Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Carth the Lion!

Carth is a four mana 3/5 that whenever he enters the battlefield or a Planeswalker we control dies, look at the top seven cards of our library and reveal a Planeswalker card and put it in our hand, putting the rest of the cards on the bottom of our library in a random order, and Planeswalkers’ loyalty abilities we control cost an additional +1 to activate.

It’s been a little while since we’ve looked at a Commander that cares about Planeswalkers, and Carth the Lion is interesting because he makes Planeswalkers abilities better.

A regular +1 ability becomes a +2 and a -1 ability becomes a 0 ability, which also means that we can achieve ultimate abilities faster which is saying a lot in Commander where that is notoriously difficult. Even better, if a Planeswalker we control dies, we can look at the top seven cards of our library to replace it.

The first thing we need to look at are some of the Planeswalkers we can use to get ahead of and cast their ultimate as soon as we can.

Garruk, Cursed Huntsman can ultimate immediately after casting it, meaning that any creatures we get from then on will get bigger and have trample.

Liliana of the Dark Realms takes a turn to ultimate, which means that our Swamps produce four black mana which we can use for casting our bigger Planeswalkers, and Nissa, Who Shakes the World takes a turn for us to tutor out all the Forests in our library.

If we want to go more aggro, then Garruk, Unleashed can help us tutor a creature onto the battlefield at the end of each turn, and Vivien on the Hunt can make a Rhino token each turn without losing any loyalty.

Even if the ultimate kills the Planeswalker, we get a search off of Carth the Lion to get another Planeswalker to replace the one that just died.

Since we are going to be focusing on a sort of Planeswalker midrange deck, we need to be able to have other ways of getting our Planeswalkers as well as protecting them.

Oath of Nissa is excellent to have in the early game because not only does it help us look for a creature, land, or Planeswalker, but it allows us to cast Planeswalker spell with mana of any color, which means that if we can get Nissa, Who Shakes the World and Liliana of Dark Realms to resolve their ultimates, then we have an absurd amount of mana to cast all of our Planeswalkers.

Settle the Score allows us to exile a creature while also giving a Planeswalker we control two loyalty counters, Kaya’s Ghostform allows us to return a Planewalker we control to the battlefield when it dies or is exiled, and Interplanar Beacon to help us in the early game to cast some of our cheaper Planeswalkers.

If we are also going up against another deck that happens to have some Planeswalkers, then we also have access to The Elderspell, which destroys any number of Planeswalkers and adds two loyalty for each Planeswalker destroyed this way to a Planeswalker we control.

In fact the way we win is by working our way to get to the higher costed ultimates of the Planeswalkers we control.

The Chain Veil is the biggest way we do this because it allows us to double dip on our Planeswalkers abilities for only four mana and tapping it.

If price isn’t much of a factor, then Doubling Season and Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider double the number of counters we can put on our Planeswalkers.

We also have the unique Equipment Luxior, Giada’s Gift which turns a Planeswalker into a creature with +1/+1 for each counter they have on it, and we can still activate the abilities of the Planeswalker to make them even bigger.

Of the more expensive ultimates that we can use there is Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools, which steals all Commanders on the field and from the Command Zone, Liliana, the Last Hope to start snowballing us a ton of Zombies, and Garruk, Primal Hunter to give us an army of Wurm tokens.

If we really want to close out the game, then we have Vraska, Golgari Queen and Vraska, Scheming Gorgon which turns combat damage into a dead player regardless of their life totals.

Carth the Lion is a fun Super Friends Commander that can act as a gateway into exploring the archetype for newer players. Being two colors does keep the deck more focused on what options it has, and has a decent amount of support to keep it decently powered.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual