Best Cards To Use With The Sonic The Hedgehog Secret Lair

The Magic: The Gathering and Sonic the Hedgehog secret lair were announced last week, and they look like a blast. At the heart of this announcement is the Secret Lair X Sonic: Friends and Foes drop which features 7 new and unique cards depicting core characters of the Sonic franchise.

Clearly designed with Commander in mind as casual first cards with legality in only Eternal formats like Vintage, Legacy, and Commander, in this article I'll look at each of the legendary creatures in that drop and suggest 5 cards that work well with each. With six new creatures to take a look at, let's dash off to this look at the new creatures from the Sonic the Hedgehog secret lair.

Knuckles the Echidna

Knuckles is an interesting design for Magic: The Gathering as he’s got a head of steam as a voltron type commander with a flurry of keywords, and comes with his own back up alternate win condition. 30 Artifacts is a lot, no doubt about it, but his ability to make several treasure a turn make it viable to do. 

Meanwhile, you can also give Knuckles some handy gear to make him even deadlier to take advantage of his double strike, trample, and haste to rush down opponents. The combination of both directions make Knuckles a powerful warrior, even if he is restricted to mono-red.

Obviously if you’re looking to run Knuckles as your commander, you should look at some of the other cards in the Sonic Secret Lair drop as cards like Super State and Knuckles’s Gloves are clear fits. 

5 Cards to run with Knuckles the Echidna

• Academy Manufactor: Triple the artifact output as you grab Sonic’s chili dogs.
• Xorn: Double the treasure output for double the fun.
• Full Throttle: Any extra combat type card can fit, but Full Throttle’s 2 extra combat phases give you the opportunity to wipe the table out in one turn.
• Excalibur, Sword of Eden: With Excalibur from the Assassin’s Creed's MTG set, one attack from Knuckles is enough to kill anyone.
• Goldlust Triad: A little spice, as with myriad it will get you more Knuckles triggers, and it makes more treasure too.

Amy Rose

Sonic’s psychotic stalker/girlfriend, Amy Rose is yet another boros (red/white) equipment centric Commander, prompting comparisons to any number of those previous (like all the Cloud's from Final Fantasy). Still, Amy has some unique capabilities here on display, and some important abilities for this type of deck.

Haste will help her get into the action quickly, while her attack trigger lets you avoid paying exorbitant equip costs that some cards have. Unlike many equipment commanders, she also wants to have a friend along the ride. 

Amy clearly wants her Piko Piko Hammer from the Turbo Gear secret lair, and is more than willing to enter Super State as well. She’s also more than willing to borrow Knuckles’s Gloves to apply some beatdown, but let’s take a look at five other cards the pink menace could use.

5 Cards to run with Amy Rose

• Colossus Hammer: Probably really a better fit for Piko Piko Hammer than Hammer of Nazahan, but really a must run here for Amy.
• Firion Wild Rose Warrior: Double up your new equipment and take advantage of Amy even more with this Final Fantasy MTG legendary creature.
• Merry, Esquire of Rohan: Merry is a perfect friend for Amy, as Merry draws cards, and joins in the hasty attacks, all the way from Middle-Earth.
• Inventory Management: There’s a lot of equipment to run with Amy, and Inventory Management provides a unique way for decks using it to get pieces where they need to be, with this technology from Fallout.
• Blade War-Whip: Providing a friend for Amy, Blade War-Whip also provides the important double strike, and its high equip cost matters less with Amy dodging it.

Dr. Eggman

Robotnik is an intriguing card that has a lot of potential, but also one that is challenging to take advantage of. Your opponents always have the option to discard, thus you should expect them to make that choice most of the time, as the idea of whatever construct, robot, or vehicle coming down for free will scare your opponent.

Thus, players must be like Eggman and pollute the situation to make it painful and harmful for everyone. Choke them with pollution, inundate them with smog, and make their lives miserable to power your creations and unleash them on an unsuspecting public.

5 Cards to run with Dr. Eggman

• Tergrid, God of Fright: If you’re going to be a villain, you might as well go all out. With Tergrid down, your opponents will be strongly considering letting Eggman send out his artifacts. Do note he is a game changer, and thus makes the deck at least bracket 3.
• Y’shtola Rhul: The double endphase is what you want here to get two Dr. Eggman triggers each round, from another of our top 50 Final Fantasy legendary creatures.
• The Valeyard: You know what’s better than 2 villainous choices a round? 4 Villainous Choices a round, as Doctor Who’s The Valeyard will double Eggman’s triggers.
• Scrawling Crawler: To make sure opponents feel the pain of denying Eggman his robots, we must give them more cards to make them discard and fuel our evil.
• Cityscape Leveler: Cityscape Leveler is one of the biggest construct, robot, or vehicle options, and provides plenty of destruction capability.

