(Nine-Lives Familiar | by Xami Gaztelua )

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Lost and Found(ations): Black Cards

Hello fellow Magic player, and welcome back to another set review here on EDHREC. After the crazy release schedule earlier in the year, it's been a while since I've written a set review, so I'm very excited. I'm back in black (thank you AC/DC) again, which is great because it is the best color in the game. That's a fact, no personal bias at all.

Foundations (and its corresponding Jumpstart set) is a marked return to Core Sets. If you're unfamiliar with Core Sets, these tend to be simpler sets to help new players get introduced to the game. This set will be the baseline for Standard for years to come, but there are plenty of new goodies for Commander too. Let's get right to it with the new black cards!

Mythics

Aphelia, Viper Whisperer

This mythic legend comes out early, starts attacking, and builds a nice board of deathtouchers. It will be hard for your opponents to attack into you on the ground once you've got a few Snake tokens lying around, and from there you can slowly begin setting up to use the second ability on Aphelia, drastically cutting down life totals.

Look for ways to give her first strike, an extremely potent combination with deathtouch, or something like Whispersilk Cloak to make her unblockable all together. I would also throw in ways to make use of the Snakes; Ashnod's Altar comes to mind.

The last thing to keep in mind is the hybrid / pip in her first ability give you access to green cards as well, so something like Fynn, the Fangbearer is fair game too! Yes, it also limits her to -based decks for the 99, but I'm a venom-glass-half-full kinda guy.

Bloodthirsty Conqueror

Holy toledo, I expect this card to be one of the most expensive from the set. Why? It's the second-ever Exquisite Blood effect, and this one is on a creature!

The effect is famously important due to its ability to infinite combo with Sanguine Bond or Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, but the fact that it's on a creature is big game for black decks.

Black is already good at tutoring, but it's also great at reanimating creatures, making it easier to make this a must-exile threat for the table.

It's an auto include in aforementioned Vito decks, while any other lifegain decks in black will probably want it too. This will require an immediate answer once it hits, so make sure you pack protection for it. Malakir Rebirth is an amazing card and only gets better with more critical targets.

Hopefully the continuous printing of Foundations helps to keep the price low for Bloodthirsty Conqueror, because I expect the popularity to be very high.

Rares

Abyssal Harvester

I can't tell what to make of this card. Theoretically, you could mill or discard some giant creature like Grave Titan or Archon of Cruelty, then activate this to make a token copy of it as early as turn four.

It doesn't matter where the creature card came from, it just had to be put into the graveyard. That sounds great, but the other limitations have me hesitating a bit.

First, you can only do this once per turn cycle unless you have ways to untap it. Second, you can only have one Nightmare at a time. Even if you populate the token with something like Promise of Aclazotz, the next time you activate the Harvester they're all going away.

Finally, the tokens get exiled, so there can be no shenanigans with death triggers.

I think I'll need to see this one in action before I decide if it's good or bad. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Blasphemous Edict

Black FINALLY gets a cost-reduced wrath to go along with Blasphemous Act and Vanquish the Horde, though there are some key pros and cons. Cons first: Thirteen creatures is a lot to hit that alternate cost; the other two need eight and six respectively.

This means each player needs four-ish creatures on average, but you can skew the odds if your deck makes a lot of expendable creatures.

Technically this won't kill all of the opposing creatures if someone has more than thirteen, but I don't expect that to come up too often.

Thankfully, there are a lot of pros. Like I said, black is the best. First of all, paying the full price is the cheapest of the three; five mana is a pretty normal rate for a wrath.

The biggest advantage is that you're forcing your opponents to sacrifice their creatures, so this will get around hexproof, shroud, ward, protection, and indestructible. For these reasons, I expect this to see a lot of play, so probably wise to snag a copy or two. I'd put this up there with Toxic Deluge and Damnation as one of the best wraths in black.

Evereth, Viceroy of Plunder

Evereth is a giant wall of text that ends up being fairly straightforward. First of all, she's an infinite sacrifice outlet, albeit only at sorcery speed. This can be powerful for decks that are looking to combo off, and even grants access to red for something like Murderous Redcap:

Just replace Viscera Seer with Evereth. Commander Spellbook will be updating their combos soon, so check back there for more possibilities with Evereth!

Outside of the combo potential, Evereth clearly goes well in a Treasure deck, so look at Kalain or Prosper for some ideas.

Powering up Evereth and sacrificing her to deal damage also reminds me of Juri, so check out some of the high synergy cards for your Evereth deck too. She'll go well in the 99 of any of those decks too.

Fumulus, the Infestation

I'm loving all of the support for under-appreciated creature types, and Fumulus here is no exception. That creepy crawly deck you've always dreamt of building now has a commander, and a pretty good one too.

The attacking ability on Fumulus isn't limited to "one or more", like we've seen lately, so if you've got a wide enough board this can become a pretty huge life swing. Carrion is a funny old card from Mirage that might now have a home, or you could use Nest of Scarabs and Blowfly Infestation to include a flavorful -1/-1 counter theme too.

Fumulus also seems like he'd love a home in the 99 of decks like Toxrill and The Swarmweaver, pumping up those Insects and Slugs even more. Sacrifice decks will be happy with Fumuls making a stream of fodder too!

High-Society Hunter

Hey look, Harvester of Souls has been completely power-crept! This seems like an easy replacement for the six-mana draw engine, so if you're running it, consider this Vampire as a replacement.

Speaking of, this seems like a decent draw engine in Vampire decks too, just for the fact that it's the relevant creature type. Not much more to say here for Commander, but I expect to get bashed by this pretty hard in Limited too.

Nine-Lives Familiar

What a cool cat. Wizards wisely made it recur itself on the end step, otherwise this would be NINE sacrifices in one card. Even still, it's very powerful for decks doing a lot of sacrificing, and also with cards like Tormod, the Desecrator and Desecrated Tomb that care about creatures leaving the graveyard.

On that note, this seems especially potent in Syr Konrad decks. It's also hilariously powerful with Felisa, Fang of Silverquill.

Otherwise, unless you're building a Halloween-themed deck, I don't see a three mana 1/1 being useful in many other places, so stick to your sacrifice and aristocrats themes.

Rev, Tithe Extractor

With a name like that, I expected Rev to have an Orzhov hybrid pip somewhere in her text box, but I guess not. Anyways, Rev is another entry in a long line of theft commanders, which are not my favorite.

I'd rather play the cards in my deck that I built to work together, than play randomly from my opponents' libraries. The other issue with Rev is that unlike other theft commanders like Gonti, you're completely reliant on the Treasures she makes to cast those cards.

I suppose she's fine in the 99 of other theft decks, and a sneaky inclusion in aggressive artifact decks if you care about the Treasures, but otherwise I'm dodging the tithe.

Tinybones, Bauble Burglar

Now here is a better theft commander. Couple Tinybones with his usual friends, discard spells, and you can cast whatever you want. You'll get access to a lot of cards more quickly with cards like Arterial Flow and use Megrim-style effects to put the burn on your opponents too.

This Tinybones will also go well in the 99 of other versions of himself, and will be extremely annoying in wheel decks, but you'd only do that if you're a monster... right?

Zul Ashur, Lich Lord

I'll tease the next Brew For Your Buck article here! We're taking a look at Zul in our first budget article featuring commanders from Foundations, so check back next week for that. I won't spoil too much, but the way I'd build Zul is with a lot of self-mill or dredge, Entomb effects, and of course, ZOMBIES.

Also Lord of the Forsaken seems pretty busted in this deck. Otherwise, Zul is an on-type recursion piece for other Zombie decks, so check consider adding him there if you're looking for more ways to feed your necromantic urges.

Uncommons & Commons

Midnight Snack

In addition to some fantastic art by Kai Carpenter, this is a great new inclusion for Food decks, providing you with a steady supply of yummies and maybe even a win condition if you manage to gain enough life in a turn. I like that it also incentivizes attacking, something I think isn't done enough in general in our format.

Nazar, the Velvet Fang

Nazar is pretty powerful for an uncommon commander. Being able to have the ability to draw cards on your commander is no joke, even if this ability is a little bit slow.

Nazar should obviously be coupled with a lot of lifegain cards (like Midnight Snack!) and goes well in the 99 of those decks too. Throwing in some proliferate to speed up the card draw doesn't sound like a bad idea either.

Ozox, the Clattering King

All the way down here we come to the card I'm most excited for. Why? Ratadrabik of Urborg. Ozox goes berserk in conjunction with my favorite commander of all time, and can even go infinite with Phyrexian Altar (what else is new?) if sequenced right:

1. Sacrifice Ozox, floating . Ratadrabik and Ozox trigger, creating a nonlegendary token of Ozox, and Jumblejones.
2. Sacrifice Jumblejones, returning the nontoken Ozox to your hand, then sacrifice the nonlegendary Ozox token, floating each time. You'll also make another Jumblebones token, which you can sacrifice for any color.
3. Use from the floating to recast Ozox and repeat! Each time you'll net one mana.

Throw in a card from further down the list, Vengeful Bloodwitch, and you're winning the game instead.

Even if you're not going infinite, sacrifice decks should rejoice, Ozox gives these decks two bodies in one (which isn't new) but then has the chance to recur the original so you always have fodder! Jumblebones bringing back Ozox is also a good way around the commander tax if the Clattering King is your commander.

Revenge of the Rats

It's mono-black Spider Spawning! Okay, it's a little worse, but both the original cost and the flashback side are cheaper than the Innistrad classic, so you're getting what you pay for.

This obviously goes great in creature-heavy self-mill decks like Sidisi, Brood Tyrant, but don't skip this for Sacrifice decks either. Like we saw with Ozox, it's a lot of fodder for a single card. On a personal note, this is getting slammed into my mono-black cube (like a few others here)

Vengeful Bloodwitch

There are some slight differences, but this is basically another copy of Blood Artist. If you want the original, you'll probably want the new one too. I expect this to be among the most expensive uncommons from the set to start, but yet again we should rely on Foundations' long print run to keep the price down.

Wriggling Grub

A quick mention for this guy as it's again three bodies on one card. Sacrifice decks are eating good this set, even if Worms and Rats seem to be the menu options.

Sanguine Syphoner

A new toy for my fellow Belbe enthusiasts!

Foundations looks like a great set for Magic players new and old, and I'm glad we're getting a flagship way to bring new players into the game. Let me know in the comments if you liked or disliked my review, missed a card that you wanted to see, or anything else.

You can check out my regular budget series Brew For Your Buck every other Tuesday on EDHREC, and I've also got some great articles for beginners coming out too.

If you want to get in touch with me, DM me on Twitter @BrewForYourBuck. I'll see you next time!

Brian Cain

Brian played Magic intermittently between 2003 and 2017 when he fully embraced his love for Commander. Finding ways to maximize the value of each piece of cardboard in the deck is one of his favorite things to explore, especially if it involves putting lands in the graveyard! Outside of Magic, Brian works as a consultant in the marine industry, turning his passion for boats and ships into a career.