Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Archelos, Lagoon Mystic!

Archelos is a four mana 2/4 with as long as Archelos is tapped, other permanents enter tapped and as long as they are untapped other permanents enter untapped.

Archelos presents an interesting game plan, more so leaning into a control aspect where you time when Archelos is tapped or untapped, so that’s going to be the game plan. This also means that we can play cards that may be less than stellar because they enter tapped, because this would overwrite that clause.

This also means that the mana base can be pretty cheap because you can play a number of enters tapped lands with less consequences. This will be important with our backup plan.

First we need to look for ways to get a good number of lands onto the battlefield, because we need to make sure we have a good amount of mana for a control win.

Blossoming Tortoise is one of the major players in this instance because when it enters or attacks we can mill three cards and put a land from our graveyard onto the battlefield tapped.

We can also use Open the Way to get at most four lands onto the battlefield, Circuitous Route to get two basic lands or Gates onto the battlefield, and Explore the Underdark to also get two basics or Gates as well as taking the initiative.

If we wanted the most use out of getting lands onto the battlefield, then cards like Summer Bloom, Explore, or Growth Spiral which allow you to play multiple lands a turn will serve us well.

Next we need to find a number of ways to tap Archelos, as well as way to take advantage of having our opponent’s cards tapped.

Twiddle is the most well known example of a card that can tap or untap something for a low cost and at instant speed. In a similar vein we have Chain Stasis and Dream’s Grip.

If we want an enchantment version of the effect where we have better control of when we can have Archelos tapped or untapped we can use Freed from the Real.

As far as cards that we can use to take advantage of our opponents tapped creatures then we have Theft of Dreams and Borrowing 100,000 Arrows to draw cards equal to the number of tapped creatures our opponents control.

We also have a suite of cards that are cheap but affect tapped creatures like Death Stroke, or get cheaper if they target a tapped creature like Dire Downdraft, or have an additional effect if they target a tapped creature like Brackish Blunder.

Now we need to get to our win condition, of which we have a couple of options to use.

The primary win condition that we’ll be looking for is using Maze’s End to win by having ten or more Gates, which we can also Nine-Fingers Keene to get Gates onto the battlefield faster and eventually just add cards to our hand.

Since we are building up a decent number of land drops, then some Landfall payoffs are worth taking a looking into, such as Scute Swarm, Iridescent Vinelasher, Nissa of Shadowed Boughs, or Zendikar’s Roil to name a few.

Another aspect to look at is big mana, meaning cards we can dump a ton of mana into to get value are worth taking a look at like Villainous Wealth which can let us cast a ton of our opponent’s spells, or Emergent Ultimatum which we can take three expensive spells and give an opponent the option of two which we can cast for free.

Archelos is, appropriately, about a slow accumulation of resources until we get to a huge amount of mana in which we can cast our expensive spells, get use out of playing a slow and steady game, or get the right resources to win via our alternate win condition.

The best thing is that since we are taking our time, we can pivot onto the other strategies relatively easily if we need to.

I’m sure there’s a saying about taking your time to achieve a goal, but it escapes me.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual