Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Betor, Kin to All!

Betor is a five mana 5/7 with flying and at the beginning of your end step if creatures your control have a total toughness of 10 or greater then you draw a card, then if the total toughness is 20 or greater then you untap each creature you control, then if the total toughness is 40 or greater, each opponents loses half of their life rounded up.

This is a fascinating way to pay a toughness matters Commander, and there are plenty of ways to try and get to 40 or greater toughness that the game plan of getting to 40 should hopefully not be too difficult to achieve, especially if we try to play an aggressive defenders strategy to help facilitate the win

The first thing that we need to do is to find a decent number of creatures with high toughness and ideally a low cost and some decent utility.

Stalwart Shied-Bearers is the perfect example of this, because not only is it a cheap 0/3 with defender but it also gives other creatures we control with defender a +0/+2 boost, which means if we can get this onto the battlefield early, then our other defenders get a solid boost to reach our 40 toughness goal.

Wall of Junk is a two mana 0/7 with defender that returns to our hand when it blocks, Perimeter Captain is a one mana 0/4 defender that gains us 2 life whenever a creature with defender blocks, Arboreal Grazer gets us an additional land drop and has reach for being an 0/3, and Flumph draws us and an opponent a card whenever it takes damage.

When looking for high toughness creatures with a solid utility as we get into higher mana values, we can use something like Sapling of Colfenor, which has indestructible and reveals the top card of our library when it attacks and if its a creature we gain life equal to its toughness and lose life equal to its power and puts it in your hand.

We can also make use of Betor’s ability to untap our creature by using mana dorks that have a high toughness like Sylvan Caryatid and Axebane Guardian, or other creatures that have a useful utility like Crashing Drawbridge which can give creatures we control haste, or Blight Pile which has each opponents loses life equal to the number of defenders we control.

The next thing we need to look at are ways we can increase our creatures toughness, ideally through anthem effects or massive boosts from combat tricks.

Spidersilk Armor is a solid example of what we’re looking for because even though it only gives a +0/+1 to all of our creatures, it also gives our creatures reach, which is an excellent utility to have when a lot of our creatures can block most anything, but not all of them have ways to block flying threats.

Another card to consider is Rammas Echor, Ancient Shield, which when you cast your second spell each turn then you draw a card and make an 0/3 Wall with defender and at the beginning of combat on your turn, creatures you control with defender gain exalted, which means when any creature we control attacks alone it gets +1/+1 until end of turn for each instance of exalted, which can also help us get to 40 very quickly.

There are also combat trick spells we can play on our turn to give a massive boost in toughness like Stoneskin which is a flash Aura that gives a creature +0/+10, Refuse to Yield to give a creature +2/+7 and untaps it, and Bar the Door which gives all creatures we control +0/+4 until the end of the turn.

If we want some more ways to get creatures with high toughness onto the battlefield, then something like Rampart Architect becomes important because when it enters or attacks it makes a 0/3 Wall creature token with defender and whenever a creature we control with defender dies we can search for a basic and put it onto the battlefield tapped.

The last thing we need is a way to help chip in the last bit of damage that we will be dealing, and for me this means having an aggro back up plan.

Ancient Lumberknot is something that we are looking for because if we control a creature with toughness higher than its power, then that creature assigns combat damage using its toughness rather than its power. We can also use Huatli, the Sun’s Heart to have this effect while also being able to get a ton of life.

Assault Formation is a way for us to get across the hurdle of having a creature that we control with defender the ability to attack, while also being able to give creatures we control a +0/+1 boost.

It is a little tricky in our colors to go full aggro, but with the release of Tarkir: Dragonstorm there has been some great help with Felothar the Steadfast, which allows our defender the ability to attack while also using their toughness for combat, and also giving us access to a card draw engine that relies on toughness to draw cards and discards cards equal to power of a creature we sacrificed.

Now if we really want to abuse the fact that Betor has the ability to make opponents lose a ton of life, then we can use cards like Wound Reflection which has each opponent loses life equal to the amount of life they lost this turn, which means that if we have Betor resolve first then Wound Reflection second, we win the game, no matter how high of a life total our opponents have.

Betor is a build around Commander in that you need to follow the restrictions of their ability to get the most out of it. It can be a linear game play loop and some people may not be a fan of a play style that is slower and more durdly, but it can be a different way to play the game that changes a toughness matters play style in an interesting way.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual