Hello internet! Sorry we have been away for so long, but with summer here and more time on our hands, lets get to some good old commander fun.

Today I’ll be discussing the card that was previewed today for the this summer’s core set M13: Door of Nothingness

 

This card has been around for awhile, and was originally printed in Fifth Dawn, and once again in the original Planechase. With introductions out of the way, let me flat out say that I hate this card.

First off, you don’t really have the time or mana to play this in most real one-v-one casual games, so this card sits in the multiplayer realm, of which Commander is king. And even here it doesn’t have a place, because you can only play it in 5-color decks. From here you don’t have as many fun-flavorful choices outside of  [card]Reaper King[/card]. For example if you are playing [card]Horde of Notions[/card] you can be going elementals as a subtheme and don’t need this, [card]Sliver Queen[/card] /[card]Sliver Overlord[/card] can have a slight sliver theme, and if you are running just straight good-stuff with any of the aforementioned generals or running one of the goodstuff generals aka [card]Cromat[/card]/[card]Child of Alara[/card]/[card]Progentius[/card] you are trying to stuff as much other goodstuff into your deck.  [card]Reaper King[/card] gets mentioned because he at least could have the best potential to have an artifact subtheme, but even then its kinda shaky.  To conclude this long-winded point, this door doesn’t have a place in most decks.

Secondly this card undermines all of my favorite parts about Commander. Commander to me is enjoyable because it is the best way to use Magic as a medium to generate friendships and have fun together. While winning is fun and all, I am a big believer that as long as everyone had fun and it was an interactive game with big moves, back and forth play, and fun interactions, even I get comboed out with a [card]Deadeye Navigator[/card] combo, or [card]Overrun[/card] by an army of Elf Tokens, I’m happy if we all had a fun game. Its ending games with a kind of win-win mentality, where it was more about the story of the game, and the epic journey of getting there that was the fun part. I’m especially likening this to Dungeons and Dragons, and the joy I get out of that Wizards of the Coast game as well.

Back to this card I’m talking about for the post. I feel that this one isn’t a win-win, or even an I-win, it is a you-loose card. Boooooo. By playing this card you are intentionally kicking someone out of the game. I suppose that sometimes there will be an archenemy that rises up on a table of players and getting out this artifact could help knock that bully out of the game. However, in the few times that I have seen this played, there wasn’t anybody who was clearly in the lead and was controlling the board to an unfair state. I’ve only seen it activate once and it took out the player that had started to empty his hand on the battlefield first (and while he could have legitimately won, it would have taken much longer for him to really taken him a while to generate anything). The game went on for awhile and my poor friend just had to sit there and be unhappy while he waited for another game to finish. In summation, when this card activates, all it does is create bad feelings and people sitting out of the game.

Also, it takes a lot to get this to activate. The only time I saw this work (out of the 5-ish times I’ve seen this played) it took a lot of work to activate all on one turn. It is a bigger mana investment than Emrakul because of all of the colored mana. And you also have to have an untap effect in order to activate it. Furthermore, you only get to take out one person for all of that work. Rings of Brighthearth could net you another person, for additional mana plus having Rings out on the field, or you would need some Artifact recursion looping, like Sharum. And for all of that work you could be playing something that wouldn’t be dead in your hand all early game and didn’t need this stupid ridiculous combo that with all that mana and artifact untapping and recurring, you could be doing it with something else more fun. The slot that this fill in an EDH deck is a late game one, and I’d rather have my late game mana spells pretty much win the the game instantly ([card]Tooth and Nail[/card],[card] Insurrection[/card], [card]Time Stretch[/card], etc.) or ones that are good early as well as good late ([card]Capsize[/card], [card]Sadistic Sacrament[/card], [card]Comet Storm[/card]).

I think the only thing that would make me happy about this door is [card]Willbender[/card] or the not-really-playable-but-super-cool-and-techy [card]Reroute[/card]. Tee-hee.

Keep Smiling-

LionRum

 

p.s.: We will have a much bigger set review for all of m13 coming up soon. So be on the lookout.