Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Alaundo the Seer!

Alaundo is a four mana 3/5 that taps to draw you a card and then you exile a card with a number of time counters equal to its mana value and when the last counter is removed you can cast that spell for free and if it’s a creature it also gets haste, then you can remove a time counter from each other card you own in exile.

Alaundo, in so many words, gives the potential for all of your cards to have Suspend, which is a neat mechanic and something that we can play with.

There are a plenty of Suspend cards that we can play with, and a lot of them actually make removing time counters worth the while.

Helpful bit of rules knowledge, but if you exile a card that has a mana value of zero, then it won’t get time counters and will not trigger from any of the cast effects.

This is helpful for the number of Suspend spells that effectively have a zero mana casting cost and can only be cast via their Suspend effects.

However, they do have their own Suspend effects that can trigger, we are just expediting them to our advantage with Alaundo.

Mox Tantalite, Lotus Bloom and Sol Talisman are all mana rocks that are cheap or free that we can use that all Suspend for three turns, which isn’t too bad to wait as we play other cards, but still provide a huge burst of mana when they do come online.

Crashing Footfalls has dropped in price dramatically and is definitely a card we can use to get some bodies on the battlefield, Inevitable Betrayal can help us steal a creature from an opponents deck, and Ancestral Vision is Ancestral Recall which is always good.

As I said, there are cards that benefit whenever a time counter is removed, and we can take full advantage of that.

Aeon Chronicler draws you a card whenever a time counter is removed, so with Alaundo we can turn Alaundo into tap draw three if we have Aeon Chronicler Suspended.

Fungal Behemoth adds a +1/+1 counter on a creature each time a time counter is removed, Watcher of Hours let’s you surveil whenever a counter is removed, and while Deep-Sea Kraken doesn’t get a benefit from removing time counters from it, they lose a time counter whenever an opponent casts a spell, so you’re just expediting the process.

If we further want to remove Suspend counters or even protect our things, there are options for that as well.

Suspend gives something Suspend which can be used against an opponent’s creature or one of ours, Timebender can add or remove time counters to Suspended cards when they are flipped, and Clockspinning can add or remove any type of counter from a permanent or Suspended card that we can Buyback.

The way we win is to take advantage of the fact that we are removing time counters from big mana spells, which usually have big effects to justify their ludicrous mana value.

First ones that come to my mind are extra turn spells, which tend to run for five mana or higher for no downsides or restrictions. Time Stretch gives you two extra turns and is ten mana, Nexus of Fate is seven mana and shuffles itself back into your library, and Time Warp is five mana just for a regular extra turn.

Then we also have huge creatures to consider, since they enter with haste, such as Worldspine Wurm for a big blowout and can come back with some extra bodies if it dies, Rumbleweed for an Overrun on a creature, and Apex Devastator for Cascade shenanigans because you technically cast Suspend spells so it counts.

Alaundo is a funky Commander with an off kilter play style that I had no idea existed and quite frankly am glad to have found because it is such a neat design in my opinion.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow for the next Daily Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual