At long last we finally get a glimpse at the capstone of what has been an incredibly exciting summer for Commander players – From the Vault: Legends.  Ever since the set was originally announced, the web has been atwitter with rumors and guesses as to which legends were going to make the cut.  Well, the wait is over.  Behold: the fifteen lucky legendaries!

On one hand, it’s totally cool that they reprinted a P3K legend.  On the other hand, this guy isn’t that exciting.  His body isn’t all that impressive, and his ability doesn’t really scale well to multiplayer.  Sure, you can dump a few cards out of someone’s hand, but not only do EDH decks usually have ways to exploit cards in their graveyards, they are also notorious for drawing disgusting amounts of cards (meaning that they’re probably going to just ditch a couple lands).  Frankly, I just don’t think he’s worth the absolutely immense amount of hate he’ll generate.

Was there ever any doubt that Sisay would be in this set?  Her flavor, her ability – she’s just perfect.  She’s also one of the most ridiculously powerful generals of all time.  Generals that generate card advantage are strong.  Generals that tutor up cards tend to be downright broken.  Sisay does both, and she does it for free once she’s on the board.  I’m just  disappointed that she didn’t get any new art – if anyone deserved it, it’s her.

I’ll be honest, I don’t get the appeal of Doran.  A 5/5 for 3 is good, sure, but it’s far, far from gamebreaking.  If anything, it’s his colors that are the real draw, since white, black, and green are packed to the gills with powerful board control, tutoring, ramp, and recursion spells.  Still, with the release of the Commander decks and the advent of [card]Ghave, Guru of Spores[/card] and [card]Karador, Ghost Chieftain[/card], I think Doran has lost most of his appeal outside of decks specifically built to exploit his unique ability.

Kiki-Jiki, enabler of a million combos!  Easily one of the more exciting cards to be included in this set, it sadly suffers from the most disappointing artwork.  I mean, seriously, this is just embarrassing.  He looks like he’s constipated, or perhaps farting out an inferno.  They couldn’t have just reprinted the old artwork?  Hell, I’d trade this foil for a regular one from Champions any day, and that’s coming from a girl with a serious foil addiction.

Kresh’s inclusion was kind of a foregone conclusion.  After all, he’s the favored general of the godfather of EDH, himself, Sheldon Menery.  That said, he’s a deceptively deep general to build around.  Sure, you can just pack your deck full of fatties, but once you start recurring them and getting extra combat steps and sacrificing them and [card]Fling[/card]ing a 84/84 Kresh at people things can get just downright silly.  The day I finally sit down to build a beatdown deck, I’m willing to bet Kresh is gonna be leading my horde into battle, dreadlocks and all.

So this is our spoiler card from Innistrad.  He’s a neat design, and is sure to be an absolute beast in Limited, but as far as commanders go he leaves me a little cold.  Let’s start with the good part: a mana cost with X in it.  Not only does that let you dump obscene amounts of mana into him to make him stupid huge, it also gives you a great deal of flexibility in casting him once he’s been killed a few times.  So far so good.  Now here’s the downer: he has to tap to use his abilities.  What that means is that you’re either going to be tapping him every turn to pump your team or basically just using him as a great big vanilla fatty beater.  Neither of those two options is particularly exciting.  If you want to pump your team, other generals can do it better – [card]Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite[/card] comes to mind in particular.  That said, he can act as a decent roleplayer in a token deck, and his 1 mana CMC means he’s fetchable by the ever-popular [card]Ranger of Eos[/card].

Omnom seems to be the monogreen commander of choice nowadays, something I have distinctly mixed feelings about.  On one hand, it’s incredibly flavorful and awesome, and on the other it’s the kind of general that requires Answers with a capital A to keep in check.  My own journey toward degenerate EDH spikiness was kickstarted by my brother’s Omnath deck doing things like hardcasting [card]Emrakul, the Aeons Torn[/card] on turn 6 or just equipping Omnath with [card]Trailblazer’s Boots[/card] and [card]Lightning Greaves[/card] and just beating my face in with unblockable general damage.

I’ve never built an Oona deck, and haven’t really played against too many of them, but the ones I did play against were honestly pretty terrifying.  Not only is Oona a powerfully-sized flier who can produce an army of tokens while disabling an opponent’s deck, she’s also capable of outright winning the game on her own with an infinite mana combo.  Combine that with the powerful tutor and countermagic suite enabled by her colors, and Oona is an incredible force to be reckoned with.

Man, does anyone play Proggy as their general and really expect to cast it?  Ten mana is a lot for something that takes 3 hits to kill someone and still dies to a board sweeper.  Still, you have to appreciate the sheer audacity of this card: 10 mana, 10/10, protection from everything.  They should seriously have just printed that last word in italics on the card, just for the hell of it.  All that said, Progenitus is really not so much a great general candidate as it is just a really excellent stupid-huge beater to cheat into play alongside the likes of [card]Darksteel Colossus[/card] in a deck packed with things like [card]Elvish Piper[/card], [card]Sneak Attack[/card], and [card]Natural Order[/card].

As much as I love [card]Jenara, Asura of War[/card], she’s by no means the most powerful general for Bant.  That title belongs to our knight in shining armor here, [card]Rafiq of the Many[/card].  Rafiq is inexpensive, can swing for 8 damage unaided the turn after he comes down, and his double strike means that any power bonuses he receives from equipment or auras is twice as effective.  In short, there’s a definite reason that people hate him off the board as soon as they possibly can.  That can be easier said than done, though, since Bant provides access blue’s vast array of counterspells to protect him until you can squeeze 21 damage through your opponents’ defensive lines.  Say what you will about too many Alara generals being included, but Rafiq certainly deserves his spot.

I’ve seen a couple articles and forum posts claiming that Sharuum is the most popular general in EDH, and while that’s definitely not borne out in my meta, I wouldn’t really be surprised if it was true.  She’s card advantage, recursion, combo piece, and a threatening 5/5 body all in one reasonably-priced package.  Then there’s also the whole artifact angle – Magic players love artifacts.  Almost too much, really.  As a nice bonus the new art is gorgeous, so this is probably going to be one of the chase cards for the set.

Horsemanship – the only keyword more obscure than banding.  Of course, despite the large number of creatures with horses depicted on the artwork, there’s very few creatures with actual Horsemanship, which means your entire team is going to be unblockable.  Granted, monoblue aggro decks are few and far between in EDH, but if you’re going to give it a go, Sun Quan’s your man.

Eerie similarities to Laurence Fishburne aside, this is easily the most badass art to come out of FTV: Legends.  Epically epic.  It doesn’t hurt that Teferi is just plain bonkers in EDH.  Not only does he let you go nuts by playing creatures at instant speed, he locks down all of your opponents, forcing them to play spells on their own turn.  This can be exploited in all sorts of different ways, from the powerful and somewhat hilarious ([card]Seedborn Muse[/card] and bounce outlets) to the instant-win combo([card]Knowledge Pool[/card] plus Teferi means your opponents can’t cast spells).

Dimes to dollars this was originally planned to be [card]Emrakul, the Aeons Torn[/card] before it got hit with the banhammer.  All things considered, though, I’m glad Ulamog is on this list.  Yes, he’s still the number-1 target when people cast [card]Bribery[/card], but [card]Homeward Path[/card] has done a lot to scale back the power of theft effects and make people think twice before just pulling out the big indestructible eldritch horror.  I’ve never seen him used as a general, although I imagine that any deck built around him would just play as many mana artifacts as possible and cast him over and over and over again until opponents run out of ways to answer him.  That actually sounds kind of fun.  Hm.

Frankly, I’ve never really understood the hubbub around Visara and her non-legendary 3-armed sibling, [card]Avatar of Woe[/card].  I’m not saying they’re bad cards – far from it.  But as powerful as they are, they still seem kind of vanilla.  I dunno, maybe it’s just that killing creatures is so common that it just doesn’t seem that special.  She’s like [card]Arcanis, the Omnipotent[/card].  He’s very powerful, but he just isn’t unique enough to really get my deckbuilding mojo flowing.  In other words, Visara is a solid inclusion in a deck that can run her, but not really stellar general material.