Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Inniaz, the Gale Force!

Inniaz is a five mana 4/4 with flying and for two and either a white or blue attacking creatures you control with flying get +1/+1 until end of turn and whenever three or more creatures you control with flying attack, each player gains control of a nonland permanent of your choice controlled by the player to their right.

What began as a pretty standard fliers matter Commander suddenly became a Commander that wishes to exchange permanents with your opponents, which brings up a whole new way of building the deck.

There are going to be a lot of flying synergies, but there is also going to be some switching control of permanents going on that we should take advantage of.

First we need to make sure that we have our fliers sorted, as well as ways to make sure we can protect them and make them bigger.

Jubilant Skybonder is excellent for this because it gives all creatures we control with flying the ability “Spells your opponents cast that target this creature cost 2 more to cast.” which is an excellent way to both protect your things as well as making sure your opponents spend more resources than they need to to kill a problematic threat.

Judge’s Familiar can be an early creature to play as a way to counter an opponent’s instant or sorcery spell, Aven Mindcensor can punish searching the library, and Aven Interrupter can exile a spell and makes it plotted while also taxing spells in the graveyard and in exile.

Rally of Wings is a solid combat trick when you have a lot of fliers because it untaps all creatures you control and gives your fliers +2/+2 until end of turn. There is also Lofty Denial to be a counter spell that becomes stronger if you control a creature with flying.

The next thing we need to look at are ways to give our opponents things that they definitely don’t want while we take the things they like.

Grid Monitor is especially devious, since it completely prevents that player from playing any creature spells. If we need to switch it to another player, then we just need to make another attack, which does mean it is a bit slow, but it can still be done in a maximum of three turns if there is an especially problematic creature player.

We can also use a card like Lich’s Tomb to force our opponents to sacrifice things in order to stay alive. They can always sacrifice the tomb, but if we do a ton of damage in the air, then they will still need to sacrifice a number of permanents anyway.

There is also a way where we can use Nine Lives to stay in the game and when its last counters, we exchange it with an opponent to switch control of it so that they lose instead of us.

We are going for more of a midrange strategy, using whatever sort of removal to get rid of problematic threats or take them until we build up a solid enough board to win.

Pongify and Generous Gift are among some of the better removal spells we have access to because not only do they destroy something, it replaces it with a solid body that we can steal with Inniaz’s ability.

Keep in mind that Inniaz’s ability doesn’t target, meaning that we can take things that have a form of protection like shroud, hexproof, etc., which means that we can make some tokens with Midnight Haunting and get something our opponents controls that they want to protect.

Since we are in the mood of taking control of things, then we can use Sudden Substitution as a way to steal a spell by giving an opponent a token, Smirking Spelljacker to steal a spell and cast it when it attacks, and Thieving Skydiver to take control of an artifact an opponent controls.

Inniaz is a fascinating Commander that would normally facilitate one sort of strategy, but adds in a new wrinkle that opens up what your deck can do. Sure it can be a one trick pony that you won’t win many games with, but if you manage to get it, then it’s going to feel amazing.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual