Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about The Watcher in the Water!

The Watcher is a five mana 9/9 that enters with nine stun counters on it and whenever you draw a card during an opponents turn you make a 1/1 blue Tentacle creature token and whenever a Tentacle you control dies, untap up to one target Kraken and put a stun counter on up to one target nonland permanent.

The Watcher is looking to do a lot of things, first having you draw cards on your opponents turn to make Tentacle tokens, then having those Tentacles die to speed up the untapping of The Watcher, and putting stun counters on things.

A control Commander that wants to draw, go wide, and sacrificing those tokens for value is definitely going to be an interesting challenge, but one that I think will be interesting.

The first thing that we need to do is work on ways to draw cards on our opponents turn, the more the better.

Tolarian Winds is a solid card in this regard because it wheels our hand for only two mana at instant speed, and since The Watcher counts every card drawn and not one or more, then we get more Tentacle tokens, especially since we are also going to be playing a lot of cheap cantrips.

Opt, Consider, and Brainstorm are going to be the usual culprits, Brainstorm especially is going to be the ideal choice here because we get to draw three cards, and even if two do go back to the library, we should be drawing a ton of cards we can mitigate that slight downside.

Frantic Search is also an excellent choice here because we draw two cards then discard two and then we get to untap two lands. Combine that with some instant and sorcery cost reducers like Sapphire Medallion or Baral, Chief of Compliance then we net an additional mana for more cards in hand.

To get even more value from casting our cantrips, we can also play Ojer Pakpatiq, Deepest Epoch since it gives instants and sorceries we cast from our hand rebound, which means we can cast our card draw spells on our opponents turn and cast them again on our turn for more cards draw.

The next thing that we need to do is find ways to sacrifice our tokens, which we need a bit of digging to find in blue.

Spawning Pit is a solid free sacrifice outlet in that we can sacrifice a creature in order to put a charge counter on it and for one mana and remove two charge counters from it then we can put a 2/2 Spawn artifact creature token into play, which helps getting some more bodies in play to block, but we are using it mostly as a sacrifice outlet.

If we want some more value out of sacrificing our creatures, then we can look at the various Altars. Ashnod’s Altar is a way for us to get two colorless mana that we can use on a variety of mana sinks, Altar of Dementia to mill an opponent by one whenever we sacrifice a tentacle, and if we have access to it Phyrexian Altar to add mana of any color.

We can also get a counter spells in the form of Abjure which is a one mana counter spell that requires us to sacrifice a blue permanent we control to counter a spell, Make Disappear which can counter a spell unless its controller pays 2 and has Casualty 1 to copy it if we sacrifice a creature of power 1 or higher, and Overcharged Amalgam which can counter a spell, activated ability, or triggered ability.

There is also Perilous Research, which is a two mana instant that allows us to draw two cards and then we sacrifice a creature, which is a way for us to end up with a net positive Tentacle token in play.

As far as how we win, we need to play into being a control deck and tap down all of our opponents things to make way for our creature to deal some damage.

Junk Winder is a way to get a massive creature into play for cheap if we are just relying on our Tentacle tokens to count for its affinity for tokens. Then whenever a token enters the battlefield under our control then we get to tap a nonland permanent an opponent controls that doesn’t untap during its controller’s next end step.

Dirgur Island Dragon has an Omen that can tap up to one target creature and draw us a card and shuffle itself back into the deck, meaning that we have a repeatable way for us to tap our opponents creatures and draw cards on our opponents turns.

Monstrosity of the Lake can potentially tap all creatures our opponents control and put a stun counter on each one of those creatures if we pay an extra five mana, and at has islandcycling as a way for us to get lands in the early game if we are a bit stuck on mana.

Once we do get a ton of stun counters on things, then we can use Fear of Sleep Paralysis to not only tap a creature and add more stun counters to them, but more importantly prevent stun counters from being removed from permanents our opponents control.

This leaves us open to attack, and if we happen to control something like Spawning Kraken then we make an additional 9/9 Kraken if a Kraken, Leviathan, Octopus, or Serpent we control deals combat damage to a player. We also have the options of Laboratory Maniac, Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, and of course Thassa’s Oracle to mitigate the potential of milling ourselves out with drawing a ton of cards.

We also have options to take advantage of drawing a lot of cards like Ominous Seas to make an 8/8 Kraken after drawing eight cards, Chasm Skulker to get a creature that gets bigger when we draw cards and makes Squid tokens with islandwalk equal to the number of +1/+1 counters it had when it dies, and Psychosis Crawler to ping our opponents whenever we draw a card.

The Watcher is a value Commander through and through, and while their play style can be pretty linear, we can still have a great time churning through our deck to cast a ton of spells and tap things down to put ourselves in an advantageous position.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual