Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Kaheera, the Orphanguard!

Kaheera is a three mana 3/2 with vigilance, the Companion condition of each creature card in your starting deck is a Cat, Elemental, Nightmare, Dinosaur, or Beast and each other you control of those types gets +1/+1 and vigilance.

While we won’t be building Kaheera with the Companion restriction, I do think that having five creature types to work with would be an interesting restriction.

There are plenty of good creatures in each of those creature types that we can work with to make a solid multi-typal deck. While Cat is the strongest of those creature types, those other creature types can help accomplish tasks that Cats normally can’t.

The game plan is to have a solid creature heavy aggro strategy to keep us in an advantageous position while we keep chipping in at our opponents with our creatures as they will have vigilance, taking advantage of Cat typal strategies as a base with the other creature types being able to help supplement.

The first thing we need are some creatures of the creature type that give us a bit of early game value.

Topiary Stomper and Wayward Swordtooth are perfect examples of this because they can help us ramp in the early game while being solid bodies once we hit seven lands or Ascend respectively, only getting bigger once Kaheera is in play.

Speaking of helping us ramp while also gaining us value, Yasharn, Implacable Earth is a great card in not only getting us two lands into hand, but also prevents from paying life or sacrificing nonland permanents to play spells or activate abilities, of which there are many.

Rampaging Baloths is a Beast that makes more Beasts whenever we play a land, Loam Lion is an early drop that gets bigger if we control a Forest, Ancient Imperiosaur is a massive body that gets bigger if we Convoke it, and Vitality Hunter is a creature that can give a bunch of our creatures lifelink if we pay mana to make it monstrous.

While we have access to a bunch of creature types, one of the most well supported typal creatures in that list is Cats, which we can use as the brunt of our aggro package.

Arahbo, the First Fang is a lord for our other Cats, as well as a way to get a bunch of Cat tokens onto the battlefield whenever a nontoken Cat we control enters the battlefield, which in this deck should be fairly often, especially if we count Kaheera among the Cats we can play.

Regal Caracal is another lord that gives Cats you control +1/+1 and lifelink while also making two Cat tokens with lifelink when it enters, Pride Sovereign gets bigger for each Cat you control and can exert itself to create two Cat tokens, Oreskos Explorer can help us get lands if we fall too far behind, and Bronzehide Lion can be used to protect something we need while being able to stay in play until we need it.

While there are plenty of Cats we can use, there are also cards that can make Cats like White Sun’s Zenith, which not only makes X Cat tokens, but also shuffles itself back into the library so we can use it again. We also have Felidar Retreat, which either makes a Cat token or can put +1/+1 counters on our creatures while also giving them vigilance when we play a land.

We have a couple of axes we can explore as win condition, but since we are developing a wide board that gets bigger, we should take advantage of that.

Ghalta and Mavren can either create a tapped and attacking X/X Dinosaur creature with trample where X being the greatest power among attacking creatures we control or create X 1/1 Vampire tokens with lifelink where X is the number of other attacking creatures. While we should ideally be making a Dinosaur to get some bonus to its power, we have the option to make the Vampires if we want to play defensively.

Speaking of a card that can work on offense and defense, True Conviction can give creatures we control double strike and lifelink, which we can use to get a ton of damage through while giving us a massive swing in life that we will be harder to take out.

In the vein of aggro finishers, we also have access to Ulvenwald Oddity which has trample and haste but more importantly can transform into Ulvenwald Behemoth, which can give creatures we control +1/+1 and haste, which means any creatures that we control that have attack triggers that make more bodies like Leonin Warleader are immediately active to make even more bodies that can get damage through.

Kaheera is a Commander that has a broad spectrum of creature types that it can use, and while Cats are the most supported, we still have access to plenty of other creature types to help supplement an aggressive Cat typal strategy.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual