Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Moira Brown, Guide Author!

Moira is a three mana 2/3 who enters with a colorless Equipment named Wasteland Survival Guide with “Equipped creature gets +1/+1 for each quest counter among permanents you control” and equip 1 and whenever you attack, you put a quest counter on target nonland permanent you control.

Quest counters are an existing counter in Magic and is on just over a dozen cards, which means that this has a chance of being able to be useable. Granted we do need to build the deck around these cards with quest counters, but there are some really good ones that we can use.

The goal is to get permanents with quest counters on them, have ways to get more counters onto them, and win via a massive amount of damage with the Wasteland Survival Guide.

The first thing we need is of course the variety of cards that use quest counters to help give us an idea of where to take the deck.

Zektar Shrine Expedition is a great example of the quest counter gimmick as a whole, being a very cheap card that naturally gains quest counters slowly, in this case via Landfall, and has an effect that requires you to have a certain number of quest counters, here needing three and sacrificing it to make a 7/1 with trample and haste that exiles itself at the beginning of the next end step.

Sunspring Expedition is very similar in this regard, gaining quest counters with Landfall and you needing only three quest counters in order to sacrifice it to gain 8 life, very easy to achieve as well as something that can just hold onto quest counters until we need to use it to keep ourselves alive.

However, there are cards that use quest counters like Luminarch Ascension, which gains quest counters at the beginning of each opponents end step if they didn’t deal damage to us and instead of being able to sacrifice itself to do an effect, instead we can pay two mana to make a 4/4 Angel token with flying when we have four or more quest counters.

We can also use Quest for the Goblin Lord to hold quest counters since we aren’t going to be running a lot of Goblins in the deck in order to trigger it, but it still becomes a +2/+0 anthem when it gets five or more quest counters on it.

The next thing we need are additional ways for our things to acquire quest counters.

Windcrag Siege being a modal enchantment is nice and can prove to be very useful if we just need bodies in play choosing the Jeskai mode, but more often than not we are going to be choosing the Mardu mode in order to trigger Moira again since all she needs is for us to attack at all to put a quest counter on something.

Proliferate is going to be one of the mechanics that we heavily lean on in order to get a lot of counters, and any cheap creature like Cacophony Scamp who can sacrifice itself to proliferate after dealing combat damage can be a quick way to get at least one additional counter.

Since most of the cards with quest counters are cheap mana wise, we can play a mana rock like Glistening Sphere in order to proliferate and while we won’t be getting the Corrupted mode normally, we can still benefit from a having a three mana rock to help us ramp.

We also have access to removal via damage in Volt Charge that deals 3 damage to any target and proliferates, and Wanderer’s Strike which exiles a creature and then proliferates.

Since we are focusing on attack triggers, there is also Recon Craft Theta, which creates an Alien token that gets a +1/+1 counter when it enters, but more importantly whenever it attacks it proliferates. We can crew it with Moira to have it attack, stack the triggers so that Moira resolves first and then Recon Craft Theta can resolve to proliferate.

Now that we have a ton of quest counters on our thing, we need to make sure that we can reliably get the Wasteland Survival Guide to swing for lethal.

Bureau Headmaster is a start for use to get the Wasteland Survival Guide onto our creatures because it makes it Equip for free, meaning that we can attach it to a creature like Cacophony Scamp to give it a massive bonus to attack, have it attack and if it deals combat damage sacrifice it to get more quest counters and then deal more damage when it dies to potentially secure a win.

We can also attach the creature to something like Swiftblade Vindicator, a two mana creature that has double strike, vigilance, and most importantly trample in order to get a bunch of damage through, or force our opponents to block with an obscene amount of creatures to not take a bunch of damage.

There is also Akiri, Fearless Voyager in order to draw a card whenever we attack with an equipped creature, or at instant speed unattach the Wasteland Survival Guide from another creature we control and give it indestructible for a turn.

This can be really helpful in keeping Moira alive if we want to win through Commander Damage using something like Ancestral Anger or Crash Through to give her trample and have Reyav, Master Smith giving equipped and enchanted attacking creatures we control double strike.

Moira is an interesting gimmick Commander in that she uses a lesser known counter in quest counters in order to give a chance for victory. Now artifact removal is going to be the bane of the deck once people realize what you’re doing, but packing an emergency Ephemerate or Slip On the Ring can do wonders for the deck.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual