Hello and welcome to Daily Commander! Today we are going to be taking a look at Yasova Dragonclaw!

A three mana Human Warrior that during combat allows you pay 3 mana (making this a three color Commander) that allows you to take control of an opponent’s creature with power less than Yasova until end of turn and gives it haste, meaning you can immediately attack upon grabbing that creature.

Now red and blue are very much the colors that allow you to take control of an opponent’s creatures, either temporarily or permanently, and green gives you access to a lot of mana and pump spells, so why not delve deeper into that aspect?

But instead of taking control of one creature, why not take control of many creatures? Now taking control of creatures via a threaten effects on average will be about the same cost as what Yasova is asking for, but filling a deck with threaten effects will only make it super redundant, and in my opinion kind of boring.

Now filling the deck with copying triggered abilities and pump spells? Now that sounds like a challenge.

Now there are two major issues that come with this plan: effects that copy triggered abilities are not too common and that we will still need to pay mana when we copy the ability.

The second issue is not as bad as one might think. Green and especially green and blue are really good at ramping to an insane degree.

Growth Spiral, Open the Way, Three Visits, Cultivate, and many more green cards can get lands onto the battlefield and of course there are a plethora of mana dorks that can help ramp you, especially with something like Rattleclaw Mystic which is great at fixing for all of your colors in the early game.

Now the first issue, copying triggered abilities aren’t the most common of abilities, especially since some of those abilities have a restriction in that they can only copy certain card types, of which Yasova isn’t any of those.

We can still work with that, especially if we can get creative with some of them.

Now we have the mana issue sorted and ways to copy the abilities, how do we make sure that our opponent has creatures that we want to take and Yasova has the right power to take control?

Anthems can make sure that Yasova has a decent power, but pump spells can do quick work in a pinch. Plus, combat tricks are usually very cheap so that can be done in response to the when the ability activates.

Now how can we guarantee that our opponents have decent creatures that we can take?

As it turns out, there are plenty of ways to get rid of our opponents stuff while giving them a token, most of which can be taken without the need for pumping Yasova.

Beast Within, Pongify, and Curse of the Swine are some solid removal spells while cards like Swan Song and Strix Serenade can help counter big threats while being cheap and provide a small body with evasion.

Now the big question, how do we win?

This is an aggro deck at its core, so we would need to make sure that we continuously apply combat pressure. Making sure that we consistently apply the pressure of attacking, which will make you a target by others for sure, and while we won’t have an overabundance of threaten effects in the deck, we could still pack a few to make sure we can get that train started.

The big finisher is to make sure we can take control of the most amount of creatures as possible, which means that Insurrection and Mob Rule will be our finishers, and with any luck we should have the mana to cast what we need.

What are the decks biggest weaknesses?

Board wipes will make things a lot more difficult, and if you go up against a control deck or a stax deck that makes attacking more difficult, that will be a struggle.

Aggro decks are not always the most well positioned in Commander, unless you go massively wide or tall. This deck is an interesting paradox in needing your opponents to some some amount of decent creatures, but not too many you can’t pay for and not strong enough that you cannot take control of.

I can see this deck being able to be decently powerful against token decks, especially if you can take mass control of their creatures, and potentially have a decent enough chance against decks that still have a solid count of creatures.

Yasova is a neat Commander to build around, but still has some issues that keep the deck from being amazing.

In any case, thank you for reading, see you tomorrow for the next Daily Commander.

Peace,

From J.M. Casual