Do you like attacking? Enjoy various token synergies? Is sacrifice theme your jam? If the answer to all of these questions was a resounding Yes!, then you’re going to enjoy Mardu Surge precon.
In today’s article you’ll find what we know about it so far, and when we’re getting the missing information. Let’s start by examining the deck’s theme, and then check spoilers and decklist, which was revealed on March 20th.
Create Tokens, Attack & Sac
This isn’t be your typical token deck, where you just spawn a bunch of tokens and try to overwhelm your opponents with them. While that could sometimes be your plan, it won’t be the only one. Mardu Surge isn’t just a one trick pony.
Your games will still often start by you making some tokens. However, you’ll want to be quite aggressive with them and turn them sideways quickly. If your opponents can’t make profitable blocks, that’s great! You’re getting in for some damage.
But even if they can block, you won’t care too much about that. You can simply sacrifice blocked tokens for value. This way, your opponents should be in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario. And that’s just where you want them to be.
One interesting tidbit is that we’ve already got something similar with Hail, Caesar, one of the four Fallout Commander decks. The deck was in the same colors and featured a pretty similar strategy. But let’s take a look at the decklist and discover how the two decks differ.
Mardu Surge Decklist
The full decklist was revealed on March 24th. If the new cards aren’t showing, that means they haven’t been added to the database yet. You can find their images in the section below.
Mardu Surge Spoilers
Here you can see all 10 new cards, alongside some commentary about the main and secondary commander of the deck.
Three mana is as cheap as it gets for a 3-color commander, so that’s pretty good already. (Barring any activation costs or hybrid mana shenanigans.) A stat line of a 3/3 is perfectly fine, but as always, we’re mostly interested in the text box.
First thing there is the new mechanic called mobilize. That means that whenever Zurgo attacks, a 1/1 Warrior token joins him. At the beginning of the next end step, you’ll need to sacrifice the token.
That’s not too bad, as you do get paid whenever one of your creature tokens leaves the battlefield. (Note that it doesn’t necessarily need to die, so even if they are exiled, you still get the trigger.) When that happens, each opponent loses a life. Unless the token was attacking. In that case, you get something even better – a new card from the top of your deck. Neat!
Zurgo Stormrender is a self-contained engine, but it plays even better if you’ve got more tokens in play. Plus, it enables some cool play patterns.
First, your opponents might avoid blocking your tokens to deny you card draw. Second, you can sacrifice tokens at the end of the combat step with instant speed effects, in order to draw cards after they’ve dealt damage. Third, when your opponents are on low life total, you can sacrifice them outside combat to make them lose life.
All in all, Zurgo seems like a really cool and potentially powerful (depending on the other 99) card.
Neriv brings its own Dragon Fodder when it comes into play. As such, it already plays really well with Zurgo. But there’s the second ability, which makes Neriv a perfect commander all on its own.
That ability triggers whenever Neriv attacks. When you do so you exile a bunch of cards from the top of your deck. The amount depends on the number of tokens with different names you control. You can play the exiled cards on any turn that you’ve attacked with a commander.
So, you’re basically drawing a bunch of cards without worrying about maximum hand size. (No need to play Reliquary Tower in your 3-color deck.) Sure, you can only play them on your turn, but the card advantage can be massive.
Plus, there’s a neat deckbuilding challenge here, if you’re considering upgrading the precon with Neriv in mind. You don’t want to go all in on a specific token, but instead opt for a nice variety. This means that the deck won’t be just another generic token build.
One tip when building around it: note that the card doesn’t say creature token. This means that it isn’t that restrictive, as it counts stuff like Treasures too.
Conclusion
So far, the Mardu Surge precon looks pretty neat. It’s always great when a precon offers you two strong commanders, that both fit into the same strategy. This way, you can easily swap them and get a slightly different gameplay experience, without needing to change the other 98 cards.
Do like like the deck? If so, you might want to preorder Mardu Surge on Amazon. This way, you’ll lock-in the preorder price and avoid any potential price spikes. These sometimes happen with the most popular decks.
If you want to compare it to the others, check our article about Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander Precons. This time around there are five different decks, one for each clan.
Until next time, have fun, and may you never run out of tokens to sacrifice for value!