Guardian Sunmare

Creature — Horse Mount

Ward {2} (Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, counter it unless that player pays {2}.)

Whenever this attacks while saddled, search your library for a nonland permanent card with converted mana cost/mana value 3 or less, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle.

Saddle 4 (Tap any number of other creatures you control with total power 4 or more: This Mount becomes Saddled until end of turn. Saddle only as a sorcery.)

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Alchemy	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Freeform	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Pre-release	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Standard	Legal
Standard Brawl	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (1)

legendofa on The more I think about …

2 months ago

I'm digging this up again now that Aetherdrift's been out for a bit. I try not to get too obsessive, but Amonkhet just has some weird details that keep itching my brain.

This time, I'm going to look at Crested Sunmare and Guardian Sunmare. The problem is, there's nothing to look at. I can't find any lore to say what they are or where they came from. (I didn't read the Aetherdrift story, so if there's more information in there, please let me know which chapter. Maybe chapter 3, going off a couple summaries?) Guardian does support the idea that the flavor text on Crested that there really is some horse land out there in the desert, but there's still some problems.

1. Djeru doesn't recognize the horses, and he doesn't seem to have even known of their existence. Either nobody in Amonkhet's history went there and wrote it down, or Nicol Bolas destroyed all the historical records that talked about them. While that's absolutely something he would do, that leads to

2. Bolas never did anything meaningful with the horses. They're individually strong enough to fight most demons on the plane to the death, even without any magical enhancement. While my opinion of Bolas as a tactical and strategic genius has completely fallen off, I have to believe that if he knew about the superhorses, he would have found a way to use them. Possibly as a reward to the faithful, or as a vanguard for the Hour of Devastation.

3. Same thing for the Phyrexians. The multiverse conquerors who set out to assimilate literally everything didn't have any interaction with them. In their defense, they probably focused on the major population center and had to deal with the anti-phyretic effects of lazotep, but not even a single platoon went off exploring the desert. The Phyrexian Invasion was deeply flawed, and this just adds to the list of oversights.

So we're left with a completely unknown land somewhere in an uncrossable desert that has superhorses, one of which decides to show up for a interplanar race. That's literally everything I can find and infer about the Sunmares. What are they? Where do they come from? Is there more than one herd? Why has nobody ever found them, especially the desert-proof invaders and conquerors? If those are decorative headpieces and not somehow part of their bodies, who made them?