Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be taking a look at Alela, Artful Provocateur!

A four mana 2/3 that has flying, deathtouch, and lifelink, give other fliers you control +1/+0 AND whenever you cast an artifact or enchantment spell, you make a blue 1/1 Faerie token with flying.

Now of course the obvious play is to have a bunch of flying creatures with a few enchantments to help you play a more midrange type of deck, and that is a perfectly fine way to play it.

However, with something like this that allows you to gain extra value when you play artifacts and enchantments, it got me thinking, why not play only artifacts and enchantments, or at the very least a good chunk.

There are quite a lot of artifact creatures that have flying and while there aren’t as many enchantment creatures with flying, there are still plenty that we can use to our advantage.

For example we have Archetype of Imagination to give anything that doesn’t have flying on our side flying while also grounding all creatures your opponents have with flying, making combat much better for us.

Meanwhile on the artifact side of things, many artifact creatures that do have flying are actually pretty cheap mana wise, sometimes free in the case of Ornithopter.

Now that we have an idea to get the most value out of Alela, what else can we do?

Well we make more Faeries of course.

There are quite a few cards that make a Faerie token, with Bitterblossom being one of the most well known and more expensive ones.

While there are a couple that are enchantments, most of the time they’ll be on creatures, instants, and sorceries. Now again, not all of your creatures need to be artifacts or enchantments, but it is something to keep in mind of.

The idea of this deck is to go very wide, and the more options we have to go wide the better.

Now the caveat is that some of the better Faerie makers are on the pricier side, but luckily if you are on a budget, there are plenty of cheaper options to choose from, including a different Alela.

Now the hardest thing to deal with when you are going wide is that board wipes are going to be the bane of your existence.

I’ve said before that giving mass indestructible is very good, but one of the drawbacks is that they tend to be more pricey, which can be a strain for budget players.

I have found that Dawn’s Truce and something like March of Swirling Mist to be some of the better and cheaper options to give protection, with Dawn’s Truce being the best for destruction and March of Swirling Mist to be good at saving what is necessary from something like Farewell.

Now are these perfect replacements to something like Teferi’s Protection? No, but they manage to make sure that you can have some way to survive, especially March of Swirling Mist not destroying your tokens.

So we have a potential win con in being a full force aggro deck, with a go wide strategy, what else can we do to win?

While I am normally not one for alternate win conditions, this is something that we can achieve if going aggro is not helping us seal the deal.

One of the more underrated aspects of Disturb is that it counts as casting the spell, and Alela doesn’t care from where you cast it so long as it was cast.

So we can take advantage of that with Faithbound Judge/Sinner’s Judgment. It provides us with a big blocker while also providing the threat of a win if say a control player is holding us hostage.

Now of course this only works against one player, but is a good thing to have in the back pocket to use as necessary.

Alela is a really interesting Commander in that she is definitely a pushed Commander with how many abilities she has, so that makes her a very flexible Commander.

You could go full Faerie typal, go all in on artifacts and enchantments, or just have a creatures with flying and generally always have something decent to fall back on.

Thank you for reading, I will see you all tomorrow for Daily Commander!

Peace,

From J.M. Casual