Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Gyrus, Waker of Corpses!

Gyrus is a three mana 0/0 that enters the battlefield with a number of +1/+1 counters equal to the amount of mana spent to cast it and whenever Gyrus attacks you may exile target creature card from your graveyard and if you do you create a token that is a copy of that card that is tapped and attacking, exiling it at the end of combat.

Big Mana and Reanimator is an interesting way to play Gyrus, because it actually has your opponents think twice in actually dealing with Gyrus because when it comes back, it comes back bigger and can bring back bigger things.

If we can make a ton of mana consistently and have things in our graveyard that we can reanimate to deal either a lot of damage or make our opponents lives difficult are what we are going to be looking for, as well as ways to make sure we get things into the graveyard consistently.

First and foremost, we need ways to get a bunch of mana in play, which should be pretty easy since we are in green.

Specifically we want ways to generate as much mana as possible, so something like Utopia Sprawl is perfect because we add two mana whenever we tap the enchanted Forest, and one of those could be any color that we want.

Fertile Ground is a mana more expensive but it can enchant any land to add a mana of any color, Wolfwillow Haven can enchant any land and add an additional green while also able to make a Wolf token if necessary, and Overgrowth can add two additional green when the enchanted land is tapped for mana.

We are going to be going heavy on the ramping, so if you don’t mind the effects being symmetrical then we can run cards like Heartbeat of Spring and Mana Flare to have our lands add more mana, and while our opponents can do the same, we have a purpose in doing so.

We can also add a sneaky Yurlok of Scorch Thrash as as a way to not only add some mana, but also have our opponents suffer some mana burn if they don’t make use of their excess mana. In that regard we can also have an Eladamri’s Vineyard and Magus of the Vineyard to have everyone add a bunch of green mana, which we should hopefully have more use for.

Now that we have ways to ramp, we now need ways to get cards into our graveyard as consistently as possible.

Cemetery Tampering is a neat way for us to constantly mill ourselves three cards, while also having a card under Hideaway, which means if we fulfill the condition of the Hideaway, in this case if there are twenty or more cards in our graveyard we can play the card for free.

If we want specific cards in the graveyard, we can use a creature like Vile Entomber as a way to get multiple instances of the effect, once when it enters from playing it and another from when we make a token copy of it when Gyrus attacks.

Smuggler’s Surprise is a nice modal spell that can mill us four cards and put up to two creature and/or land cards from the milled cards to our hand, put two creature cards from our hand onto the battlefield, and/or give creatures we control with power 4 or greater hexproof and indestructible until end of turn.

If there is a creature in our hand that we want in the graveyard, then we can take advantage of draw spells like Faithless Looting to draw two cards then discard two, while also being able to cast it from the graveyard if we need to get more cards out of our hand or it was milled earlier.

Big Score, Unexpected Windfall, Pirate’s Pillage, and Seize the Spoils are all cards that have us discard a card as an additional cost but draw us two cards and each gives us one or more Treasure tokens, which allows us to sculpt our graveyard, gives us mana to spend if we need certain colors, and let’s us cycle through our deck to allow us to get what we need.

Now comes the creatures that we want to reanimate with Gyrus, and we can go a wide variety of ways for this.

If we want to present a massive amount of pressure against an opponent then we can use Master of Cruelties, which has first strike and deathtouch meaning that it will most likely kill a creature if it is blocked, because if it isn’t blocked then it makes a players life total 1 and it deals no combat damage.

This effect will still work even if it is tapped and attacking because it triggers after blockers are declared and not when attacks are declared, which is an important distinction because some effects trigger when an attack is declared, meaning that they wouldn’t work if it came in tapped and attacking.

If we just want some raw damage from Gyrus, then we can use Conclave Sledge-Captain, which has three instances of backup 1, which gives a creature a +1/+1 counter and if it was a different creature then they gain the rest of the creature’s abilities.

In this case it is trample and whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, put that many +1/+1 counters on it. Having three instances of that can make a deadly Gyrus into a lethal Gyrus really quick, especially with the extra trample.

We can bring back Hornet Queen to get four Insects with flying and deathtouch in play, Ravenous Chupacabra to destroy a creature when it enters the battlefield, Bladewing, Deathless Tyrant to make some Zombie Knight tokens equal to the number of creatures we have in our graveyard when it deals combat damage, and Massacre Wurm to clear the board of smaller creatures and having our opponents lose life when those smaller creatures die.

Gyrus is a value Commander in that they get better the more mana you happen to sink into them and what creatures you decide to reanimate from the graveyard. Now you are exiling them and making token copies, so if you want to sneak in a Riftsweeper to bring back a creature from exile into your library then I would recommend it.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual