Mardu Surge Commander Precon Review: Zurgo, Stormrender Is the Real MVP

It’s day three of Tarkir: Dragonstorm spoiler season and the second of five new Commander precons has officially been revealed.

It’s day three of Tarkir: Dragonstorm spoiler season and the second of five new Commander precons has officially been revealed. Mardu Surge is here, and it looks incredibly impressive.

A ton of new cards in this deck look like they can see play across a variety of different archetypes. Not only that, but the payoffs that are a bit more specific are incredibly explosive. Creature token lovers are in for a real treat.

Zurgo Stormrender

If you ask us, Zurgo Stormrender is the most powerful Commander of all the five precon decks. Zurgo can easily helm a terrifying token-based deck, and can easily upgrade other existing precons like the Hail Caesar MTG Fallout deck.

At worst, Zurgo Stormrender is an aristocrat effect that threatens to win the game, which is an incredibly high floor. At best, Zurgo is a win condition that, with some careful deckbuilding, can turn into a card advantage engine. This Commander literally does everything a deck could ever want as long as you meet his conditions.

Expect Zurgo to show up in a lot of existing 99s of token synergy decks.

Neriv, Crackling Vanguard

Neriv, Crackling Vanguard is far less adaptable than Zurgo, but it’s not a bad card in token strategies that support it. Neriv will excel in creating a lot of Impulse draw-based card advantage. The cards don’t necessarily go away, but having your Commander removed repetitively will make it difficult to access your loot. The build conditions of this Commander are also a lot more strict than Zurgo. Zurgo doesn’t really care what tokens you use, but Neriv specifically needs tokens of different names to scale his payoff.

In our opinion, Zurgo, Stormrender is the superior Commander by a landslide. If anything, Neriv is a cool support option in creature tokens decks, but that’s likely where the card ends.

Ainok Strike Leader

Ainok Strike Leader is a fantastic one-man army in Commander. Having the option to attack with your Commander to trigger this creature means that it can somewhat shrug off summoning sickness. Even though the attack trigger resembles Myriad somewhat, your Goblin tokens are permanent, which allows Ainok Strike Leader to continually build a bigger board.

Eventually, your opponents will need to deal with your board state, but Ainok Strike Leader can fight against that by sacrificing itself. This is an incredibly valuable card for two mana. Any Commander deck that wants to go wide should consider running this card.

Notably, Ainok Strike Leader has some terrifying synergy with Tymna, the Weaver. This could even make this creature cEDH playable.

Ironwill Forger

Ironwill Forger is another powerful card for decks that want to turn sideways. Granting any nonlegendary creature Myriad has a scary amount of potential. Worst case scenario, you can always give the Forger itself Myriad.

Not every Commander deck is going to want this, but using Ironwill Forger will hardly be difficult. Any deck that wants to create copies of creatures with ETB effects will be interested in granting their creatures Myriad. In other cases, where your creatures scale with the size of your board, Ironwill Forger threatens a ton of damage. Construct tokens from Urza, Chief Artificer are an example of this. All in all, Ironwill Forger is a solid card that will likely find a home under a sizeable amount of Commanders.

Bone Devourer

Bone Devourer is probably less exciting than it appears. There are a lot of creatures that offer a scaling reward equal to how many creatures died upon entry. Devourer is capable of drawing a lot of cards, but it needs to die for that to happen. Considering how popular Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares are in Commander, this might be a surprisingly difficult task to accomplish.

Goldlust Triad

Goldlust Triad is a rather straightforward Dragon that should find itself in both Treasure and Dragon decks. Five mana is rarely the top end that Dragon Typal decks want to get to, and Goldlust Triad can help bridge the gap. Any cards that trigger upon a Dragon entering also have strong synergy with this card. It’s not a flashy creature, but there are certainly decks that will want this.

That said, Goldlust Triad will be at its best when its Myriad and combat damage triggers can be copied. This can lead to a ton of damage, a massive amount of Treasures, and a huge tempo swing. I would expect this to show up in Isshin, Two Heavens as One decks.

Redoubled Stormsinger

Redoubled Stormsinger is an interesting effect in any deck that’s creating lots of creature tokens, especially if you have tools to utilise them before they die. Whether you’re somehow skipping your end step, or sacrificing your extra tokens, Redoubled Stormsinger has the capability of creating a ton of value for just three mana