Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Inalla, Archmage Ritualist!

Inalla is a five mana 4/5 with an Eminence ability of whenever another nontoken Wizard you control enters the battlefield under your control while Inalla is in the command zone or battlefield, you may pay 1 mana and create a token copy of that Wizard that has haste and exiles itself at the beginning of the next end step and you may tap five untapped Wizards you control to have target player lose 7 life.

Eminence is a powerful ability that is on seldom few Commanders because of how strong it is. It allows you to use a Commander in the command zone without actually playing it, almost as if you had an emblem at the start of the game.

Now Inalla is not the worst Eminence Commander because the Wizards are temporary, but she can still be powerful because of how easy it would be to abuse enters the battlefield effects and activated abilities that require tapping the creature.

While the deck I am looking to showcase is intended to be mid powered, it will show how strong Eminence can be even when trying to be built “fairly”.

The first thing that we need to do is have a decent number of utility Wizards that we can use to gain a bit of value in the early game.

Stonybrook Banneret is a cost reducer for Merfolk spell and for Wizard spell by reducing their cost by 1, and has the plus side of having islandwalk, which means if we need to go on the offensive, we have some way of getting damage through.

Vedalken Aethermage is a Wizard that has flash and can return target Sliver to its owners hand, which may occasionally be relevant, but the more important part is that it has Wizardcycling for three mana, which allows us to tutor for a Wizard and put it into our hand, which can be immensely useful as we need it.

Basalt Ravager can deal X damage to any target where X is the greatest number of creatures we control that have a creature type in common, which if we manage to make a copy of helps deal double the damage to a problematic creature or to our opponents if we want to keep parity.

Disciple of Bolas is definitely a Wizard to consider because, I believe if we time it correctly, we can sacrifice the original to Disciple of Bolas to a copy of Disciple of Bolas and vice versa and still be able to gain 4 life and draw four cards, and even if that isn’t the case we can still double dip into the value to help make sure we have cards in hand and life to spare.

Now we need to look at Wizards that make our other spells and Wizards more effective the more copies we can get.

Dualcaster Mage is a fun choice because we can cast something like Snap, which bounces two creatures and untaps two lands, make a copy of Dualcaster Mage with Inalla in order to get two additional copies of Snap in order to bounce six creatures and untap six lands in order even out the playing field.

Patron Wizard is a way for us to get some spell casting going while still being able to protect ourselves since we can tap an untapped Wizard we control in order to counter a spell unless its controller pays one mana, and if we have an additional copy for a turn, then we can keep a chain of counters going while having an additional Wizard to tap to counter the spell.

If there are some big creatures coming our way, then we can use Portal Mage as a way to redirect two attackers to our other opponent, especially if they happen to be big creatures with evasion that we wouldn’t be able to block effectively.

Galecaster Colossus is a way for us to have a large Wizard that can bounce a permanent an opponent controls if we tap an untapped Wizard, Watcher for Tomorrow is a creature with Hideaway 4 that puts the exiled card into our hand when it leaves the battlefield, and Apprentice Necromancer can return a creature from our graveyard to the battlefield for a turn.

Now we need ways to win the game, especially since our plan is more of a midrange Wizard value strategy.

Dire Fleet Ravager is a way for us to have everyone lose a whole bunch of life, which we get two instances of when we make a copy with Inalla. Not only that, but we get a 4/4 with menace and deathtouch to attack and either deal some extra damage or get rid of some smaller creatures.

Descendants’ Fury is an interesting way for us to get some more Wizards in play for free since if one or more of our creatures deal combat damage to a player then we can sacrifice one of them to reveal cards from the top of our library until we reveal a creature that shares a creature type with it and put it on the battlefield. It was being sacrificed anyway, might as well get some value from it.

Docent of Perfection is a fun creature that, while not a Wizard, does in fact make Wizards tokens whenever we cast an instant or sorcery, then if we control three or more Wizards we transform it into Final Iteration, which gives Wizards we control +2/+1 and flying while still making Wizard tokens whenever we cast an instant or sorcery, giving us a potential aggro win if we need it.

Then we have Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor which gives spells our opponents that cast that target creature or Planeswalker we control cost 2 more to cast while also being able to make a Wizard token and draw and discard a card just gives us some more Wizards in play to have Inalla use her ability to tap Wizards in order to have an opponent lose 7 life, which can help us eliminate a player.

Inalla is a value Commander, especially with us focusing on just accruing a ton of Wizards and gaining value from having multiple of them. Even looking at some mid powered options, Inalla can be incredibly strong in gaining that value. This is somewhat tempered by the fact that Eminence generates such a strong reaction that people will be focusing removal on us in order to keep us in check.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual