Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Grand Arbiter Augustin IV!

Augustin is a four mana 2/3 that makes white and blue spell you cast cost 1 less to cast and spells your opponents cast cost 1 more to cast.

Notoriously a miserable Stax Commander because not only do you make your things much cheaper with other cards, but you also make everything your opponents cast much more than the one mana tax you are imposing. Augustin is so synonymous with being unfun to play against that it is a Game Changer.

But what if we decided to shed the poor reputation that Augustin has and play them completely against type. What if instead we play an aggressive version of Augustin, avoid using other Stax effects and go for an aggro win plan?

Now that seems like an interesting challenge.

The first thing we need to consider are cards that discount our spells even further, hopefully in ways that will make people less likely to attack you.

Helm of Awakening is something that would never go in a Augustin deck because it counteracts what Augustin would normally do in adding a tax to your opponents spells since it discounts everyone’s spells by 1. However, this is just going to stack the discounts in our favor.

Of course Pearl Medallion and Sapphire Medallion are going to be on the list in order to discount our colored spells even further, and we can even play a Sunscape Familiar to discount our spells even further.

We can also play Oketra’s Monument and Kefnet’s Monument as a way to discount our creature spells and whenever we cast a creature spell we can create a 1/1 Warrior token with vigilance and tap a creature an opponent controls that is unable to untap on their next untap step.

In a similar vein we can use Defiler of Dreams and Defiler of Faith to potentially some spells free in allowing us to replace the colored pips for permanent spells by paying 2 life instead, and with the bonus of us drawing a card and making a 1/1 Soldier token.

The next thing we do is look for cheap creatures that give us additional value when ever we cast multiple spells.

Taigam, Master Opportunist is perfect for this because he is cheap to cast, meaning if we even have one of our spell discounters in play then we can get him in play for one mana, and we cast another cheap creature like Resolute Reinforcements to gain the Flurry effect to copy the spell and then be able to cast it later for more cheap creatures.

Clarion Spirit makes a Spirit token whenever you cast your second spell each turn, Codespell Cleric enters with a +1/+1 counter if it was the second spell you cast this turn, and Lavinia, Foil to Conspiracy investigates whenever you cast your second spell each turn and can tap for two colorless mana on your opponents turns.

We can also take advantage of creatures that have effects that care about the number of spells you’ve cast like Geralf, the Fleshwright who makes a 2/2 Zombie Rogue token whenever you cast a spell during your turn if it isn’t the first spell you’ve cast that turn and also makes your Zombies bigger whenever a Zombie enters under your control for each Zombie that entered that turn.

In a similar vein we can also play Murmuration in order to make a Storm Crow token for each spell we’ve cast that turn while also giving Birds we control a bonus of +1/+1.

Now that we have our spell discounters and utility creatures in play, we need the big mana creatures that help us win the game.

Akroma, Angel of Wrath is a keyword soup creature that has flying, first strike, vigilance, trample, hate and protection from black and red that we should be able to get onto the battlefield with ease and quite early, which means that we have a difficult to interact with creature early on that can start putting pressure against our opponents.

Celestial Force can be used to give us continuous life gain at the beginning of each upkeep, Hoverguard Sweepers can be used to get two problematic creatures off the board, and Salvation Colossus can be used to give all of our creatures +2/+2 and indestructible whenever we attack.

There are also the Myojins, with Myojin of Blooming Dawn to make a 1/1 Spirit token for each permanent we control, Myojin of Cleansing Fire to clear the board, Myojin of Seeing Winds to draw us cards for each permanent we control, and Myojin of Cryptic Dreams to copy a permanent spell we cast three times.

That permanent spell could be something like Knowledge is Power which gives your creatures +X/+X where X is the number of cards you’ve drawn this turn, Cathar’s Crusade for some +1/+1 counter insanity, or Mind Control for stealing a bunch of your opponents creatures.

If we really wanted to abuse Myojin of Cryptic Dreams we could cast Legion Loyalty, which gives all of our creatures Myriad, which can be used to help us win in a combat by giving us multiple Myriad triggers.

Augustin as a Commander is a way to make our spells cheaper in order to cast some strong aggro pieces, despite the reputation of being an unfun Stax Commander. Will people still believe that you have Stax pieces? Yes, and it may take a couple of games showing that you are playing an aggressive deck that people will not have the immediate knee jerk reaction in targeting you with everything that they have.

It is ok to build Commanders in ways that they are “off type” because, in my opinion, it makes for a much more interesting deck building choices. Following the traditional build for a Commander isn’t bad by any means, I think its nice to spice it up a bit from time to time.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual