Exclusive Commander Legends: Battle For Baldur’s Gate Preview Card – Intellect Devourer

The new Magic: The Gathering set will be available in a few weeks. Prerelease begins a week after Friday. Sign up at your local gaming store to get involved with events. Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate returns the game to the setting of Dungeons & Dragons and the Forgotten Realms, but as it says in the name, the set focuses on an important location in video games as well as tabletop adventures, Baldur’s Gate. We posted last week a breakdown of the set’s mechanics. You can check that story for more information about the returning and new mechanics.

Wizards of the Coast has graciously allowed us to preview one of the cards coming with this set, and this creature may want all of the big-brain plays you can muster. Intellect Devourer is a great example.

Brian Valeza, Art

This creepy fellow will do its best to make sure you always have a play to make after slamming this 2/4 horror into play for 3B, and you don’t even have to dig through your own deck. Intellect Devourer removes one card from the opponent’s deck (of). They(choosing) until Intellect Devourer departs the battlefield. Then, you can play lands or spells from among those exiled cards and spend mana as though it were of any color to cast them. You may not get the best of what each player is holding, but this creature can offer tons of value to you in the right deck while becoming a major annoyance to the rest of the table.

Art by Martina Fačková

Intellect Devourer can fit into decks which don’t allow you to cast spells that aren’t yours. Battle for Baldur’s Gate has an excellent Commander to help you achieve this theme. Tasha the Witch Queen is a Planeswalker who rewards you with 3/3 flyers for casting another spell. Tasha can also take spells out of an opponent’s graveyard. This will be a great combination with Intellect Devourer as the spells you cast and exile with it go straight to their bin. 

Zack Stella’s Art

Thassa the Deep Dwelling, a duplicate of Thassa that can steal Intellect Devourer for hand-stealing throughout a Tasha deck is recommended. Thassa can exile and return up to one creature you control to the battlefield (also under your control) at the end of your turn. Blinking Intellect Devourer in this way essentially refills your hand just in time for your opponent’s turns. You can also work some fun political plays with allies by having them give you their removal spells, land drops, or creatures to cast that would benefit the truce you’ve built. Thassa’s blinking can be dangerous as Intellect Devourer says that cards are exiled until the card leaves the battlefield. This means that if Intellect Devourer gets blinked by Thassa those cards return to their owner if not used. Be sure to play and cast as many spells as you can before replenishing your stock of swiped spells.

Those are just a couple of use cases for this brainy horror that’s sure to cause some frustration in any Commander playgroup if used in the right way. Let me know if you have clever ideas for how Intellect Devourer can be used to the fullest in comments below. 

Commander Legends Battle for Baldur’s Gate: A Commander-focused Commander-focused set, which is draftable on June 10, and available for prerelease at WPN participating game shops on June 3, with prerelease events beginning on June 3. If you’re looking to play digitally, Battle for Baldur’s Gate can be drafted on Magic Online on June 10, while MTG Arena will also get in on the Baldur’s Gate fun with an injection of cards in the Alchemy and Historic formats on July 7.