Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Doran, the Siege Tower!

Doran is a three mana 0/5 that lets each creature assign their combat damage equal to their toughness rather than their power.

Having a toughness matter Commander is fun because a lot of high toughness creatures tend to err on the cheaper side of things or have such a huge toughness for a really low rate.

It also helps that a lot of high toughness creatures are Treefolk, meaning that we can weave in come Treefolk synergies into the deck and make our way into having a ton of big creatures that not only can block, but also attack when needed.

Starting off with the Treefolk support, we need to pack in a decent chunk of Treefolk in the deck to help set up our forest.

Treefolk Harbinger is a card I had no idea existed and am glad to see how great of a card it is. For one mana you can tutor a Treefolk or Forest card to the top of your library, which is excellent to help us make sure we get what we need when we need it. It also is effectively a one mana 3/3 when Doran is in play.

There is also Bosk Banneret, which makes all of your Treefolk and Shaman spells cost 1 less to cast, Leaf-Crowned Elder to cheat Treefolk and Shaman onto the battlefield, and Fangorn, Tree Shepherd to give your Treefolk vigilance and ramp you when your Treefolk attack.

We also have access to Kindred spells like Rootgrapple to destroy a creature and draw us a card if we have a Treefolk and Reach of Branches as a way to repeatedly make a Treefolk token.

Now while we will have a lot of Treefolk in the library, we won’t be solely relying on them as we need creatures with high toughness, which usually are Walls or have defender.

In cases like that, we need cards like Rolling Stones to help get our Walls a chance to attack. Assault Formation is the better version of this effect, doing the same thing as Doran and allowing all creatures with defender the chance to attack, but it is never bad to have a little redundancy in your deck.

Fecund Greenshell is also something we could use effectively in our deck because it can become an anthem when we have ten or more lands, but more importantly whenever a creature with toughness higher than its power (most of our deck) then we can look at the top card of our library, put it into play if its a land or in our hand if it isn’t.

We can also use Tree of Redemption and Tree of Perdition to not only have huge blockers, but also being able to give your Trees huge toughness for a massive swing will be devastating to any opponent.

Our plan is a go tall aggro plan, using our creatures with high toughness to accomplish this, but how else do we secure a win?

Doran’s ability affects all creatures, not just our own, so if we have an effect like Maha, Its Feathers Night on the battlefield, suddenly a huge blocker becomes a slight inconvenience to us.

Add in an effect like Primal Rage, which gives all of our creature trample, then all of the sudden we can have a lethal amount of damage in a short amount of time.

Plus there are a variety of effects that only raise toughness or primarily raises toughness like Stoneskin or Gauntlets of Light that can give a single creature even bigger toughness in order to swing out for game.

What’s even sneakier is a card like Behind the Scenes, which gives all of our creatures skulk, which means that can’t be blocked by creatures with power higher than our attacking creatures. Since Doran’s ability doesn’t change their power, and a lot of the creatures we’re using have low power, we have a chance of swinging through without even worrying about blockers.

Doran is an interesting Commander in wanting creatures with high toughness to be a primarily combat heavy deck, and also having support in Treefolk does make the deck a little more consistent as well.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual