by Elton Gahr

Created on: October 30, 2009

One of the things that makes for a truly good card in magic the gathering is versatility. A card that can be used in a great many situations or decks is almost always more powerful than a spell that has only a single use, and though these type of spells are often considerably more expensive when you can use them they are almost always worth it.

One of the most important cycles of versatile cards are the commands. With one spell in each color they allow the caster to have two important effects of their choice out of the four. Cryptic command is the one that has gotten the most attention but it is not the only one of these that it worth playing.

Austere Command is a rare sorcery from the Lorwyn expansion set of magic the gathering. It costs two white and four colorless and reads "Choose two - Destroy all artifacts; or destroy all enchantments; or destroy all creatures with converted mana cost 3 or less; or destroy all creatures with converted mana cost 4 or greater."

Each one of these abilities is very powerful and potentially game changing, two of them together should be enough to get you out of any situation you might find yourself in if not put you ahead.

The most obvious use of this card is as a wrath of god. Choose the last two abilities and you will destroy all creatures with converted mana cost three or less and all creatures with converted mana cost four or more, or all creatures. But this is one of the weaker plays in many ways.

More valuable in many situations is going to be to use the one of those two abilities that leaves you ahead in the creature battle, either by killing all of their larger creatures or clearing the way for your own large creatures, and one of the other two. For example if you chose to destroy all creatures with converted mana cost three or less, and all artifacts you could take out all of their small creatures, and any larger artifact creatures they might have, while leaving your creature free to attack without interruption.

Both the artifact and enchantment removal cards are important abilities to have in every deck, but useless when you run into a deck that does not use one of those. This is a card that is an excellent way to have your cake and eat it too, and may even replace wrath of god in some decks.

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