EDH - Basandra, Battle Seraph

So perhaps the biggest hit yesterday was the fact a new EDH general was announced for the upcoming commander decks which start selling on June 17th, 2011, want to see the general itself let's get to the big reveal

Here she is Basandra, Battle Seraph she costs 5 mana 3, a white and a red, is a legendary angel, with flying of course, during the combat step she prevents combat tricks like Giant Growth, etc from being cast and her final ability is Pay 1 red mana, target creature attacks this turn if able, though the power and toughness is unknown let's examine the card as a whole

First is the mana cost, for a EDH general 5 mana is roughly well balanced she fits into any Boros style deck with a bunch of small dudes that make a lot of impact, she has some decent potential in other deck types, prefereably a Razia, Boros Archangel EDH deck as a secondary general, or even a deck that has no real big bomb threat, this i feel is perfect mana cost wise and is a well suited legacy/vintage legal card when it comes into retail as of this June. Secondly, the abilites, flying is a given with all angels, there are no angels i can think of without flying and this is a given so evasion is a must for most of these standard angel cards, Players not being able to cast spells during the combat step is a nice way to control the game as a whole, you've got potential for some serious threat level there and combat steps this thing is nasty i must admit, but i never expected it to have the prevention effect much like Ethersworn Canonist which is from the Shards Block. The final ability of Basandra is a rather simple one, make things attack you, this way you can pull a end of turn removal spell and banish the attacking creature, in a format like EDH this is a rare sight since you are only allowed one of each spell or creature, but in a regular casual format this is a beast of a card that makes anything look sick, i'm hoping that in the future the power and toughness ratio of this angel is revealed from the promos, however that being said that's all for now, i'll have more information on all of this as time goes on, so till next time magic fans, this is vergil signing off.