Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Nazar, the Velvet Fang!

Nazar is a four mana 3/3 with menace, and whenever you gain life you put a feeding counter on Nazar and whenever Nazar attacks, you may remove three feeding counters from it to draw three cards and lose 3 life.

Nazar is interesting as a value Commander because it require the two axes of gaining life and attacking in order to draw cards. We can gain life fairly reliably in black, the concern comes in making sure that Nazar is protected in combat.

Menace is doing a lot of work in evasion, but there are ways we can make sure that Nazar can attack safely while still maintaining the feeding counters.

The first thing we need to have in play are ways to make sure we can gain life reliably.

Demon’s Horn is a simple card that can get more effective the players play black since it gains us 1 life whenever any player casts a black spell. In a similar vein there is a Staff of the Death Magus, which gains us 1 life whenever we cast a black spell or play a Swamp and Prism Ring which lets us choose a color to gain 1 life whenever we cast a spell of that color.

Ayara, First of Locthwain is also a solid pick to have in play since whenever she or another black creature enters the battlefield under our control, each of our opponents loses 1 life and we gain 1 life and we can sacrifice another black creature to draw a card.

Of course we also have access to creatures like Vampire Nighthawk which have lifelink, Thrull Parasite which has Extort which we can pay an extra mana to have each opponent lose 1 life and us gain 1 life whenever we cast a spell, and Sanguine Syphoner which has each opponent lose 1 life and we gain 1 life whenever it attacks.

Sangromancer can also be a decent piece to help us gain a bunch of life, since it gains us 3 life whenever a creature an opponent dies or whenever an opponent discards a card, which may just occur incidentally without us playing those sort of effects.

What we should focus on next are ways to make sure that Nazar sticks on the battlefield, and while black can bring creatures back from the graveyard we should want to make sure Nazar sticks to the battlefield to not lose the feeding counters.

This means that instead of cards like Feign Death which brings back a creature from the battlefield after it dies, something like Maximum Overdrive becomes a much more valuable pick in order to make sure that Nazar doesn’t die and potentially lose their counters.

Alesha’s Legacy, Battle-Rage Blessing, and Offer Immortality all do the same thing in being two mana spells that give a creature deathtouch and indestructible, which does double duty in making sure that Nazar stays alive, but also if they are blocked by multiple creatures because of menace, we can take out multiple creatures with only one point of damage because of the deathtouch.

Rush of Vitality gives a +1/+0 bonus in addition to giving lifelink and indestructible which adds another feeding counter to Nazar, and in a similar vein there is also Butcher’s Glee which gives a creature +3/+0 and lifelink while also regenerating it.

Some other reliable forms of protection come from Equipment like Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves, but one of the more underrated pieces of Equipment comes from Silver Shroud Costume, a flash Equipment that automatically attaches itself to a creature and gives it shroud until end of turn and makes the creature it controls unable to be blocked.

In terms of how we win, with the amount of life gain we have access to we can exploit that to win the game.

Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose has an opponent lose life equal to the amount of life we gained, while also having the activated ability to give creatures we control lifelink in order to make an even larger swing of life to at least one opponent.

Gray Merchant of Asphodel is also a solid choice to include to drain our opponents since a lot of our permanent happen to increase our devotion a lot, which makes the Gray Merchant more lethal to our opponents and gives us a bigger swing of life.

I feel like I need to also mention the obligatory infinite life drain loop that forms from Sanguine Bond and Exquisite Blood, which can also be achieved if you happen to have access to Enduring Tenacity and Bloodthirsty Conqueror, two of those pieces tend to be pricey to include. You can include the ones that have opponents lose life when you gain life, Sanguine Bond and Enduring Tenacity to keep pressure on your opponents while also not breaking the bank.

Since we also have a lot of life to play with, we can also play around with cards that require us to pay life to use them, like Season of the Witch which has us pay 2 life at the beginning of our upkeep or sacrifice it, but it forces everyone’s creatures that are able to attack to attack each turn otherwise they get destroyed at the beginning of the end step.

Nazar is a value Commander that relies on reliable life gain and protection in order to draw a bunch of cards. Of course there are ways to get around the amount of protection we provide or we may not have a piece of protection at the right time, but that isn’t as much of an issue as it is with some Commanders.

Nazar has a solid enough game plan with their support cards that Nazar can be more of a supplemental piece to draw more cards rather than a critical engine piece if necessary.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual