Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Rasputin, the Oneiromancer!

Rasputin is a three mana 4/1 that enters the battlefield with a dream counter on it for each opponent we have and each opponent creates a 1/1 red Goblin, creature token and can tap and remove one or more dream counters to add that much colorless mana or tap and remove a dream counter to create a 2/2 white Knight creature token with protection from red.

This is an interesting way to make a big mana Commander in white and blue, having the Commander be able to make a big burst of mana all at once or make some tokens to protect yourself. It all hinges on having enough dream counters on Rasputin.

The goal of the deck is very simple, get more counters on Rasputin and use it to cast some big mana spells, while also having ways to protect ourselves from the Goblins our opponents will be getting.

The first thing we need to do is get as many counters as we can on Rasputin, and that primarily means proliferate.

Metastatic Evangel is a great creature to get into play early because whenever a nontoken creature we control enters we can proliferate, meaning if we can cast Metastatic Evangel on turn 2 and then Rasputin on 3, then we can get four dream counters on Rasputin instead of three.

Thrummingbird and Grateful Apparition can proliferate whenever they deal combat damage to a player, Tezzeret’s Gambit draws us two cards and proliferates, and Experimental Augury can let us look at the top three cards of our library to put one in our hand and then proliferates.

We are going for the long game, so mana sinks that can proliferate like Contagion Engine and Contagion Clasp will work well, especially since they can come in to put -1/-1 counters on creatures your opponents control to help get rid of the Goblins that you give them.

Since we are going for the long game, we can also play something like Inexorable Tide, which proliferates us whenever we cast a spell, meaning that so long as we save one dream counter on Rasputin, we have a reliable way of building them back up.

The next thing we need to consider are ways to make sure that we don’t die to the Goblins that we just gave our opponents.

Surge of Salvation is a really good way to help us at instant speed, especially against a red or black based opponent because not only does it give us and our permanents hexproof for the turn, but it also prevents damage done by black and/or red sources to our creatures, meaning we don’t just have to rely on the Knights that Rasputin makes.

Sphere of law is also something to consider because it prevents up to 2 damage done by a red source, which can save us from individual points of damage like from say a Guttersnipe, or if there are a lot of tokens which generally have low power can sandbag all that damage.

Then we have ways to stop any attacks on us at all like Teferi’s Moat which we choose a color and creatures of the chosen color without flying can’t attack us, which is massively helpful against the Goblins we make for our opponents, and allows us to be a bit more cavalier in playing some blink spells in order to recharge our dream counters.

There are also of course effects like Ghostly Prison and Propaganda, which tax attacking creatures if they want to attack us, which also incentivizes us to blink Rasputin.

This is because even if we give our opponents a ton of Goblin tokens, they can only attack us with a limited number of creatures, meaning we can bank the mana by moving counters with something like Nesting Grounds or Goldberry, River-Daughter or The Ozolith if we have access to it.

If we have access to The Ozolith, then we can combine that with something like Conjurer’s Closet to blink Rasputin each turn, and since The Ozolith requires something to just leave the battlefield and no die, we can move all the counters onto The Ozolith to just bank a bunch of them.

Now that we have ways to get big mana and keep ourselves protected, we need some big mana spells to cast.

Since we were so generous in giving our opponents a bunch Goblin tokens, we can take them back along with any small non-Commander creature with Subjugate the Hobbits, which allows us to gain control of each non-Commander creature with mana value 3 or less.

We can also use the mana for a massive X spell, one of which I would recommend is Invasion of New Phyrexia, which makes X 2/2 white and blue Knight tokens with vigilance and transforms into Teferi Akosa of Zhalfir, which can draw us some cards, give us an emblem to give our Knights +1/+0 and ward 1, or tap X creatures to shuffle a creature of mana value X or less to their owner’s library.

The more mana we can sink into a card to get benefits the better, so we can actually be able to make a massive number of creatures with something like Finale of Glory where we would normally make X 2/2 Soldier tokens, but if we pay 10 or more for X, we also can get X 4/4 Angel tokens with flying and vigilance, which can help close out the game.

Big mana also tends to go along with Eldrazi, and the one I would personally use is Emrakul, the World Anew, which can take control of all creatures target opponent controls when we cast it and has the safety button of destroying all creatures we control if she leaves the battlefield, which we can circumvent with something like Dawn’s Truce to give our creatures indestructible if we gift a card.

Rasputin does something not a lot of white and blue Commanders do and that is play with big mana. The trouble comes in the fact that he requires counters in order to do so, meaning we need to jump through some hoops to make the most out of his effect.

Once we do, then we can really go ham on casting some big mana spells.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual