Also man I'm not on Aristocrats right now but there's some really nice tools for it in this set:
The bar on 3 drops is high, but you gotta notice that this says "when your nontoken creatures die, you get a new creature", which is explosive in the right circumstances.
I like flash on this thing, it's nice to have the option for this to do a
caller of the claw impression without it being the only thing this does, but I could leave First Strike. If for some reason you want to put more eggs in this basket, a 4/4 first strike blocker is really hard to push through organically, I much prefer the first strike on your turn or when attacking if you must have it on a card.
Also IDK how the paper tokens for this set work, but this does make a 2/2 nonflying spirit and other cards in the set make different sizes, which is a bit yikes. It's been said a million times now but yeah I do wish this was a 0/0 with +1/+1 counters. I get that would have been more powerful in the context of the set, but I'd accept nerfs for the added utility (not card options utility, ease of use utility) in paper.
I may not have actually said enough about this the first time around. Unopposed, this thing attacks like
Kari Zev does ie for 3 with enough toughness to mostly keep doing that, spread across multiple bodies. Here you trade menace & first strike (a delightfully annoying evasion duo which is just tame enough on a 1 power creature that's its cute rather than frustrating) for some generic hatebear text which is not quite
Teferi, Time Raveler.
See this thing actually produces bodies in enough quantity to actually be appealing to an aristocrats player, and tosses them out each turn so it's not just a snowball, which I love. The 1/1 bodies are likely enough to bounce off something, but aristocrats decks love
giving everything menace or
even just letting them die, hell imagine curving this into
warleader's call!
I think this card is mostly bait, and the last thing I'd want to encourage my aristocrats drafters to do is play HEAVIER black, but it's worth noting this does combo very well with
gravecrawler
And
Shriekmaw, but like whatever
This is from a while back preview wise, but both these modes work pretty well when you're trying to throw a pile of tiny creatures at the problem.
So Caveats: this is a 3 color card, this is a commander card, so this is asking a lot.
That out of the way, this provides a really interesting set of incentives for the person playing against it (assuming Zurgo's controller doesn't have a free sac outlet in play and get to make all the decisions their way, which I think they should be within their rights to)
When you're being attacked by this guy, you get to decide if you'd rather give your opponent a card by blocking their 1/1, or taking 2 by letting it hit you and then die. That's gonna change throughout the game, and it's gonna change based on what your opponent has in play, and that's cool.
As commander bullshit goes, this card is actually pretty interesting.
