Who you gonna call?

I suppose you've all had time to come to terms with the recent announcement regarding changes to the naming of the Elder Dragon Highlander format and the forthcoming multiplayer product featuring 5 seperate EDH Commander decks! With the boost of publicity and the news that there will be 51 brand new cards in the release, it's sure to sell well.

What has me excited is the announcement that these decks will be enemy wedges and will each contain 3 Legendary creatures in Enemy Wedge colours. An "enemy wedge" is a card containing 2 friendly colours, for example Green and Red, with a third "enemy" colour, in this case Blue. Of the legends in the upcoming release, we already know 5 as they are the Planar Chaos dragons. In addition, WotC have decided to give us 2 new legends per enemy wedge. This will vastly improve the playability and popularity of enemy wedge decks. Up to now only 6 enemy wedge legends existed, the 5 Planar Chaos Dragons and Doran the Siege Tower, who shared Treefolk colours from the Lorwyn block.

To sweeten the announcement Wizards gave us one of the 10 unknown legends. Meet Karador, Ghost Chieftain:

An 8-mana 3/4 requiring 3 different coloured mana? I think we need to read the text box because this is seriously underwhelming.

"Karador, Ghost Chieftain costs 1 less to cast for each creature in your Graveyard"

Ok, So he doesn't cost 8, he costs 8-x, where x is the number of creatures in your Graveyard. This means he can cost from 8 down to 3 (the ability doesn't reduce colour mana costs). I'll have to check up on this but I'm fairly sure that you'll be able to get around the general tax with his ability so if you have 11 creatures in your graveyard you'll be able to pay just BGW for the third casting from the commander zone. This makes him very attractive as a general.

What else does he do?

During each of your turns, you may cast one creature from your graveyard.

That's pretty cool, you get an extension of your hand into your graveyard for some nasty creature once per turn. There's an interesting, but minor, tension between how many creatures you have in your graveyard and his cost should he be returned to the Command Zone.

So, what's the advantage to running him over Doran or Teneb? I think it's all going to come down to what strategy you want to run. Doran is likely to be general in a more aggressive build while Teneb will obviously shine when you're in a playgroup where you're pretty sure that everyone else if going to be giving you some goodies to choose from in their graveyards.


Karador is more likely be be useful in builds where you're less reliant on other players and happier to set up your own interactions and synergies. Teneb wouldn't necessarily be bad in that style of deck either so the choice could come down to personal preference, very specific builds or just that shiney new general feeling.


Either way, you'll rarely be unhappy when you're filling everyone's graveyards!