ROE EDH General Review – Tuktuk the Explorer

So good, they named it twice

Doug Beyer just gave us our first non-Eldrazi Legendary creature for EDH. Tuktuk, a great name, with a fun ability, looks like it could be an awesome General. He doesn’t cost that much (really, not many Goblins do), he’s got haste (which so few Generals do), and he’s got an interesting ability. I mean, he makes Legendary tokens! How cool is that?

Let’s take a look at the text box:

Haste
When Tuktuk the Explorer is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, put a legendary 5/5 colorless Goblin Golem artifact creature token named Tuktuk the Returned onto the battlefield.

You have to admit, that’s pretty awesome flavor: there’s another token of him when he goes to the graveyard. Goes to the graveyard? Aw, man.

Whenever a General would go to the graveyard to gets exiled, you may put it in the Command Zone instead; graveyard triggers do not trigger, it’s a replacement ability. So while his ability triggers once, you can’t get it over and over again. He’s a single-serving General.

If Tuktuk was Green, or Black, or even White then this would be a completely different story. Those three colors have ways to bring Tuktuk back from the graveyard. Red has one card to bring Tuktuk from the graveyard to your hand or onto the battlefield (remember it has to be Mono-Red because he’s the General): Search for Survivors. Good luck with that.

Final Word: Look, he’s a cute card, and I’m sure he could see some fun in a deck that constantly recurs creatures (this is why Recurring Nightmare is banned). Yes, he’s very flavorful and I see why they did this and it’s a great design. As a General, Wizards really missed the ball on this one. I’d rather have Norin the Wary than Tuktuk leading my guys into battle.

Note: This also uses up 2 more instances of Legendary in the Orb of Insight: 5 out of 7. Two more possible EDH Generals to go.