Dominaria United Preview
Preview season for Dominaria United (DMU) began yesterday, and this is already shaping up to be an incredible new set. It’s only natural that there’s been a ton of excitement online about new cards and stories from this return to Magic’s most storied plain.
The entire PlayEDH team would like to thank the fine folks at Wizards of the Coast for giving us an opportunity to share in this excitement with a brand new preview card! On behalf of our entire team, we hope that you enjoy this exciting new legendary creature card!
Tetsuo, Imperial Champion is a Mythic Rare that is part of Legends Retold, a group of 20 cards that are considered part of the Dominaria United Commander set. These cards are all remakes of legendary characters that debuted in the original Legends set in 1994.
You can find Legends Retold cards as Traditional Foil Box Toppers in DMU Draft Booster, Set Booster, and Collector Booster Display Boxes. Non-foil and Etched Foil versions of these cards will be available in DMU Collector Boosters. We’re certainly excited to see the rest of the cards in this series.
Seeing as how Tetsuo, Imperial Champion is an updated version of a classic character from Legends, it makes sense to go over a bit of his history before we (Chief, Patiently Waiting for the Rest of the Sword Cycle and Exxaxl, Who Wishes That Colossus Hammer’s Mana Value & Equip Cost Were Reversed) dive into our thoughts on brewing him as a commander!
Tetsuo Umezawa was one of the earliest legendary creatures in Magic’s history, a member of the Umezawa Clan who rose to prominence when he became the Imperial Champion of the Empire of Madara. He was a descendant of Toshiro Umezawa, the roguish samurai who helped end the Kami War on Kamigawa before being granted passage to Dominaria.
Tetsuo traveled with other characters from Legends such as Tor-Wauki, Ayesha Tanaka, and Kei Takahashi. Over time, his code of honor caused him to feel conflicted about the directives of his master, the God-Emperor of Madara. As it turns out, the God-Emperor was eventually revealed to be a character who would later become one of Magic’s most enduring antagonists.
In one of his earliest bids for power, Nicol Bolas had slain the previous Emperor of Madara and installed himself as the God-Emperor. Although he was already a powerful planeswalker by this time, he suffered a major defeat during his battle with Tetsuo on the Meditation Plane and his physical form was actually destroyed.
When he eventually returned to Dominaria, he discovered that Tetsuo was no more and he was forced to settle for indirect vengeance by harming those who had aided the Umezawa Clan. This defeat shaped many of Bolas’s later plots, as he was reluctant to suffer such a costly loss again. His defeat on Ravnica would ironically return him to the Meditation Plane as a prisoner of his brother Ugin.
Chief: Tetsuo, Imperial Champion is the first commander with a Grixis color identity to care about equipment. This might seem unusual, but the execution of the card feels at home in this color identity because it uses equipment to do things that you’d expect from these colors.
Tetsuo presents challenges and opportunities during deck-building that really make him stand out. He has the potential to be an interesting commander to brew around and play, because you’ll be faced with different limitations and synergies than you would with most other Grixis commanders.
Chief: The most notable difference between Tetsuo and most other equipment-focused commanders is the lack of white equipment support. White is far and away the best color at handling equipment, with cards such as Puresteel Paladin, Sigarda’s Aid, and Stoneforge Mystic forming a solid backbone to support any strategy relying on equipment.
There’s no question that white has the most ways to find equipment, use it to gain card advantage, and get around equipment costs. Even so, there are still plenty of tricks in Tetsuo’s colors that will help get the job done. Let’s take a look at a few of them now.
Chief: You can use Magnetic Theft to cheat one of your own equip costs, or you can use it to…borrow an equipment from one of your opponents. If you’re playing at tables where equipment is common, you could even consider a card like Fumble to bounce an opponent’s creature and steal all of the equipment it’s holding!
Exxaxl: Blue gives you access to Anchor to Reality to sacrifice any artifact or creature and turn it into an equipment. With the ever growing amount of food, clue, and treasure generation in EDH, you should have no issues finding something expendable to sacrifice.
Exxaxl: If all else fails, you have access to the normal catch-all black tutors if you want to go that route. Sure, you miss out on white equipment tutors, but you have access to cards like Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor, and Imperial Seal instead. These powerful tutors can find your best equipment or any other cards that you might need.
Exxaxl: Is this the moment when someone finally goes out of their way to play Unscythe, Killer of Kings? This has to be the most color restricted equipment ever made.
Chief: I was actually going to make a Worldslayer joke again, but I’m feeling like Grafted Exoskeleton has actual synergy with Tetsuo so that’s gonna be my “mean” recommendation this time around.
Chief: Tetsuo cares about the mana value of the equipment that he’s holding, you’ll want to play a decent number of equipment cards with a higher mana value. This means that a card like Hammer of Nazahn that does multiple things to help the deck work is a valuable inclusion.
Embercleave feels like a great combat trick for this deck that enables you to catch your opponents by surprise and deal big damage. Kaldra Compleat will allow you to cheat in almost any spell while also offering a ton of value on one card. It even comes with a free body if you need it.
Exxaxl: There’s your creature to sacrifice to Anchor to Reality! Using Kaldra Compleat’s body to tutor for another equipment is peak Phyrexian thinking! Reduce, reuse, recycle. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Chief: I’m morally obligated to point out that the 0/0 Phyrexian Germ never did anything to anyone. I wanted to highlight the fact that Tetsuo’s ability requires him to be equipped when he is declared as an attacker and it also checks to see if he is still equipped when the ability tries to resolve.
This means that an opponent could remove his equipment in response to the ability going on the stack to stop it from working, but it also means that flashing in Embercleave in response to the ability could change the math a little bit.
Exxaxl: ‘Now that I flashed in my Embercleave in response to Tetsuo’s attack trigger, I will cast Surge to Victory for free from hand, targeting Invoke Calamity in my graveyard!’
Chief: Please stop. This is why more people are starting to play stax.
Chief: Cards such as Temporal Manipulation and Relentless Assault offer you an expedient route to victory, as they’re within the range of spells that Tetsuo can easily cast for free. It’s also worth noting that while you can cast Savage Beating for free, you’ll likely want to pay the entwine cost to give Tetsuo double strike to finish off your opponents faster.
Exxaxl: I actually wasn’t actively aware that the current highest mana value of any equipment in the game is 7 until we got the preview card and I actively looked into it. This means that at the time of writing the article there is no way to cast Beacon of Tomorrows or Aminatou’s Augury for free, but you do have a small chance of casting a free Peer into the Abyss!
Exxaxl: It’s important to note what does and does not work with Tetsuo’s second trigger.When choosing to cast an instant or sorcery through Tetsuo, you can pay for additional costs, such as Entwine, Kicker and Suspend. You can not pay alternate casting costs, such as Overload, Delve or Cleave.
This means you will be able to cast cards such as Ancestral Vision or Profane Tutor for 0 mana if Tetsuo is equipped, but you will not be able to cast an overloaded Mizzium Mortars.
Exxaxl: Tetsuo’s trigger is on attack, not on damage, which matters a whole lot since you can meaningfully impact your opponent’s board prior to moving to the declare blockers step. Playing sorcery spells in steps and phases where you usually don’t have access to them is rather strong. On attack, River’s Rebuke, Toxic Deluge, or Chain Reaction without paying any mana sounds absolutely devastating.
Exxaxl: Copying Tetsuo’s second trigger with Strionic Resonator or Lithoform Engine seems like a fun interaction to pull off. The amount of potential mana cheating you can achieve with either of these seems quite high.
Chief: The important thing to remember is that Tetsuo’s ability is modal, so these cards will copy whichever mode you choose. You may want to deal damage twice or you may want to cast two different spells. If you’re casting something like Time Warp, then you may want to copy the spell with Lithoform Engine instead of the ability.
We hope that you’ve enjoyed our preview card. We’re looking forward to seeing many more exciting new cards as preview season continues. Tetsuo, Imperial Champion finally does a bit of justice to an epic character from the early days of Magic story. We’d once again like to thank Wizards of the Coast for the opportunity to showcase this awesome new commander!
What did you think of Tetsuo, Imperial Champion? Are there any other characters that you’re hoping to see in Legends Retold? Let us know on Twitter! We’d love to hear from you.
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