Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Wilson, Refined Grizzly!

Wilson is a two mana 2/2 that can’t be countered and has vigilance, reach, trample, and ward 2 and Choose a Background.

Wilson being a Commander that allows us to Choose a Background definitely give us plenty of options to play with, especially since there is a Background that many people would assume for us to take.

In fact, we should take a particular Background and instead of going one particular direction, we take it in a completely different direction. This is probably going to lean into a lower powered deck, but there is definitely plenty of interesting interactions we can play with.

First we need to pick our Background, one that will serve as a distraction in what we are actually going to focus on.

Folk Hero is going to be the background that we will choose, because it allows us one extra draw whenever we cast a spell that shares a creature type with our Commander. Most people will assume that we will be playing a Bear deck as the case, but instead we are going to be working as a Warrior typal deck.

We can also use Inspiring Leader as a way to make our opponents assume that we are going to playing a lot of Bear creature tokens when we are going to focus on Warrior tokens instead.

While they won’t be the Background to serve as our second Commander, we can also use Master Chef as a way to get Wilson and our other creatures bigger when they enter, Raised by Giants as a way to get a massive Wilson that can get through most combat scenarios, and Flaming Fist as a way to also help get damage through with Wilson.

Since we are going to focus on Warrior typal instead of Bear typal, we need cards that benefit Warriors.

Bramblewood Paragon is another way for us to not only get Wilson bigger when we cast them, but also helps get our other Warriors bigger by giving them +1/+1 counters and also gives those Warriors trample as a way to help keep our deck aggressive.

Talking about boosting a cheap creature, there is also Decorated Champion who gets a +1/+1 counter whenever another Warrior enters under our control. A lot of Warriors are cheap, like Dromoka Warrior who gives all other Warriors we control vigilance, which also helps keep bodies in play after board wipes.

There is also Obsidian Battle-Axe, a Kindred Warrior Equipment that gives the equipped creature +2/+1 and haste, and if a Warrior we control enters then we can attach it to that Warrior. Combine that with Kor Blademaster who gives equipped Warriors we control double strike, then Wilson can deal massive damage upon entering the battlefield.

We can also use Sosuke, Son of Seshiro as a way to also help get our Warriors to help threaten our opponents board since any damage done by our Warriors to other creature would have them be destroyed at the end of combat, almost like giving them deathtouch.

As a way to help us gain an advantage against our opponents, we can also use Rush of Battle to not only give creatures we control +2/+1 until end of turn, but Warriors we control gain lifelink, which with how much we are boosting our Warriors can certainly leave us ahead of our opponents.

We are going for an aggressive Warrior deck, so ways to get more Warriors in play as well as making them more combat effective are going to be necessary.

Inquisitorial Rosette is a way for us to get an attacking Astartes Warrior with vigilance and give other attacking creatures we control menace, which if we played correctly should be decent sized Warriors going on the attack.

There is also Battle for Bretagard, a Saga whose first two modes make two different types of Warrior tokens and the third mode lets us choose artifact and/or creature tokens with different names and make token copies of, meaning more bodies for us to use.

If we want some more evasive Warrior bodies, then we can use Starnheim Unleashed which makes a 4/4 Angel Warrior with flying and vigilance, but if it was foretold with XX and white then we make X of those tokens, meaning that we can save it for the late game in order to get more Angels in play.

Thunderhawk Gunship is also a way for use to get some more Astartes Warrior tokens in play and gives our attacking creatures flying, which when combined with all the other bonuses that we have stacked should allow us to get a ton of difficult to interact with damage through to win the game.

Wilson as a Commander can definitely go plenty of different directions, and when paired with Folk Hero can give our opponents an idea of what we might be playing, but when we play our first Warrior that can shatter expectations and have our opponents on the back foot.

Granted this is making a lot of assumptions on the opponents we will be facing with this deck, and since it is an aggro deck it is going to have a harder time winning games, once our opponents figure out the strategy then we may have a difficult time.

Wilson does have some in built protection in the ward and can’t be countered and it also helps that he’s only two mana, if we continuously get board wiped there is only so much we can do.

We can still win, it’s just a bit harder to do so.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual