Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Elenda and Azor!

Elenda and Azor are a six mana 6/6 with flying, ward 2, and whenever they attack you may pay X white, blue, and black to draw X cards and at the beginning of each end step you may pay 4 life to make a number of 1/1 black Vampire Knight creature tokens with lifelink equal to the number of cards you’ve drawn this turn.

Elenda and Azor want you to draw a lot of cards in order to make a lot of tokens, and with some evasion, protection, and a draw effect can definitely help get the deck started. What also helps this deck is the fact that we can make tokens at the beginning of each end step, so we are incentivized to play draw spells on our opponents turns as well.

The goal of the deck is to draw a whole bunch of cards on everyone’s turns in order to make a ton of tokens, while also making sure we don’t lose too much life to making tokens.

The first thing we need to look at are our draw spell, and the more draw we can get the better, especially if its at instant speed.

Brainsurge is a way for us to draw four cards at instant speed and can also have us put two cards on top of our library, either to save them from hand attack, or a way we can reset our next draws if we have a way to shuffle our library to go along with it.

Combine that with something like Teferi’s Ageless Insight, then we can turn a draw four into a draw eight and can make eight Vampire Knight tokens with lifelink, and any other one mana cantrip like Opt or Consider become draw two cards and two more bodies from Elenda and Azor.

We can also make use of Wheel effects like Tolarian Winds to discard our hand to draw that many cards at instant speed for only two mana, which if we get Elenda and Azor into play early enough can produce a decent number of bodies if we chain more and more cheap draw spells.

If we want to give ourselves a bit of insurance to make sure we can continue to pay life in order to activate Elenda and Azor continuously, then we can play the classic Sphinx’s Revelation in order to gain X life and draw X cards, which can be expensive mana wise, but can allow us to continue in the game.

Drawing cards doesn’t become an issue, but the next thing we do need to make sure we manage is making sure we have enough life to get Elenda and Azor to work.

Soul Warden is a simple enough effect that we can play early on in order for us to jump start into gaining a bunch of life whenever any creature enters the battlefield, which if we go up against token decks can be a huge amount of life gain, and becomes more life gain for us when Elenda and Azor start going.

Soul’s Attendant is also a classic creature to go along with Soul Warden in order for us to gain an advantage in gaining life whenever a creature enters the battlefield.

While not as effective in gaining us life as the Soul Sisters, we also have access to a number of other ways for us to gain life whenever a creature we control enters, such as with Case of the Uneaten Feast, which can also allow us to cast creature cards from our graveyard after we solve it from gaining 5 or more life in a turn, or Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim to not only gain us 1 life whenever a creature we control enters, but also has our opponents lose 1 life whenever a creature we control dies.

One of the better ways for us to take advantage of our opponents playing a lot of creatures is by using Authority of the Consuls, which gains us life whenever a creature enters the battlefield under our opponents control, but also has creatures our opponents control enter tapped, which can definitely be useful against low to the ground aggressive decks especially if we play it turn one.

The way we win can be as simple as using our army of Vampire Knight tokens to attack, but we can supplement with other drain and life loss effects.

Mirkwood Bats is an excellent example of a card that rewards us for making a ton of tokens as well as sacrificing them because when we do either, each opponent loses 1 life, which if everything goes to plan our opponents should be losing life every single turn.

Another way we can get some drain going is by using Wispdrinker Vampire, which whenever another creature we control enters the battlefield under our control, then we get to drain our opponents, and if we have enough mana to sink then creatures we control with power 2 or less gain deathtouch and lifelink.

If we want to make our draw power work for us, then we can play something like Psychosis Crawler to have each opponent lose 1 life whenever we draw a card, which could be a ton if done correctly. If we have access to Sheoldred, the Apocalypse then that could be an additional way for us to get way ahead and turn any of our targeted draw spells like Peer into the Abyss into game winning spells.

Elenda and Azor plays really well with a value sort of strategy, rewarding you for drawing a ton of cards and paying a frankly small amount of life in order to get a ton of bodies for drawing a bunch of cards.

Now once you get your engine going, people will be targeting you in order to stop it, and while having ward 2 is a nice delay, it isn’t a full stop against board wipes or edict effects. There is also the chance where you get too greedy and draw your whole library and don’t have a way to win, in which case you draw yourself out, which would be a funny story to tell to be fair.

You can win with Elenda and Azor, especially if you play cards like Rhystic Study or Consecrated Sphinx, but there are ways to build the duo Commander without those cards.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual