Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Geralf, the Fleshwright!

Geralf is a three mana 2/3 that makes a 2/2 blue and black Zombie Rogue creature token when you cast a spell during your turn other than the first spell you cast and whenever a Zombie enters the battlefield under your control, put a +1/+1 counter on it for each other Zombie that entered the battlefield under your control this turn.

A mono blue spellslinger deck is interesting, but not impossible to make work, especially since blue has a lot of cheap cantrips that we can use to our advantage. The hardest part will making sure we have the mana to start going ham.

We can make it work, its just going to take some effort and making sure we can survive to our big turn.

Our first plan is to make sure that our spells are as cheap as possible and ways to make those spells are cheaper.

Mocking Sprite is an example of this because it makes our instant and sorcery spells cost 1 less to cast. There are plenty of these we can make use of like Baral, Chief of Compliance, Thunderclap Drake, and Jace’s Sanctum with them having various other abilities.

Baral draws us a card whenever we counter a spell or ability, Thunderclap Drake can copy a spell for each time we’ve cast our Commander, and Jace’s Sanctum can scry 1 whenever we cast an instant or sorcery.

There are also the spells that untap our lands after we cast them, which helps us cast more spells like Frantic Search which draws us two cards and we discard two cards but we untap up to three lands. While not a full refund, Pore Over the Pages draws us three cards, untaps two lands, and we discard a card.

These cards become essential in fueling us later, and if we happen to hold on to a High Tide, which doubles the mana our Islands make, then we can make even more mana to cast a ton of spells.

Our next course of action is to get a ton of cheap cantrips that we can cast to draw a card, and since Geralf only triggers on our turn we can use sorceries with no issue.

Gitaxian Probe is an extremely mana efficient cantrip we can use to get things started, since not only do we get to look at our opponent’s hand and draw a card, we can do it by spending only two life.

Peek does the same thing but costs one mana to do, we can use Opt to scry then draw, we can use Consider to surveil then draw, Preordain scries 2 then draws, Serum Visions draws us a card and scries 2, Brainstorm draws us three and puts two cards from our on top of our our library, and we can Ponder to look at the top three cards then choose to shuffle if we don’t like them then draw a card.

Each one of those spells cost one mana, which means that as late as turn 4 we can start getting a huge army of Zombies.

We also have cheap removal spells in Pongify and Rapid Hybridization which destroy a creature and leave a 3/3 body in their stead, Unable to Scream and Witness Protection to transform a threat into something else, and Fading Hope and Curfew to bounce creatures.

Keep in mind Geralf cares about any spell cast, not just instants and sorceries, so 0 mana artifacts like Mishra’s Bauble, Tormod’s Crypt, and Spellbook are definitely options to consider.

At the end of the day we are going to be a Zombie deck, which means that we need to make use of our Zombies.

Undead Alchemist is a neat Zombie piece in that if our Zombies deal combat damage, our opponents instead mill that many cards and any creatures milled make Zombies, which get massive because of Geralf’s ability if a bunch of Zombies have come into play prior or are made because of it.

To help get our Zombies through to deal that damage, there is Eternal Skylord, which not only makes a Zombie Army token, but also gives Zombie tokens we control flying.

If we want some more card draw after getting a ton of Zombies then we can use Prophet of the Scarab, Geralf, Visionary Stitcher to give our Zombies flying or to make a massive Zombie after making a few tokens and sacrificing one of the bigger ones, or Jason Bright, Glowing Prophet to draw us a card whenever a Zombie or Mutant we control with different base power dies and to give a +1/+1 counter and flying to creature we control for 2 mana and sacrificing a creature.

As the coup de grace, we can use Rise from the Tides to create a tapped 2/2 black Zombie creature token for each instant and sorcery in our graveyard, which should be a massive number once we set it up.

Geralf is a Commander that can snowball us into a dominant position early and if left unchecked, which after a few massive Zombie making turns, your opponents will try to stop you. Have a couple of cheap counter spells at the ready to make sure you can through and nothing can stop your Zombie swarm.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual