We’ve had our first potential Commander previewed from Secrets of Strixhaven, and it’s really cool. RW gets Lorehold, the Historian, a cost reducing, miracle making rummager. Here’s the lowdown on how she works, and some sweet synergy cards to check out if you’re building her.
LOREHOLD THE HISTORIAN
Secrets of Strixhaven brings back the Elder Dragons in charge of the schools, and Lorehold is here to explore more new exciting ground for Boros Lorehold Borehold decks. This time, we get a 5/5 Flying Haste for five, which is already pretty solid. She gives each instant and sorcery in our hand miracle {2}. This means that we can cast our instants and sorceries for {2} mana when we draw them if it’s the first card drawn during a turn – including during opponents’ turns.
Not content to give us some powerful cost reduction, Lorehold also lets us rummage at the beginning of each opponent’s upkeep, helping us trigger Miracle on each turn of a full turn cycle in Commander.
Miracle cards have been popular in Legacy due to their competitive cost for the effects you get. Some have also been pretty okay in Commander, like Reforge the Soul. But what spells are we interested in casting for just {2} mana?
TWO MANA IS A GREAT DEAL
The first thing that comes to mind is the kind of haymaker finisher that Boros or white decks are already playing. Storm Herd for two mana relatively early in the game should net us plenty of tokens. Beacon of Immortality for two mana is a great way to keep your life total topped up. Spells like Call Forth the Tempest get a lot better when you’re powering them out for less than eight mana.
Of course, it’s the decidedly more dastardly spells that’ll get you hot under the collar here. Rise of the Eldrazi during an opponent’s turn, for two mana? Bonkers, and definitely something you want to try at least once. Ultima is also devious, given it ends the turn. If you miracle this during an opponent’s turn, then you can really screw them over. The classic Razia’s Purification is one to consider for higher bracket games, too. It makes short work of lands. Oh, and there’s Worldfire if you really want to make yourself the archenemy.
A more relaxed way to play the new Lorehold is as a reanimator deck. You can use some of white’s costlier reanimator spells like Storm of Souls, Late to Dinner and Miraculous Recovery for {2} mana, or just rely on the likes of Karmic Guide to bring back the creatures you discard. It won’t get cost reduced, sure, but having a discard outlet means running cards like Karmic Guide is worth it.
Anyway, here are 10 amazing synergy cards you won’t want to miss for Lorehold, the Historian.
LIBRARY OF LENG
Library of Leng is the biggie here, and the one you’re probably most excited to get sleeved up. It means whenever you discard a card with Lorehold (or any other loot effect), you get to put the card on top of your library. This is a replacement effect, not a trigger, so you will have “time” to put that card on top and then draw it as Lorehold’s ability resolves, meaning you can discard the card you want to miracle. Neat.
PENANCE
If you’re not so lucky with sequencing, you need a way to put those cards out of your hand and back on top of the library. You can pay your Penance using a three mana enchantment. The damage prevention part is secondary to the putting a card back part, of course.
SENSEI’S DIVINING TOP
Anyone familiar with Miracle will of course know about the merits of Sensei’s Divining Top. If you were unaware, this little toy can do a heck of a lot for such a low mana investment. It can stack the top of your deck just how you like it, which is perfect in RW where you don’t have ready access to Brainstorm or Preordain.
SCROLL RACK
Those who have been playing Boros decks for a decade and change will know about Scroll Rack, which was one of the only good card advantage engines back in the day – usually combined with Land Tax. You want to run that very same combo here; Land Tax is a phenomenal card, and Scroll Rack is the kind of top-deck manipulation that Lorehold wants in spades.
VICTORY CHIMES/BENDER’S WATERSKIN
How are you going to Miracle four times in a turn cycle? Mana from lands can only get you so far. For whatever you can’t solve with treasure generation, you’ve got Victory Chimes and Bender’s Waterskin. These two will help greatly with giving you mana in every turn of a turn cycle, allowing you to perform as many miracles as you can muster.
PLANETARIUM OF WAN SHI TONG
Given you’re stacking your deck with powerful instants and sorceries that often cost a fair whack to cast, having ways to otherwise cast them for less than face value is crucial to allowing you to not be wholly reliant on having Lorehold in play. That’s where Planetarium of Wan Shi Tong comes in – you get to cast a card for free when you scry or surveil, once each turn. This one works in Spellslinger or in Reanimator, as it doesn’t care about the type of the card; you can cast that Karmic Guide here, for free.
PALANTIR OF ORTHANC
Speaking of scrying and getting payoff for high mana value cards, the Palantir of Orthanc is the perfect tool to bring everything together. You get to scry to set up miracles, and should your opponents choose to mill you out, the high mana value average on your cards might well cause them to lose a huge chunk of life. Otherwise? It’s extra card draw, baby.
LONGSHOT, REBEL BOWMAN
As well as running those mana rocks that untap, you can look to cost reduction to help you miracle more often. Longshot, Rebel Bowman is one such cost reducer, hitting all of your noncreature spells – meaning it’ll reduce the synergistic artifacts and enchantments as well as your instants and sorceries. Getting some bonus burn damage on there and some protection from flyers is the icing on the cake.
MONUMENT TO ENDURANCE
Monument to Endurance is a busted little engine card that has proven its worth in both Standard and Commander. In Lorehold, it turns your discarded rummages into extra cards, mana, or “burn”. That’s everything you could want, and it’s one of the first snap includes I’d consider when building this deck.
ANGEL OF INDEMNITY
Wrapping things up, I want to touch on a card that I expect to see underplayed in Lorehold decks: Angel of Indemnity. The Angel is perfect here as it can recur any of our key synergy pieces or engine cards. It can also help us stabilize by giving us a big chunk of lifelink, and if it does end up in the yard – through dying or being discarded – we can perform a big tempo play by Encoring it out to reanimate multiple things and swing life totals by a big percentage.
END STEP
That’s our picks for the best synergy pieces for Lorehold, the Historian. The first previews of Secrets of Strixhaven have been revealed, including the face Commanders, so be sure to look out for more previews as we get closer to April.
For now, there’s an amazing red-white Dragon to brew around. Let us know your secret tech cards in the comments!
Kristen is Card Kingdom’s Head Writer and a member of the Commander Format Panel. Formerly a competitive Pokémon TCG grinder, she has been playing Magic since Shadows Over Innistrad, which in her opinion, was a great set to start with. When she’s not taking names with Equipment and Aggro strategies in Commander, she loves to play any form of Limited.