Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Ephara, God of the Polis!

Ephara is a four mana 6/5 with indestructible and as long as your devotion to white and blue is less than seven Ephara isn’t a creature and at the beginning of each upkeep, if you had another creature enter the battlefield under your control last turn, you draw a card.

At first I wrote Ephara off since I thought it said at the beginning of your upkeep, but then seeing that it works after each upkeep means that we have something interesting to play with.

There are a plethora of ways to get creatures on the battlefield each turn, and we can take advantage of the fact that we play on our opponents turns in order to draw even more cards, which means we can be a control deck that uses creatures to draw us into instant speed answers every turn.

What we need to start off with is ways to reliably get a creature in and out of the battlefield each turn.

Saltskitter is a less than ideal creature normally, but it does trigger off of any creature coming into play, which means that if an opponent gets any creature into play then it will exile itself to come back at the end of turn. Not only that, but we can save it if an opponent plays a board wipe by playing a cheap flash creature.

Speaking of, cheap flash creatures are going to be a majority of creatures we play in order to trigger Ephara, especially if they let us bounce creatures. Sunpearl Kirin is one of these sort of creatures because when it enters it bounces another nonland permanent to our hand, and if it was a token we draw card.

We can also make use of flash creatures that have a utility attached to them, like Cathar Commando, which we can flash in to get rid of a problematic artifact or enchantment, Aven Mindcensor to limit our opponents ability to tutor from their deck, Selfless Squire to help against a big swing against us in combat, and Deep Gnome Terramancer to help us catch up when an opponent starts ramping.

Blink and flicker effects also help us when looking to get additional ways to get benefits from enters effects. Ephemerate, Momentary Blink, and Cloudshift are cheap ways to do this, with Ephemerate becoming available again with Rebound and Momentary Blink having Flashback.

The next thing we need to consider are the spells we are going to use for the control aspect of the deck.

Familiar’s Ruse is Counterspell with the additional cost of having us return a creature we control to the hand, which usually means a small flash creature with a utility that we can use again.

To help us make sure that we can have mana to use, Unwind also becomes a solid choice to have in the deck since it can counter a noncreature spell while also untapping three of our lands so we can have mana for more interaction or flash creatures.

We also have access to some instant speed board wipes in Final Showdown which has some modal functions in making creatures losing all abilities until end of turn, giving a creature we control indestructible, and destroying all creatures. This keeps death triggers from activating and can kill indestructible threats, keep a creature protected if necessary, all while having access to a board wipe.

While not instant speed, Hour of Revelation can be one of the most efficient board wipes because if there are ten or more nonland permanents in play, it only costs three white mana and destroys all nonland permanents. Since Ephara has indestructible, then we can guarantee she stays in play to help us reestablish ourselves on our opponents turns.

Since we are a control deck, our win condition is going to involve the slow accumulation of resources until we hit capacity to get into a dominant position, ideally Planeswalkers.

Venser, the Sojourner is an example of a card that plays well in the long game, since we can use it to flicker a creature to gain additional use of enters effects, helps us get damage through by making our creatures unblockable, and the ultimate turns every one of our flash creatures into removal in addition to their other effects.

If we want a Planeswalker that will really slow down our opponents, then Teferi, Time Reveler definitely fulfills this condition in forcing our opponents to play at sorcery speed while allowing us to play a sorcery at instant speed while also being able to exile something will definitely help us advance quikly.

Elspeth, Sun’s Champion makes tokens, clears the board of larger creatures, and makes our team stronger, Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim gets bigger for each card we draw from Ephara and can make bodies that also get bigger for each card we draw and can clear one opponents board to leave it open, and Narset Transcendent to get us more cards in hand, rebound an instant or sorcery, and prevent our opponents from playing noncreature spells.

Ephara is an engine Commander in that she helps fuel your hand into more action as the game goes on. She has in built protection in indestructible, and also the more subtle protection in that she isn’t a creature unless our devotion to white and blue is seven, which avoids some exile based removal and some board wipes that can give -X/-X.

It turns out if you read the card you learn what the card does, who knew?

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual