Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are talking about Keranos, God of Storms!

Keranos is a five mana 6/5 with indestructible, isn’t a creature until your devotion to red and blue is seven, and you reveal the first card you draw on each of your turns and if it is a land you draw a card and if it is a nonland card you deal 3 damage to any target (via errata).

Keranos is a Commander that is built for gaining you card advantage and burning your opponents, with the biggest concern being able to deal enough damage to all of your opponents.

Burn (along with mill) are two of the most difficult strategies to win with in Commander, but we can find a way to make it work by pairing it with a control/tempo back up plan to keep us in the game.

If we want to play into burn, then we need ways to have more utility with our burn spell, because just having regular burn won’t be as effective.

Ionize is an example of this because it doubles as a counter spell and burn spell, and while it is a touch harder to cast because of the two colors, we have access to monocolored counter spells as well.

When talking utility, the Ravnica Charms come to mind, and Izzet Charm is a solid choice as well because of how it can be a soft counter spell, a burn spell, or a draw spell as we need it, and that drawing of cards may be necessary.

We can also consider Beacon Bolt as a way to get the last bit of damage in when we have a bunch of spell in the graveyard, or in exile if they have Flashback or are removed by an opponent.

Since we are doing a bit of burn and a bit of spell slinging tempo, we need to take advantage of the fact that we are casting so many spells.

Third Path Iconoclast is a good creature to get out early, because for each noncreature spell we cast, we get an additional Soldier token. There is also Talrand, Sky Summoner which make a flying Drake token whenever we cast an instant or sorcery spell.

There are also the plethora of creatures that deal damage whenever we cast a noncreature spell like Kessig Flamebreather, Firebrand Archer, and Coruscation Mage.

If we are doing burn, then Soul-Scar Mage is in contention, not only because of the cheap casting cost and prowess, but also the ability to turn burn on creatures into -1/-1 counters, which will deal with any indestructible threats.

Now that we have a suite of spells we can cast to help with our game plan, we need a way to win the game.

With the printing of Foundations, we have access to a potential “infinite” combo with Niv-Mizzet, Visionary and Niv-Mizzet, Parun. The combo goes with us needing to deal some damage to an opponent, like through Keranos’s effect, draw that many cards with Visionary, then deal damage with Parun, which triggers Visionary into the loop.

Now the reason why this loop is “infinite” is because you still need to have cards to draw and a Commander deck won’t be able to deal one damage enough times to kill all three players, in some cases not even one.

So the way we remedy that is through damage multipliers. Fiery Emancipation, Torbran, Thane of Red Fell, and Fiendish Duo are all options to help burn out an opponent.

Granted there is still the chance you mill yourself out, but we should ideally be dealing enough damage to get our opponents in a solid range from the get-go.

Keranos is a card that can serves as either a draw engine or a burn engine, and we can build a deck that can suit both. It may not win all the time, but it can definitely hold its own.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual