Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Jasmine Boreal!

Jasmine Boreal is a five mana 4/5 with no abilities.

This is one of the bigger issues that a lot of early legendary creatures had, especially in Legends, is that they are a lot of mana to cast, but have no abilities and/or subpar stats.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t make Jasmine Boreal work, we just need to play into the fact that Jasmine is a vanilla creature and find ways to make the other vanilla creatures we play work.

Jasmine was one of the few Commanders that had a redo in the Dominaria United Commander series of cards, and it is one of the ways to help us deal with Jasmine being a vanilla creature.

Jasmine Boreal of the Seven is a mana dork for creatures that have no abilities and allows our creatures with no abilities to not be blocked by creatures with abilities, of which most creatures do have nowadays.

There is also Muraganda Petroglyphs, which is an anthem for creatures with no abilities and Ruxa, Patient Professor which when they enter or attack can bring back a vanilla from your graveyard to your hand, an lord for vanilla creatures, and can help vanilla creatures get damage as though they weren’t blocked.

Now these are all of the cards that help creatures with no abilities, but that is fine because there are plenty of other ways to get vanilla creatures onto the battlefield.

Most token creatures generally have no abilities, which means that any ways that we can get to get tokens onto the battlefield come in at a premium, especially if they have an additional upside.

Aura Mutation is along what we’re looking for, because not only does it destroy an enchantment at instant speed, it also creates Saproling tokens equal to that enchantment’s mana value.

If you are playing against an opponent that has a lot of artifacts then you can play Curious Herd to make 3/3 Beast tokens equal to the number of artifacts they control.

Sometimes we don’t have access to a lot of creatures but our opponents are about to overwhelm us, so we can cast Martial Coup to wipe the board while keeping a decent sized board to protect against any swing backs.

We should also consider other anthem and buffing effects, but we have to make sure that they don’t give our creatures abilities, with the exception of indestructible to protect our things from a board wipe.

Final Showdown, Unbreakable Formation, Heroic Intervention come to mind when it concerns protection. In the Trenches, Mirari’s Wake, and Unnatural Growth come to mind for anthem effects.

Now in order to get big damage through, we need a whole host of vanilla creatures and there are plenty to choose from.

New from Foundations is Quakestrider Ceratops, which is a 12/8 so it gets even bigger with everything in place.

We also have access to popular cheap creatures like Isamaru, Hound of Konda, Watch Wolf, and Savannah Lions in order to get some decent bodies on the battlefield quickly.

There will be a couple of creatures with abilities that we will play in order to help things out like Maja, Bretagard Protector to be a lord and make a Human Warrior token whenever we play a land, King Darien XLVIII to help protect our tokens, and if we can swing it Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite to buff our things while clearing things on our opponents board.

Jasmine does not really factor into our strategy, but that is the downside of having a vanilla Commander. It dictates a theme rather than a play style, but having a vanilla matter Commander is something easy for new players to understand and can be made on a budget that can be upgraded over time.

Of course there is Jasmine Boreal of the Seven to act as an alternate Commander if you want to go that route.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual