Things became fundamentally slower, and suddenly Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver wasnt just an anemic little speed bump but a powerful disruption and card advantage spell
In the early days of MTG, Richard Garfield and his team experimented with having players take physical actions to activate a cards ability
Getting to run one of those in the command zone sounded incredibly appealing for this strategy, and the colors would call for unique ways to go about it
What Makes This Event Extra Special
We've chosen these cards because they either showcase environmental detail in a singular card or continue a story or theme across multiple cards
For these commanders, we manually curated speed modifiers and archetype tags: Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy: speed -2, combo archetype ("infinite mana into activated ability creature cheats") Najeela, the Blade-Blossom: speed -2, aggro+combo ("infinite combat steps with any WUBRG source") Urza, Lord High Artificer: speed -2, artifacts+combo ("artifact combo and infinite mana") There are 16 commanders in this table, all chosen because their power comes from synergy with the 99 rather than their individual text
