Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to take a look at Gabriel Angelfire!

Gabriel is a seven mana 4/4 that on your upkeep Gabriel gets either flying, first strike, trample, or rampage 3 until your next upkeep.

The first look at a Legends Commander, we see that one issue that early Legendary creatures had at this time was that they had an insane mana cost on a middling body.

Now the ability is actually sneaky good because it lasts until your next turn, should it survive when you first play it, but let’s go in with the assumption that it does.

Let’s see if modern card design can make Gabriel a better Commander than it seems.

The first issue that we need to tackle is making sure that we have enough mana to cast Gabriel.

Mana dorks like Elvish Mystic, Llanowar Elves, and Fyndhorn Elves are going to be very helpful because they are cheap mana value wise.

To talk about artifact ramp, Sol Ring and Arcane Signet also help here as will Selesnya Signet. I normally don’t talk about the generic mana rocks because a lot of Commanders that I do talk about usually have a much more reasonable mana value.

I am highlighting that any sort of mana acceleration is going to be important in this deck, because a seven mana Commander needs all the help it can get, especially if it does get removed at some point.

Enchantments that allow your lands to tap for extra mana are also a must, so Grafted Growth and Gift of Paradise can be really helpful. Leyline of Abundance can help our creatures get more value, and Buried in the Garden also acts as removal.

The next thing we look at are ways to make use of Gabriel’s ability to give itself rampage 3 to our advantage.

Rampage, for those that don’t know, increase the power and toughness of a creature by an assigned value, for Gabriel 3, for each creature that blocks its beyond the first.

Which means that the more creatures that block Gabriel, the stronger they get.

So this is where we can play with Lure effects, meaning that all creatures that can block a creature must do so, meaning that Gabriel will get huge and can potentially clear a whole board of creatures.

Indrik Umbra increases Gabriel’s power while also giving it first strike and a lure ability, which means that we can give Gabriel some protection from destruction effects.

There is also Revenge of the Hunted, which normally would not be great as a six mana spell that gives +6/+6, trample and a lure effect, but it does have a Miracle for one green, which makes it even better because it allows us to cast more stuff to make Gabriel better.

We also have You Look Upon a Tarrasque, which +5/+5 and indestructible along with the lure effect.

Gabriel is looking more and more like a Voltron Commander, so we need to load up on effects that we can use to help facilitate a win.

Angelic Destiny is great because of the +4/+4, flying, and first strike, which means we can pick one of the other abilities that Gabriel has. It is also great because it is recursive in that if Gabriel dies, then we get Angelic Destiny back to our hand.

We could also look at Armadillo Cloak, which gives a +2/+2 buff while also giving trample and a pseudo-lifelink effect to help us make sure we can survive any retaliatory attacks.

Then there are cheap one mana enchantments like Audacity and Primal Frenzy that give trample, or in Audacity’s case draws us a card when it goes to the graveyard.

With the multitude of enchantments, then All That Glitters becomes a major consideration as does Ethereal Armor, Ancestral Mask, and Michiko’s Reign of Truth.

Of the early Legends Commanders, Gabriel is not the hardest to build for. The biggest prohibitive factor is the mana value on a creature with less than stellar stats, but the ability is one that can be used to our advantage and can be worked with.

Modern cards and ramp definitely help, but if they were to make a new version of Gabriel, then I think making it have a sort of a Morphling style card that can give itself more abilities the more mana you pay into it would be interesting to play with.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual