Sway of the Stars – Betrayers of Kamigawa
Date Reviewed: May 8, 2025
Ratings:
Constructed:
Casual:
Limited:
Multiplayer:
Commander [EDH]:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Effects like this are always on a knife-edge. Too cheap, and they become downright broken; too expensive, and nobody plays them even in joke decks. I remember people trying anyway with Sway of the Stars back in the Champions of Kamigawa era, and it was pretty bad even by the standards of joke decks. I never, though, thought it should have stayed on the Commander ban list as long as it did. Yes, it gets around the format’s life total cushion while simultaneously making it hard for people to take advantage of it, but any format needs things that push a game towards a conclusion. (A conclusion other than “everyone gets bored and goes home”.) Nowadays, suspend is also a thing and can make Sway of the Stars a lot less symmetrical, and dealing a total of 21 damage with things is a much more reasonable ask than 120. It might feel wrong to play a ten-mana sorcery in what is essentially an aggro deck, but we do what we have to do.
I feel I should also point out that setting players’ life totals to 7 will count as them gaining or losing the difference between 7 and their current life total. That means that if you can somehow find a way to cast a card like Final Punishment afterwards, you have a ridiculously expensive and difficult “kill target player” combo. But where are you going to do that if not in Commander?
Constructed: 1
Casual: 2.5
Limited: 1
Multiplayer: 3
Commander [EDH]: 3
Recently freed from the Commander ban list, Sway of the Stars is…certainly flashy and extravagant, a board wipe that also resets resources and pulls everyone to 7 life. It’s an unholy fusion of Upheaval and Timetwister, which will certainly raise eyebrows.
10 mana is a massive ask, and it’s certainly an issue in formats like Modern, but in a format like Commander, being able to reset resources while still potentially having the mana to do things with afterwards is quite potent; if you can cast this with mana left over, you get first crack at ruining people’s attempts to get back in the game. There’s also some shenanigans with phasing and temporary exile that can still make this less symmetrical than it looks.
Sway of the Stars is a combo piece first and foremost, though; you’re casting this with the intention of exploding a game wide pen in most cases. This can be a fun “screw you” reset button, of course, but…those are rarely going to win you the game, maybe instead just drawing everyone’s ire. It’s definitely a fascinating card to craft around, but I do question how efficacious it will ultimately be.
Constructed: 1 (no)
Casual: 2
Limited: 1.5
Multiplayer: 3.25
Commander [EDH]: 3.75 (if you’re playing this, make sure you have an engine that can end the game when the effect finishes resolving)
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