Miles “Tails” Prower

The kid genius of the Sonic universe, Tails is a longtime icon of the Sonic franchise, and he's got his shop tools out to lead a vehicle deck. Known for making different machines, piloting, and being Sonic’s sidekick, Tails can take take the lead here.

Vehicle decks have challenges with the fact that you need both creatures, and the vehicles, as well as needing to defend yourself. While the traditional UW (blue/white) vehicle deck is led by Shorikai and is a slower, more methodical deck. Miles wants to lead a more aggressive take that is taking to the sky under his piloting, much like his work on Tornado, Sonic’s Biplane which you definitely will want here as well. 

5 Cards to run with Miles "Tails" Prower

• Prodigy’s Prototype: Making trained pilots, Prodigy’s Prototype also benefits from Tails granting flying to it, as well as a low crew cost.
• Prowl, Stoic Strategist: From the BOT special sheet, this Transformers crossover is disruption, vehicular talent, and able to eventually be a decent beater with evasion from Tails.
• Stonybrook Schoolmaster: From Lorwyn, Merfolk there gave a benefit when they become tapped - which is what you need to do to crew vehicles, and the tokens it makes are perfectly disposable blockers or bodies to crew vehicles.
• Drumbellow: Untapping all your creatures each turn ensures that your attacking vehicles don’t leave you defenseless.
• Unidentified Hovership: Abduct opposing creatures, and ensure they won’t return with the Unidentified Hovership, and grab a card if Tails is out.

Shadow the Hedgehog

Shadow is one of the less focused commander options in the Sonic Secret Lair drop, as Sonic’s nemesis is rewarding a variety of behavior. He wants hasty or flash creatures, who are dying, and artifacts that produce mana, ideally for spells that take the most advantage of split second.

The best use for him is likely as a draw engine in an aggressive aristocrats style of deck. That means hasty creatures attacking, sacrificing and getting payoffs from it all while causing chaos with attacks.

5 Cards to run with Shadow the Hedgehog

• Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker: Making quickly disposed of versions of various creatures you control, Kiki-Jiki is a great friend to Shadow.
• Sneak Attack: Put any monster you want onto the field quickly and attacking with haste, and cash out with the card from Shadow.
• Sabin, Master Monk: A recurring consistent threat, as blitz is a great mechanic with Shadow, and Sabin can blitz from the graveyard.
• Captivating Crew: Threaten effects are a great way to add haste to creatures, and with other sacrifice outlets can be removal and card draw with Shadow.
• Zulaport Cutthroat: While I try to avoid too many staples, to avoid the Cutthroat would be ignoring the fact that there are a lot of black payoffs for creatures dying.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Last and not least, is the blue speedster himself. While he’s missing chilidogs (seriously where is that food token), Sonic here is in Jeskai (blue/white/red) colors and rewards having creatures with haste or flash by growing them.

Sonic wants you going fast, and grows himself and the entire team of speedsters he’s inspired by attacking. He also is instructing them to grab all the rings that they can, as when the speeders hit someone treasure comes in.

Sonic works particularly well with Knuckles, and alright with Tails and Amy, as well as loving his power sneakers to make anyone trigger his abilities as they gain haste. 

5 Cards to run with Sonic the Hedgehog

• Vexilus Praetor: Sonic might be opposed to the Imperium order opposed type, but this flash(y) Warhammer 40k card works incredibly well with him.
• Errant and Giada: If you’re wanting to focus more on Flash creatures, this pair from New Capenna can join Sonic on his anarchic quest, adding spray painting and angel wings to team Sonic.
• Gornog, the Red Reaper: Sonic is a Warrior, so you can take advantage of Warrior typal cards like Gornog, who also is a perfect fit for Sonic’s trashtalking, calling your opponent’s creatures cowards.
• Guardian of Faith: Sonic sometimes needs protection for him and the crew, and the Guardian of Faith will provide just that and a flash body afterwards.
• Gingerbrute: This little guy is easy to miss but as a cheap haste creature who is virtually unblockable for 1 mana, he’s a great fit for Sonic.

The Sonic Secret Lair drops look great, and these cards look like they’ll be a lot of fun. You’ll be able to attempt to order them on July 14, at Noon Eastern, or buy one of a limited supply of non-foil versions at local stores that are part of the Wizards Play Network for the mechanically unique cards in the ‘main’ secret lair with the new cards.