Hello everyone, and welcome to my Heavy Hitters overview for Commoner. We’ll be examining the cards from the upcoming set that I think will make a splash in the Commoner format within the existing hero pool, so anything related to Betsy, Victor Goldmane, Olympia, or the new Kassai won’t be touched on.

I’d like to start off by saying that Heavy Hitters as a set is slightly weaker on power level for the Commoner metagame, due to the set needing to account for the balance of draft and sealed deck gameplay. But there are some gems within the card list.

Rhinar Gets a Whole Batch of Toys

Of all the heroes to get a huge bump in power from the set, Rhinar stands out heads-and-shoulders above the rest. In particular, I’d like to highlight the new Beat Chest mechanic, which is extremely strong at common due to the scarcity of hand manipulation in the random discards. Being an ability that allows optional intimidation from Rhinar’s hero power and slight upside of creating a token on hit means that these attacks can be played after some buffing, or upfront while representing a reaction in hand.

To add to that, both Assault and Battery and Pound Town have good enough rate due to limited needs. Seven strength, three block means that some of the cards with no block value such as Smash with Big Tree are entirely obsoleted from existing lists – a step towards Rhinar’s initial power from Welcome to Rathe.

Monstrous Veil is also an amazing upgrade for the hero, and really puts Bone Vizier to shame; LSS has once again knocked it out the park with the rare equipment design. Battleworn still remains the absolute king of equipment keywords, and being a potential intimidate trigger that doesn’t force you to be down a card in hand to begin with is a huge boon to the deck.

I’d also like to quickly shout out the Windup cycle for its versatility and flexibility in a hero like Rhinar, providing some setup for the following turn and also an intimidate trigger. Which of the three is the one to play, however, seems to be very matchup- and meta-dependent, as I can see merits to all three tokens that they produce. But their poor block value means that you can’t feasibly overload on them without risking some clunky hands on defense.

Warrior Gets Some Interesting Tools

Due to the limited gameplay of Heavy Hitters, Warrior as a class sees itself gain more attack actions with the hybrid cards that spider-web across the set for draft purposes, and much fewer attack reactions.

Agile Engagement is perhaps the best of the sparse reactive pickings for Warrior, as the Agility and Might tokens encourage more setup-oriented gameplay, as opposed to forcing your opponent to make bad decisions and blocks. There are many ways to buff the next attack and create one of the tokens, whether on hit or through a wager, but these all tend to either block for two or offer the most minimum rate of a one-for-three bonus in strength.

That being said, there are some small gems here. Edge Ahead in red is at the baseline of a one-for-three pump to the next Warrior attack, but threatening Agility via wager encourages the opponent to block with cards from hand, making for some easy reprise enablers, feeding into the ability of Cintari Saber or simply maintaining the aggression. Additionally, it blocks for three, an extremely important aspect for a card’s playability in Commoner and is probably the push that Kassai, Cintari Sellsword needs to have a critical mass of go again, taking her to almost a 50% of go again enablers.

While the actions and reactions themselves are largely underwhelming, Warrior received some very interesting weapons at rare. Both Parry Blade and Hot Streak are extremely unique designs and are indicative of how the rare equipment and weapons are continually some of the best new cards to come out from LSS.

Hot Streak in particular seems to synergize well with Edge Ahead, forcing the block from the wager as well as Dorinthea’s ability to threaten the second attack. Add in Quicksilver Dagger to the mix and that’s a lot of multi-attacking weapons at your disposal. Now, Cintari Saber is still most likely the best option in this mismatching one-handed weapon setup, due to retaining any strength bonuses from its ability for the entire duration of the turn. But Hot Streak is definitely worth considering as it negates the need for specific cards to enable the go again from the Warrior’s side.

Guardian Wins Again

Much to the annoyance (or excitement, depending on who you ask) of players, Guardian has received perhaps the strongest card for Commoner in the set: Miller’s Grindstone.

The incredibly on-the-nose name aside, Miller’s Grindstone is the first four-power one-handed weapon for the class since the majestic-rarity Winter’s Wail, a rate that is usually reserved for meeting specific conditions as seen in High Riser, Hammer of Havenhold, and Titan’s Fist. So the floor of the weapon is already quite high, and the ability is even better. Clashing on hit and being able to shred their top card on winning the clash is amazing for fatigue-oriented strategies such as Oldhim, and also only happening on hitting provides such a powerful threat of activation that it demands blocking from the opponent, which in many cases is potentially better than the clash itself.

The downside of losing the clash is a real factor, gradually shrinking the Grindstone on every loss. But in Commoner where most attacks don’t go higher than four or five, it’s quite easy to have the odds in your favor. Especially when you’re on a slightly more aggressive-leaning Guardian strategy in comparison to the Oldhim deck I shared a few articles ago, there will be very few matchups where you’ll be consistently losing clashes, and those matchups will be quite rare as well. Even in the defensive decks, there’s no punishment for tying the clash. So in the matchups where they’re relying on buffs from the hero or equipment, such as Ira, or are trying to be more low to the ground, such as Chane and Fai, there is still a high chance to draw or win the clash. Miller’s Grindstone is an amazing new card, and one I personally can’t wait to play with.

Test of Strength

I was initially extremely high on Test of Strength (it was revealed long before preview season) as another four-block card that would fit right into defensive strategies and sideboards against the Dash menace.

However, as I’ve had more time to process and analyze the card, I’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps it isn’t as much of a slam dunk auto-include as I initially thought. Having to play the block from hand only means that it has to be in hand on the turn where they deploy a zero-for-four to gain the maximum amount of value in answering their breakpoints. As such, my assessment of the card now occupies a similar space to Oasis Respite: a nice “free” slot within the sideboard for a specific matchup, and one that shines specifically against heroes like Ira and Dash.

Concluding Thoughts

Overall, Heavy Hitters has some fun and interesting new tools for existing heroes in Commoner, even though the majority of the set appears to be on the weaker side relative to the format’s power level. I really hope that some of the new heroes in the set, in particular the new Kassai and Victor, can find some sort of place within the metagame as the card pool continually gets expanded and their identities become more fleshed out.

Join me next time as I continue with the deep dives into decks within the format. Until then, have fun playing Commoner.

Daniel Yam

Daniel is a competitive psychopath who has relegated himself into playing the most casual format of Commoner. Starting Magic at the onset of Shards block, he jumped into Flesh and Blood when the Ira demo decks were being given out to Australian stores and is a proud holder of a 4-digit GEM ID. In his spare time, he enjoys trying to convince his friends to play increasingly worse cards, going to museums, and playing Guild Wars.