Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Xyris, the Writhing Storm!

Xyris is a five mana 3/5 with flying and whenever an opponent draws a card except for the first one they draw then you make a 1/1 Snake token and whenever Xyris deals combat damage to a player, you and that player draw that many cards.

The plan for Xyris is to make a bunch of Snake tokens as a way to punish your opponents for drawing too many cards, however there is another option I see and that is a sneaky “mill” strategy.

It requires a bit of set up, but it is a sneaky way to get a win through, but there is the danger of your opponents drawing their answers, so we need to find ways to deal with that as well.

The first thing we need to consider are all the ways we can get our opponents to draw a whole bunch of cards, ideally also as a way to make sure they can’t cast too many spells either.

Forced Fruition is one of the bigger keystones of the plan because whenever an opponent casts a spell they draw seven cards, which is seven triggers for Xyris.

While that will be a later game play, we still have options in the early game to get our opponents to draw cards, one notable example being Howling Mine.

Windfall will also help us out in the later game if an opponent has a huge number of cards in hand and we can get them to discard all of them and force everyone to draw that many cards as well, getting even more triggers off of Xyris.

There is also of course wheel effects, such as Magus of the Wheel, which at the very least makes each opponent draw seven cards. We even have access to a counter spell that makes opponents draw cards in Arcane Denial.

The next thing we need to do is make sure that we can limit the number of spells and permanents our opponents control, which is a little harder to do in our colors but not impossible.

Aether Barrier is a way to limit the number of creature spells our opponents can cast each turn, forcing them to either pay more mana or sacrifice a permanent.

We also have access to Pendrell Mists, which gives each creature an upkeep cost of 1 mana or sacrifice the creature. Now this is symmetrical, so if you only want one player to have this effect for a turn then there is also Fade Away, which is especially effective against a token deck.

There is also a similar effect for artifacts called Energy Flux, which if our deck doesn’t have a lot of artifacts we can slot in the deck.

Now we do need a back up plan against our opponents now that they have a lot of cards in their hand and once they figure out our plan.

Gaze of Adamaro is a way to deal a huge swing of damage against a player who has a ton of cards in hand. As another potential finisher we have Runeflare Trap to deal damage to an opponent equal to the number of cards they have in their hand, which we can cast cheaper if an opponent has drawn three or more cards this turn.

We can also punish our opponents for drawing those cards as well, such as our favorite Scrawling Crawler and Razorkin Needlehead both of which deals 1 damage for each card our opponents draw, and Cerebral Vortex to force an opponent to draw two cards and then deal damage equal to the number of cards they have drawn that turn.

If we want an offensive option, then we have access to Leela, Sevateem Warrior, which gains a +1/+1 counter whenever an opponent draws a card other than the first one they draw each turn.

There is also Thought Sponge, a flash creature that adds +1/+1 counters for each card an opponent has drawn that turn and when it dies you draw cards equal to its power.

Xyris is a quirky Commander that gives you a game plan, but with a bit of creative deckbuilding, that game plan can be something completely different.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual