Golos ramps you a land and then we can pay a whopping seven mana to play the top three cards of our library. Golos will likely be IN the Sisay deck's 99.
We finally have a new Kaalia and that's all cool, but this one isn't really great as a commander. Sure she won't get shot on sight, but she also doesn't have enough power to lead a deck. I know I always say "build the deck so it can work without the commander", but Kaalia falls way short of cards like Muldrotha, the Gravetide. Its neat that she can sift out the top six cards and possibly net you three creatures, but I'm betting the odds on hitting all three consecutively in the top six is going to be far more hassle than value.
Did I miss something where by Enchantress decks were lacking a cost reduction effect? Not unlike Herald of the Pantheon this Mystic is really good and getting a cost reduction on your enchantments looks like a whole lot of win. Never mind if someone starts killing your enchantments and making the Mystic grow. Hey, remember fading enchantments like Parallax Wave?
Almost ever deck will play this land if they can generate the value out of it. Blue based and lands decks will both have ways to use it. Blue decks have Stifle effects to turn off the downside and have a hexproof land that comes into play tapped. But that huge mana boost is amazing. Lotus Vale from Weatherlight is on the Reserved list, this seems like a way to reprint the card, but better in my opinion. But the deck that really wins with Lotus Field is Lord Windgrace, because on turn five you will likely have an additional land or two from ramping or mana rocks, tap all your lands and play Windgrace, then Lotus Field and use Windgrace's minus three to get the two sacrificed lands back into play. If you wanted to go a more fun and interesting route, play an Atraxa, Praetors' Voice/Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi infect walking lands deck.
I'm not sure if this is a win more card, or an extremely broken way to get 20 odd Aetherflux Reservoir onto the field using all those good old Treasure tokens. Either way, this seems like a really silly way to lock up and end a game. Better yet, Mycosynth Lattice out and a Blightsteel Colossus makes for a very amusing table kill using all of your fresh Blightsteel lands. If you want to get really boring, just cast this with Mechanized Production on the field and win that turn.
A welcomed budget tutor for all ages! It won't break the bank and it's certainly not an instant but its going to be very cheap to buy some for your decks. Let's face it, most decks have a way to draw the card straight away anyway. The big downside is that your opponent may also search their library for a card and put it on top, but depending on the colours you're playing you can likely force them to mill the card anyway.
OATHBREAKER ANYONE?
Vampire tribal sounds like a pretty good deal with Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord heading up your mono black vampire party. On turn three, you can play Sorin, tick him down to one loyalty and throw a big fat blood sucker right onto the table such as Anowon, the Ruin Sage or Nirkana Revenant. Actually, there doesn't seem to be a whole stack of mono coloured ones I would say we can break the game with, but enough of them are cool enough to make a big impact on the board.
That's it this time, what are you excited about from M20 for Commander play?