Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Amalia Benavides Aguirre!

Amalia is a two mana 2/2 with a ward of pay 3 life and whenever you gain life, Amalia explores then if her power is exactly 20, destroy all other creatures.

As someone who enjoys the Pioneer format, I remember when Amalia was the core of one of the most disliked decks of the time, being one of the two main pieces of a combo win by powering up to 20 to clear the board and then swinging in for lethal damage, with also the potential to create non-games and is very difficult to interact with.

Now since this is Commander that has less of a chance of happening because the other piece that made that combo so effective is Wildgrowth Walker which is in green so we can’t go potentially infinite.

Is there a way we can get close? That’s the challenge for this deck.

The first thing that we need to do is find a consistent way to gain life, ideally when a creature enters.

Case of the Uneaten Feast is a solid way for us to gain a life whenever a creature enters the battlefield under our control, and the bonus that allows us to cast creature cards in our graveyard after we solve the case if we gained five or more life this turn.

We also have access to Soul Warden and Soul’s Attendant, which help us gain a massive amount of life if we are playing against creature heavy decks and are cheap ways for us to gain life from anyone playing any creatures, not just us.

Another interesting choice that gains us life whenever a creature we control enters the battlefield is Guide of Souls, which not only gains us a life but also nets us an energy counter. We won’t have many energy payoffs in the deck, but the one that Guide of Souls has can make Amalia bigger and gives her flying to help make an attack stick.

There are also the aristocrat payoffs like Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim which can gain us life when a creature we control enters and have each opponent lose 1 life when a creature we control dies, and Cruel Celebrant which whenever it or another creature or Planeswalker we control dies then each opponent lose 1 life and we gain 1 life.

The next thing we need are sacrifice outlets and creatures that we can sacrifice with little downside.

Bartolomé del Presidio is a very effective way to sacrifice creatures or artifacts that we control in order to make himself bigger, which we can use something like Unbreakable Formation to make not just him but other creatures we control indestructible for when we do go for a win.

If we want to go even cheaper for the same outcome, there is also Carrion Feeder which we can sacrifice a creature to in order to make itself bigger, Viscera Seer as a way to sacrifice a creature to scry 1, and Devouring Swarm as a way to sacrifice a creature to temporarily give itself +1/+1 until end of turn.

As far as creatures we want to sacrifice, Putrid Goblin is such an excellent example because it can come back with Persist, which means it comes back into play with a -1/-1 counter, which means if we put a +1/+1 counter on it then it cancels out and it can be sacrificed over and over again.

Lesser Masticore is another cheap creature with Persist, Wingrattle Scarecrow is a three mana creature that gains Persist if we control a black creature which is not difficult to do in our deck, and Persistent Constrictor can have our opponents lose 1 life and put a -1/-1 counter on each creature they control at the beginning of each of our upkeeps.

One of the better Persist creatures comes in the form of Puppeteer Clique, which when it enters we take a creature from our opponents graveyard and put into play under our control with haste, which means if we can set up a reliable sacrifice loop then we can potentially steal all of our opponents creatures after an Amalia board wip.

Now that we have creatures that come back play and proper sacrifice outlets, we need the way to get +1/+1 counters on those Persist creatures to start our loop.

Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit is a way for us to get use out of making our creatures weaker because of Persist, since whenever a creature we control enters we bolster 1, which if done on a Persist creature can cancel out the -1/-1 counter to sacrifice again.

The loop is we sacrifice a Persist creature, it comes back, we gain life to trigger Amalia and the Persist creature gets a +1/+1 counter so we can sacrifice it again to loop until we get Amalia to 20 power to clear the board.

If we want to turbo charge this effect, then we can use Cathar’s Crusade to add an additional +1/+1 counter to Amalia and our other creatures to make the loop shorter and put a +1/+1 counter on the Persist creatures not only when they come back to the battlefield from being sacrificed, but also when Amalia wipes the board.

Since a majority of our creatures also have very low power and low mana value, then we can play something like Raise the Past to bring a majority of our things that weren’t Persist creatures to make Amalia even bigger, as well as everything on our board if we have Cathar’s Crusade out.

Amalia was a surprise in how effective she was in Pioneer, so much so that she is banned in the format. While we can achieve a similar effect in Commander, it takes more cards and a lot more set up, and if an opponent realizes what you are doing, they will retaliate to stop you from doing so.

If you play slowly and carefully there is a chance you can pull off a version of the Amalia combo in Commander, which I’m not gonna lie is very tempting for me.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual