Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Maralen of the Mornsong!

Maralen is a three mana 2/3 that prevents players from drawing cards, and at the beginning of each player’s draw step, that player loses 3 life and can search their library for a card and put it into their hand, then shuffle their library.

Maralen can be a backbreaking Commander because people love to draw cards, so preventing that will definitely make you the enemy. This is will draw the ire of your opponents, who will tutor out their removal to deal with Maralen as soon as possible.

Our goal is to make sure we get our cards out as soon as we can, control what we can, and make sure that we can protect Maralen from imminent destruction.

The best way for us to pull ahead is to make sure we have more life than our opponents after Maralen triggers, ideally cards with a drain life effect.

Exsanguinate is an example of this ability because not only does it drain the life of each of our opponents, but we gain life equal to the total life lost this way, which can be as low as 3 if X is 1, which pays for one of Maralen’s searches.

Syphon Soul is a drain effect for three mana that drains our opponents for 2 and we gain life equal to the life lost this way, Blood Tithe does this for an extra mana and drains for 3, and there are plenty of creatures that either enters, attacks, or dies to drain an opponent like Vampire Spawn, Sanguine Syphoner, and Nocturnal Feeder.

For a more control feel, we also can use Polluted Bonds, which drains an opponent whenever a land enters the battlefield under their control, brutal for Landfall decks to be sure.

Like I said, Maralen is most likely going to draw removal in order for people to start drawing cards again, which means that we need as many protection spells as we can.

Ashnod’s Intervention is an underrated version of protection, mostly because it returns to hand, but this is actually one of the more versatile forms of protection because it also protects when the creature is exiled as well as dies.

Cheap exile effects are a dime a dozen, so it’s helpful to keep an eye on that.

We also have access to effects that really only work when the target creature dies like Feign Death, Undying Malice, Not Dead After All, and Undying Evil. The best thing about these spells is that they are cheap to cast and there are plenty of them to keep in stock when you need them.

If we don’t have access to these cards, then we have to make sure we can control the battlefield. Hellish Rebuke can deal with aggro decks that attack us by forcing our opponents to sacrifice permanents that deal damage to us and has them lose more life, and Soul Shatter to force our opponents to sacrifice their most mana expensive creature or Planeswalker.

As far as how we win, we need to make sure we put the screws on our opponents as the game progresses.

Ob Nixilis, Unshackled forces our opponent to sacrifice a creature and lose 10 life when they search their library, which can quickly become a problem if they already used their removal on Maralen.

Another way we can punish our opponents from searching is Opposition Agent, which can err on the pricier side, but it allows us to control our opponents search and allows us to play with their cards. If done at the right time, we can drain our opponents while playing their cards, effectively locking them out of the game.

Since we can’t draw cards either, we have to have other ways to get cards into our hands such as Sorin the Mirthless, which has a Dark Confidant effect, can create a token with flying and lifelink, and an ultimate to deal 13 damage to any target and us gain 13 life.

To further twist the knife, we could use something like Painful Quandary, which has the opponent lose 5 life or discard a card whenever they cast a spell. Again, we are forcing our opponents into a difficult position as we slowly drain them of their life totals and resources.

Maralen can be a miserable Commander to play against, and it is likely that you may only play this deck once and then retire it because of how unfun it can be. But if you are playing in a higher power pod or are playing with people who don’t mind it, Maralen can be quite the challenging Commander for your opponents to deal with.

Having a Commander that is explicitly the Archenemy is not a bad idea, especially if you decide to have it be higher powered and tell everyone that its a strong deck and they should all try to beat you together. It’s worth a shot, in my opinion.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual