Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Velomachus Lorehold!

Velomachus is a seven mana 5/5 with flying, vigilance, haste and whenever Velomachus attacks you look at the top seven cards of your library and you may cast an instant or sorcery with mana value less than or equal to Velomachus’ power without paying its mana cost, putting the rest of the cards at the bottom of your library in a random order.

When I look at Velomachus I think of one type of deck, and that is a red and white control deck that uses a ton of instants and sorceries to control the board or deal a ton of damage.

Velomachus should allow us to clear the field in order to get what we need done, but we need to make sure we can get to that point because of how high Velomachus’ mana value is.

The first thing we need to do is make sure that we can deal with being behind as we do what we can to ramp up to get to Velomachus.

What comes to mind first are Fog effects, so something like Holy Day which prevents all combat damage that would be dealt this turn. This keeps us alive against aggro decks that are looking to swing on an open target.

We have Ethereal Haze, Angelsong, and Pollen Lullaby to act as a way to prevent combat damage, with Pollen Lullaby giving the potential benefit of keeping the attacking opponent’s creatures tapped if we win a Clash.

There are also cards that redirect damage like Deflecting Palm, which can take a creature with massive power and turn that on its controller. If we want a creature version, there is Phyrexian Vindicator which acts like a wall to soak up and redirect damage to another target.

If an opponent has a problematic creature that is more on utility and doesn’t want to attack, then there is Pariah which moves damage dealt to you to that creature.

The next thing that we need to focus on is the suite of instants and sorceries that help us catch up to where we need to be when we finally do get Velomachus into play.

Angelfire Ignition is perfect for this because it allows us to stabilize if we are in a less than ideal situation when Velomachus attacks by making Velomachus bigger, have trample, lifelink, and indestructible and we can Flashback later if necessary.

Chandra’s Ignition can help us sweep the board of smaller creatures and can also get a decent chunk of damage through, and is more effective if we manage to contrive a way to give Velomachus lifelink.

If we really want to control the board then we have a suit of board wipes that we can use, with one of the more effective ones being Urza’s Ruinous Blast to exile nonlegendary nonland permanents to help you clear the way in a more definitive way, especially if you are dealing with an opponent who wants their stuff to die.

We should also consider using modal spells, which we can adapt to whatever we need in the moment. Lorehold Command for a body, protection, some damage and life gain, or card draw as an example.

Once we reach an ideal point, then we can start pressing our advantage to win via a ton of extra combat steps to trigger Velomachus.

Savage Beating for example can give us an additional combat, but we can also Entwine it to give our creatures double strike for even more damage during the combat. It also allows us to cast Great Train Heist, though we do need to pay the mana to get the extra combat step.

What’s tricky about Velomachus is that a lot of extra combat spells are sorceries that say “after this main phase,” which I believe doesn’t trigger an extra combat when cast during the combat phase, I’ll need a judge ruling for that but from a bit of searching that seems to be the case.

So instead, we are going to also be relying on cards that we can allow us to recast our extra combat spells from the graveyard.

Surge to Victory is the win condition in this case because we exile a card from our graveyard to give our creatures a boost, and if during our turn our creatures deal combat damage we can copy that spell and cast it for free.

So, if we manage to exile our Savage Beating and manage to land combat damage on an opponent, we set ourselves in a potential infinite loop of combat phases to win the game, casting whatever number of other spells from Velomachus to guarantee us the victory.

Velomachus can make a complex deck that relies on making sure our timing is correct and we have the opportunity to win. Velomachus is also a seven mana Commander, meaning that we need as much ramp or rituals we can get to make sure we can cast Velomachus before our opponents can get too far ahead.

That is the hardest part about Velomachus, but if we can manage it, then we can win quite decisively. Until then, we need to control the board in the most efficient way we can.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual