Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about General Marhault Elsdragon!

Marhault is a four mana 4/4 with whenever a creature you control becomes blocked, it gets +3/+3 until end of turn for each creature blocking it.

This is a spin on the old ability Rampage, which did something similar to Marhault’s ability but only for blockers beyond the first, which is why we’ll never see the old version of Rampage because the bonus would never really matter.

With this new version of the effect we can always guarantee that our creature will get a bonus when blocked. This can be used as a way for us to be an aggro deck that can deal small bits of damage over time, but can threaten more damage if we give our creatures a buff and a way to get damage through.

The goal of the deck is to have our opponents block our creatures by any means necessary, while also making them evasive and needing multiple blockers in order to get damage through.

The first thing we need are either creatures that must be blocked or ways to make our opponents block our creatures.

Taunting Elf is the ideal example of what we are looking for a creature because it is a cheap one mana creature that deals 0 damage if it makes contact, but it must be blocked by all creatures able to do so, meaning that if our opponents have a ton of creatures, they all need to block it, which if we have Marhault out then it can become massive.

Lure is the classic example of a way to make a creature that must be blocked. We also get a similar effect if we use Roar of Challenge, which makes all creature able to block target creature do so and if we happen to control a creature with power 4 or greater, like Marhault, then that creature also gets indestructible, which can be useful against bigger creatures that can potentially kill our attacking creature.

Shinen of Life’s Roar is a great creature that does double duty in being a creature that must be blocked by all creatures and has a Channel ability that can give that ability to another creature, which we can do to surprise an opponent into blocking a tricky creature.

The next thing we need are ways to make our creatures be able to get damage through, or deal with larger creatures effectively.

Archetype of Aggression is a way for us to give our creatures trample so we can deal with massive swarms of smaller creatures, while also making our opponents lose access to trample, which can be very effective since a majority of our creatures will be smaller and can’t block trample effectively.

Enduring Courage is also something to consider because it can give us immediate value from our creatures by giving them haste and +2/+0 when they enter and if Enduring Courage dies, it can come back as an enchantment to be harder to interact with.

The creatures that we will be using are going to be cheap creatures like Fang of Shigeki which has deathtouch and can deal with larger creatures that would normally soak up the damage that we deal when blocked, Glistener Elf which can be used to get rid of indestructible threats while threatening poison damage, or even a bigger creature like Froghemoth which threatens to get bigger and eat up a graveyard.

If an opponent gets wise and starts finding ways to tap their creatures to avoid being forced to block, we can use something like Goblin Grappler which has Provoke, which when it attacks untaps a creature defending player controls and blocks it if able to help get rid of tapped creatures that would normally not block.

As far as how we win, we need to take advantage of the fact that we are making our creatures very big by using extra combat steps.

Full Throttle is a way for us to gain two additional combat phases, also untapping all creatures that attacked this turn, which we can use to clear out one opponent of a bunch of creatures, then moving down the line to get a massive amount of damage through and beating at least one opponent through the accumulation of power.

Anzrag, the Quake-Mole is the perfect creature for the deck in that whenever he becomes blocked we gain an additional combat step, which when combined with Lure effects means that there is a way we can get perpetual combat steps and Anzrag and our other creatures can just continue to get damage through until we win.

Nacatl War-Pride is an interesting creature in that it must be blocked by at least one creature if able and when it attacks it creates a number of tapped and attacking Nacatl War-Pride copies equal to the number of creatures an opponent controls, which means we can get a wider board of creatures that must be blocked that can bigger and bigger and wider and wider the more combat steps we have, since they all would trigger if they attack.

If we really want to finish our opponents off, we can use an Avatar of Slaughter to give all creatures double strike to deal with the smaller or more durable creatures, and having the second attack deal the lethal blows, provided we have a way to give our creatures trample or menace which we should have.

Marhault is an easy Commander to get a grasp of, and while it can be boring, there are some interesting aspects of having our opponents needing to block our creatures at the threat of us winning. Aggro generally has a hard time in Commander, so any way we can make an aggro Commander have an easier time winning a game is not a bad thing in my own personal opinion.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual