Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Neheb, the Worthy!

Neheb is a three mana 2/2 with first strike, gives your other Minotaurs first strike and as long as you have one or fewer cards in your hand, Minotaurs you control get +2/+0 and whenever Neheb deals combat damage to a player, each player discards a card.

This very much leads to an aggressive Minotaur typal with a benefit for having one or fewer cards in hand and the discard is nice to have.

There have been quite a few Minotaur typal cards that are very good, which we will definitely use, but we should also have ways to make use of cards being discarded.

It is surprising to see that Minotaurs have access to one of the best pieces of typal support and that support was printed in 1995 in one of the least regarded sets of all time in Homelands.

Didgeridoo let’s you pay three mana to just put a Minotaur onto the battlefield, meaning that we can play some of the higher cost Minotaurs without worrying too much if we have enough mana to cast them, all for a one mana artifact.

For the times when we don’t have Didgeridoo, we should also consider that cost reducer that Minotaurs have access to in Ragemonger, which makes Minotaur spells we cost a black and red cheaper.

There are also plenty of lord effects that Minotaurs have in Rageblood Shaman which gives our Minotaurs +1/+1 and trample, Kragma Warcaller which gives our Minotaurs haste and attacking Minotaurs +2/+0, and Fellhide Petrifier to give our Minotaurs deathtouch.

If we have a lot of mana and just need bodies on the field then we can cast Deathbellow War Cry to get up to four Minotaurs with different names onto the battlefield from our library.

We need to make use of our opponents discarding cards, and there are a few ways that we can do that.

One of the better ways to do this is Waste Not, which gets a use no matter what an opponent discards, making discarding much more awkward for our opponents.

Liliana’s Caress turns our opponents discarding cards into them losing two life, as does Raiders’ Wake which gets better if we trigger its Raid ability from our Minotaurs attacking.

If we want to go for the jugular and for our opponents to really put a target on our backs, then we could play Tergrid, God of Fright and Syr Konrad, the Grim. Tergrid if we want to take control of our opponents permanents when they are discarded or Syr Konrad if we want to punish them even further for discarding creatures or creatures dying by dealing 1 damage to each opponent.

To potentially secure a kill, there is also Tinybones, Trinket Thief which for six mana deal 10 damage to each opponent that doesn’t have cards in hand.

We also need to take advantage of the fact that we also shouldn’t have cards in our hand.

Hellbent is the ideal mechanic for Neheb because it benefits us to empty our hand as soon as possible.

Anthem of Rakdos is great for an aggressive playstyle, especially if we give our Minotaurs trample, because we could potentially close out a game quicker if we deal double damage to permanents and players (thank you errata).

Pair this with Moraug, Fury of Akoum and some cheap fetch lands like Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse, then we have severely lethal combats.

Twinstrike can deal 2 damage to creatures or be a double kill spell, Tragic Fall can get rid of a small creature or a big one with indestructible, and Taste for Mayhem can either give a +2/+0 or a +4/+0 for one mana.

There is even a cheap tutor in Infernal Tutor, which is normally terrible in Commander because of it being a singleton format, but it becomes a Demonic Tutor if we are Hellbent.

Neheb promotes an aggressive play style with hand denial as a way to make our combats easier, but this is also fragile because Neheb does not have inherent protection. This is the double edged sword of aggro decks, but that’s the fun part of it.

Aggro in Commander is not often in the best position because of the higher life total and multiplayer format, but with something as hyper aggressive as Neheb, it could potentially lead to an effective aggro deck that will win if the opponents don’t have an answer.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow on Daily Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual