Think about this: Your Commander is a skin-changer from Center-earth who’s assumed the type of a large black bear. He leads a military of lesser bears — infusing them with further bear energy in order that they develop stronger — into battle. However then one among your opponents drops a Blasphemous Act or Toxic Deluge, wiping out your complete board of creatures. There’s one Magic: The Gathering card you need in your hand if this occurs to your Beorn the Fierce deck. This 23-year-old card has at all times been first rate, however with Beorn as your Commander, it units you up for the final word comeback.
Beorn the Fierce is likely one of the hottest Commanders from Magic’s newest The Hobbit crossover set, with 4,410 decks registered on EDHREC as of this writing. The five-mana 6/6 has trample and provides each different bear you management +2/+2. In the beginning of fight, he offers a trample counter that additionally offers them the bear kind. When you management no less than three bears after that, you draw two playing cards.
Commanders with each inherent fight tips and a draw engine typically turn out to be massively in style, and Beorn isn’t any exception. He’s arguably one of many best Commanders ever for a bear typal or kindred deck that focuses on bear-typed creatures. The place he’s missing, nonetheless, is in safety, particularly as a result of filling up your board with a ton of bears makes you weak to board wipes. That’s the place Caller of the Claw is available in.
Initially launched in 2003’s Legions, Caller of the Claw is a three-mana 2/2 elf with flash. (You understand it’s previous as a result of the unique printing describes the flash impact earlier than it grew to become a named skill.) When it enters the battlefield, you create a 2/2 inexperienced bear creature token for each nontoken creature put into your graveyard from the battlefield that flip.
Let’s say you management Beorn and 5 different nontoken creatures, bear or in any other case, when an opponent casts Blasphemous Act, dealing 13 injury to each creature. Your complete military dies, however you possibly can forged Caller of the Claw after the board wipe resolves and create six 2/2 Bears. Even Beorn counts, since Commanders technically enter the graveyard earlier than you progress them again to the Command Zone.
You’ll end the flip with Caller and 6 Bear tokens, whereas everybody else most likely has an empty battlefield. When you recast Beorn, these six tokens turn out to be 4/4s, after which he could make Caller into one other bear at first of fight, giving it the identical +2/+2 bonus and trample. Since you management no less than three bears, you’ll additionally draw two playing cards. All of a sudden, you’ve bought seven 4/4 bears with trample and one king bear that’s a 6/6. What when you’ve got Doubling Season out? That’s a dozen bears able to maul the opponent that simply worn out the earlier bear troupe. What when you’ve got Yedora, Grave Gardener out when these creatures die? Each single different nontoken creature returns to the battlefield as a forest.
The one main disadvantage in relation to Caller of the Claw is that it solely replaces nontoken creatures, so any bear tokens you had received’t depend. You additionally want Caller in your hand and three untapped mana accessible when the board wipe occurs. And, if an opponent exiles your creatures moderately than destroying them, Caller turns into ineffective.
Playing cards like Heroic Intervention could make your permanents indestructible and shield them from focused injury or destroy results. However Caller of the Claw needs your creatures to die first, so you possibly can convert these losses into a completely new military. That distinction makes Caller particularly helpful towards Poisonous Deluge, which provides creatures detrimental energy and toughness moderately than destroying them. Neither indestructible nor hexproof can save creatures decreased to zero toughness with a blanket impact like this, however Caller of the Claw can nonetheless change these nontoken creatures since Deluge sends them to the graveyard.
It’s value noting that fairly a number of bear creatures are simply generic our bodies, however as nontoken creatures with no talents, they tackle extra worth when Caller of the Claw is within the combine. Alpine Grizzly, Balduvian Bears, Bear Cub, Forest Bear, Golden Bear, Grizzly Bears, Ordinary Bear, and Runeclaw Bear all choose up +2/+2 from Beorn — they usually basically come again from the lifeless as 2/2s with Caller of the Claw, whereas bear tokens don’t. Ruxa, Patient Professor, additionally turns into far more intriguing with this construct, since he offers creatures with no talents +1/+1 (that features generic tokens) and the power to assign fight injury as if they weren’t blocked. Better of all? Ruxa himself is a bear. The enchantment Muraganda Petroglyphs can even stack right here, giving creatures with no talents +2/+2 (remember the fact that this one buffs opponents’ creatures as effectively). In idea, you possibly can make these 2/2s into 7/7s with the appropriate setup.
29% of all Beorn decks registered on EDHREC embrace Caller of the Claw. Each printing of the cardboard has drastically elevated in worth because the launch of The Hobbit again in August. For years, its market worth had sat beneath the $1.50 mark, nevertheless it started inching upward in current months. Based on TCG Player data, its worth jumped from $6 two weeks in the past to $15 or extra in the present day. The Commander 2015 printing climbed from roughly $3.22 to $9.88, a rise of greater than 200%. Beorn frenzy has additionally pushed up costs for different bear staples like Bearscape or Ayula, Queen Amongst Bears.
That doesn’t essentially imply a whole bunch of hundreds of gamers are out of the blue shopping for Caller of the Claw. As an older card with comparatively restricted provide, it doesn’t take an infinite variety of gross sales to maneuver its worth. Round 80 copies of the Commander 2015 printing reportedly bought over three months as demand elevated.
Nonetheless, the cardboard’s sudden rise makes excellent sense. Caller of the Claw has at all times supplied creature-heavy inexperienced decks a method to get better from catastrophe. Beorn simply turns that substitute military into one thing far more harmful. A well-timed board wipe can destroy so many methods. With three untapped mana and Caller of the Claw ready in your hand, it simply offers Beorn decks a brand new alternative to growl, smash, and hibernate after they win.
Hi, I’m Rishab. I’m a passionate pc gamer and an avid video game content writer. I have been involved with video games for over 2 decades now, and even today, after playing an astronomical number of games over the years, I’m still eager for more. In my free time, you will find me enjoying a hot cup of coffee and playing my favorite relaxing fishing game, Dave the Diver.
