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Pojo's Magic The Gathering
Card of the Day

Daily Since November 2001!

Commune with Lava
Image from Wizards.com

Commune with Lava
- Dragons of Tarkir

Reviewed April 30, 2015

Constructed: 3.88
Casual: 3.25
Limited: 3.13
Multiplayer: 3.63

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale:
1 - Horrible  3 - Average.  5 - Awesome

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Card of the Day Reviews 


David Fanany

Player since 1995

Commune with Lava
 
Of all the things I would have expected Magic to let you commune with, lava is actually pretty low on the list. Then again, it does fit with the more action-oriented nature of Tarkir's flavor. "It's like Commune with Nature . . . except hotter!" In fact, it's arguably better than Commune with Nature later in the game, when you're more likely to need something with an immediate impact. The issue it has is that you need a lot of mana to get a good selection of things to cast with it, which means you have less mana to do so. Perhaps in a burn deck where cards are cheap anyway? It's hard to say right now, but I find it hard to believe that any pseudo-card drawing effect is going to be entirely useless.
 
Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 3/5
Limited: 3/5
Multiplayer: 3/5

Paul

Welcome back readers todays card is quite interesting, Commune With Lava is a powerful X spell that allows you to exile the top X cards and play them with a timing restriction. The upside is this card is instant speed and can allow you to play those cards until the end of your next turn. This card by itself does nothing but relies on hitting other powerful cards to make it worth it, being able to dig an extra X cards deep. In standard I can see this in a slower more controlling deck that features red its not close to Sphinxes Revelation but it tries to do its best impression, allowing you to dig for finishers or more cards to help deal with your opponents threats. This card fulfills a niche role and fulfills it well. In modern, legacy and vintage this card is just too much mana it doesn't do enough to justify its inclusion and is just in general too inefficient for these more high powered formats. In casual and multiplayer this card is pretty mediocre it depends on the shell of your deck and if you want to slam it down on your turn to try and get some value or too hold it up alongside something like a counterspell or removal, in certain decks it can do okay but very specialized decks. In limited this card is hard to grade it basically can potentially draw you a few of the top X cards but is very slow and has no immediate impact on the board unless you hit another card meaning its power level is quite low. Overall a mixed bag a card I feel has some competitive and casual potential but it remains to be seen.
 
Constructed: 2.5
Casual: 2.0
Limited: 1.5
Multiplayer: 2.5

Michael "Maikeruu" Pierno

Today's card of the day is Commune with Lava which is a two Red and X instant that has you exile the top X cards of your library and they may be played until the end of your next turn.  This is up there with Fireball for being the card you want in hand in an infinite mana build. 
Even without that this has quite a bit of potential in Red's high aggro or burn decks as a source of card advantage after the early turns where those builds often run out of tempo.  Overall it is strong in the right situations and best when the deck is built entirely around it, so it is likely going to be seen mostly in Casual settings and possibly be a Competitive dark horse for the notable card advantage.
 
In Limited this is an aggressive first pick in Booster that can offer a fairly large advantage in the later stages of the game, is an excellent topdeck, and has minimal drawback overall.  In Sealed it does benefit from having a very balanced mana curve and color distribution, with more than a splash of Red.  The potential power of having two, three, or even more cards at a very reasonable price makes playing Red almost a given and it should not be overlooked unless the remainder of the pool is terrible.
 
Constructed: 4.0
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 4.5
Multiplayer: 4.5

Mattedesa

Deck Garage
Commune with Lava
 
I misunderstood this card at first. I thought it said “until end of turn, you can play those cards,” but once I played against the card, my opponent (unfortunately for me) had read the card correctly, and knew to play it at the end of my turn, untapping  his lands, and playing a lot of cool cards. This is really quite brutal in most red decks. Burn decks that run out of cards can draw a few more burn spells. Creature-centric decks can usually find one or two creatures to play. Any kind of deck is likely to find another land they can play.
 
Of course, this is a late game card, so there will be times and matchups where you only have three or four mana and this is rather underwhelming as you get nothing but land or exile cards that are too expensive for your current mana sources.
 
If you’re running mostly red, it’s worth it to run at least a couple of these in a constructed deck.
 
In multiplayer, this would be a lot of fun to play if you have some effect that allows you to untap your lands on opponents’ turns, since you can have several opportunities to play any or all of the cards you turn up!
 
Constructed: 4.0
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 3.5
Multiplayer: 4.5

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