Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Raffine, Scheming Seer!

Raffine is a three mana 1/4 with flying, ward 1, and whenever you attack an attacking creature you control connives X where X is the number of attacking creatures. Connive is when you draw that number of cards and discard that number of cards and you put a +1/+1 counter on the creature for each nonland card discarded that way.

Playing with self discard is always interesting because you are in control of what cards you discard as well as why you are discarding cards.

There are a plethora of strategies we can take advantage of, but one of them is making use of a strategy that is starting to make it’s return to current Magic, and was going to be the original subject of today’s Daily Commander.

Threshold is a mechanic that is not often talked about because of how old the mechanic is, but having discard as a use for us can help us get Threshold fairly quickly.

Originally I was looking at Kiora, the Rising Tide to be the focus of today’s Daily Commander, but looking at her and seeing that there are not that many blue cards with Threshold to make use, I decided to have her be a part of the deck.

She is a potent part of the deck because once we hit Threshold and she attacks, we get an additional 8/8 body onto the field.

Not only are we opening up other options when we hit three colors, but we also hit some unexpected option like Aven Warcraft, which gives our creatures a bit of extra toughness, but when we have Threshold we get protection from a color of our choice to help get our creatures through.

Aboshan’s Desire is and Aura that gives flying and once Threshold is hit gives the creature shroud, Cephalid Inkmage surveils 3 and then becomes unable to be blocked at Threshold, and Shoreline Looter draws us a card when they deal damage and we don’t need to discard a card if we have Threshold.

With us discarding cards, there are some cards that we actually want to discard in order to make them more effective.

Madness is the first mechanic to come to mind, and something like Shadowgrange Archfiend is an effective creature at helping to clear the board of each opponent’s strongest creatures, and potentially offsetting the huge life swing we would use to cast with Madness.

There are even Madness cards in white that we can use, Frantic Purification being a one mana enchantment removal when cast with Madness, and Strength of Isolation to give a stat boost and protection from black.

Blue has a few niche Madness cards we can use, but the ones that will be the most effective are Obsessive Search to draw us an additional card, Just the Wind to bounce a creature, and Chilling Grasp to tap two creatures for a turn.

With all the cards that we are going to be drawing, we should take advantage of all the draw effects we can get.

Since going wide is an ideal option for us, we should consider Homunculus Horde as a way to get a wide enough board for us to get a massive connive trigger whenever we attack.

Knowledge is Power is an anthem that increases our creatures by +X/+X where X is the number of cards we’ve drawn, Oneirophage gets bigger for each card we draw, Queza, Auger of Agonies drains an opponent for each card we draw, and if you have access to Sheoldred the Apocalypse then we can gain a massive amount of life when we draw cards.

If you want to make sure that you don’t accidentally mill your self out, then you can use cards like Clear the Mind to reshuffle your graveyard into your library, same with Midnight Clock, Feldon’s Cane, and Elixir of Immortality.

Raffine benefits you from moving your cards all around, and having the self protection of ward 1 does make removal trickier for your opponents. We can supplement the deck with cards with flashback or cards like Snapcaster Mage, but the point is to have plenty of cards in our graveyard to trigger Threshold.

This can be a complicated to play well, but so rewarding when it is able to do the thing.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual