Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Nahiri, Forged in Fury!

Nahiri is a six mana 5/4 with affinity for Equipment and whenever an equipped creature you control attacks, exile the top card of your library and you may play that card this turn, and if it is an Equipment spell than you can cast it without paying its mana cost.

Equipment Commanders are pretty interesting to play with, though the toughest thing is working to make sure that you can get the Equipment on the battlefield, while also having mana to attach the Equipment.

Nahiri gets rid of one of those hurdles, so we only need to worry about getting enough Equipment in play, having creatures that are already equipped to attack, and have a ton of solid Equipment that we can win via a Voltron strategy.

Starting with the first piece of the puzzle, we need ways to get Equipment onto creatures that can attack whenever they are able, which is better the cheaper they are.

Barbed Spike is an ideal example of this because not only does it make a body that has a solid enough stat line for the early game and a low Equip cost, but the body that it makes also happens to fly by default, which we can use to stack some early Equipment on to get some damage through.

We should also consider Equipment that has Living Weapon, like Flayer Husk, which while it doesn’t give the Germ token a significant boost, it is still a one mana artifact that we can get onto the battlefield to make Nahiri cheaper while still having a body on the field to protect ourselves if necessary.

In a similar vein, For Mirrodin! is also an effect to consider, though some of those Equip costs tend to run high. However, with something like Haxplate Wallbreaker, which is an Equipment that gives an additional combat if the creature attacks during the first combat phase of your turn, untapping your attacking creatures.

A sneaky pick of getting an early creature equipped is Fervent Champion, which allows you to pay 3 less for Equip costs targeting Fervent Champion, which in some cases can mean you can Equip for free or for 1.

The next major hurdle to look at is making sure we can get Equipment onto our creatures in an efficient manner.

Bruenor Battlehammer is great for this because for the first Equip of each turn, then we can pay 0 for the Equip cost, and any equipped creature we control gets stronger for each Equipment attached to it.

In a similar vein, Astor, Bearer of Blades can help you search for an Equipment or Vehicle from the top seven cards of your library and Equipment you control have Equip 1 and Vehicles you control have Crew 1, and while you won’t use the Vehicle part often, being able to make costly Equipment attach for just one mana is huge.

Of course you have cards like Sigarda’a Aid which can let you cast Aura and Equipment spells as if they had flash and you can attach an Equipment when it enters the battlefield, Forge Anew which can return an Equipment from your graveyard to the battlefield and equip as at instant speed and pay 0 for the first equip ability each turn, and Puresteel Paladin to draw you a card whenever an Equipment enters and if you have Metalcraft then Equipment you control has Equip 0.

Danitha, Benalia’s Hope allows you to put an Aura or Equipment from your hand or graveyard onto the battlefield attached to Danitha, Stonehewer Giant can tutor an Equipment onto the battlefield and attach it to creature you control, and Brass Squire to attach an Equipment onto a creature at instant speed.

Now we need to find a way to make sure that once we get Nahiri in play, we are able to get as much Equipment onto her as possible.

Inventory Management is a fun card in this regard because it allows you at instant speed with split second attach each Aura and Equipment you control to target creature you control, and if you have been casting some cheap artifacts then Nahiri should be able to deal with what you need.

If you want to get a large number of Equipment onto the battlefield fairly early, than Bloodforged Battle-Axe is worth considering because it gives the equipped creature a sizeable bonus while also making a token copy of itself if the equipped creature deals combat damage to a player.

One of the better ways to win via Commander damage is via extra combat spells, with the one I recommend the most being Akki Battle Squad because it triggers when a modified creature you control attacks to give you one additional combat phase.

If you don’t mind a potential infinite combo to win, then you can employ the Godo, Bandit Warlord loop with Helm of the Host. The way the loop works is that you attach Helm of the Host to Godo, Bandit Warlord, which at the beginning of combat will make a token copy of Godo to search for another Equipment, and if you attack with the token Godo then it will create an extra combat step, which retriggers Helm of the Host to make another Godo, which creates an infinite combat loop.

Now it is also very easy to not include this loop in your deck, replacing those cards with excellent strong Equipment like Shadowspear or Excalibur, Sword of Eden, or any sword from the Swords cycle, the choice is yours.

Nahiri is a value Commander that rewards you for playing a ton of Equipment in order to make her cheaper to play and to start gaining the benefits from. She has versatility in that you are choosing which Equipment you think will serve you best based on your local meta, and that can allow you to fine tune the deck to be more and more consistent.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual