Between Planeswalker tokens, creatures with negative power, and all kinds of oddities, Reality Fracture hosts some of the most unique MTG cards we’ve ever seen. The same is true for the new Sanctum Lurker, which flips one of MTG’s core rules on its head. By letting Planeswalkers survive at zero loyalty, Sanctum Lurker creates two annoying soft locks you can try in Commander.
MTG Sanctum Lurker
Even without any Planeswalkers to support immediately, Sanctum Lurker is a surprisingly strong MTG card. By Empowering Jace 1 and offering your token a new +2 ability, Sanctum Lurker essentially offers two bodies for the price of one. More often than not, you should be able to get at least an extra card out of your Jace token, but using it to trigger your other Stingerquill payoffs is also strong.
While surprisingly effective on its own, Sanctum Lurker gets real nasty when paired with a few specific Planeswalkers. Gideon Jura and Sanctum Lurker, for example, can essentially lock down one of your opponent’s attacks, forcing them to swing everything at the Planeswalker. With Lurker in play, any amount of combat damage won’t take this Planeswalker out, while you can pick off their more valuable creatures by blocking them.
Alternatively, Gideon of the Trials
Gideon of the Trials+1: Until your next turn, prevent all damage target permanent would deal.
0: Until end of turn, Gideon becomes a 4/4 Human Soldier creature with indestructible that's still a planeswalker. Prevent all damage that would be dealt to him this turn.
0: You get an emblem with "As long as you control a Gideon planeswalker, you can't lose the game and your opponents can't win the game." creates an even more effective soft lock by creating an Emblem with his final ability. Your opponents will be forced to deal with Gideon if they want to win, but doing so through combat damage will be impossible.
Of course, while these soft locks can be effective against creature strategies, any form of removal, like using Erode on either Sanctum Lurker or the Gideons themselves, can break this up. Because of this, you’ll want to protect your Sanctum Lurker with cards like Lightning Greaves
Lightning GreavesEquipped creature has haste and shroud. (It can't be the target of spells or abilities.)
Equip {0} and Flare of Fortitude to push through your opponent’s removal. Notably, Deification can do something similar for Planeswalkers, giving them Hexproof.
While these locks are hardly foolproof, Sanctum Lurker can easily become a core part of your Superfriends Commander decks, especially if you have ways to protect it. Heck, the card could also see play with existing Planeswalkers like Ashiok, Dream Render, Karn, the Great Creator, and Narset, Parter of Veils with strong lock abilities. With all of these possibilities and more, Sanctum Lurker looks like an incredible new piece of Planeswalker support.
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