Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Jenova, Ancient Calamity!

Jenova is a four mana 1/5 who at the beginning of combat on your turn, you put a number of +1/+1 counters equal to Jenova’s power on up to one other target creature, who then becomes a Mutant in addition to its other types and whenever a Mutant you control dies during your turn, you draw cards equal to its power.

This will be the last Final Fantasy Commander I’ll be talking about for a bit because while I could make a whole week on Final Fantasy Commanders, there are too many to talk about and plenty I can save for later.

Speaking on Jenova, this is an interesting way to do a pseudo-typal strategy, in that it makes your creatures stronger and turns them into Mutants and the Mutants need to die on your turn in order to get any value. This could be used as a way to do an aristocrat strategy mixed with a go tall strategy.

The plan is to get some ways to get some Jenova stronger in order to get our soon to be Mutants stronger in order to sacrifice them on our turn in order to draw some cards. This is an interesting puzzle to solve, but not impossible.

The first thing that we need are creatures that have a benefit when they die, especially if they can benefit Jenova.

Hunting Moa is an excellent example of this because when it enters or dies, we put a +1/+1 counter on target creatures, which we can put onto Jenova to give her 2 power, which can then put two counters on the Hunting Moa and we can choose to not pay its Echo cost in order for it to die to draw five cards and put another counter on Jenova, who can put more counters on our creatures.

Jugan, the Rising Star is a bit expensive mana wise, but when it dies we get to put five +1/+1 counters on any number of creatures, of which we can put all of them into Jenova so she can boost one of our creatures immensely, all the while having drawn a bunch of cards from Jugan dying.

If we want to use a creature to bring back another creature that was put into our graveyard, then we can use Dutiful Attendant, which doesn’t get us too many cards if it dies, but does bring a creature card from our graveyard back to our hand, so we can get an additional use of a creature that died.

We can also use the death of a creature for cheating another creature onto the battlefield by using Body Snatcher, which when it enters exiles itself unless we discard a creature card but when it does die we exile it to put a creature from our graveyard back to the battlefield.

Now that we have creatures that want to be sacrificed, we need ways to actually sacrifice the creatures, on our turn in order to draw the cards with Jenova.

Annihilating Glare, Bone Splinters, and Spark Harvest are all one mana kill spells that require the additional cost of sacrificing something or paying more mana, and since we want our creatures to die after they become Mutants, this is actually a mana efficient way to remove a problematic creature, or in the case of Annihilating Glare and Spark Harvest a Planeswalker, while also sacrificing a creature.

Deadly Dispute can be used to sacrifice a creature to draw two cards and make a Treasure token, Reckoner’s Bargain can be used to sacrifice a creature to gain life equal to that creature’s mana value and draw two cards, and Primal Growth can be used to get two basic lands onto the battlefield tapped if we pay the Kicker cost of sacrificing a creature.

I’m of two minds including something like Greater Good in the deck, because yes it can draw us a ton of cards if we sacrifice a big enough creature then discarding three cards, the tricky part is that we are going to be drawing a ton of cards already that we potentially risk decking out. We can definitely do it for a free sacrifice outlet, but play at your own risk.

Wight of the Reliquary is a solid card to have as a sacrifice outlet because not only doe sit get bigger for each creature card in our graveyard, but we can sacrifice a creature and tap it in order to get a basic land into our deck, meaning we can draw a bunch cards from Jenova’s ability and get a basic land into play for cheap.

We have a couple ways we can potentially win the game, either getting the creatures from our graveyard back into play or to make Jenova big enough to win.

For the first strategy, we have something like Out of the Tombs, which at the beginning of our upkeep we put two eon counters on it and mill cards equal to the number of eon counters on it and if we would draw a card while we have no cards in our library, we instead return a creature from our graveyard to the battlefield, losing the game if we can’t.

This means we can use Greater Good’s downside as upside and draw ourselves out, still sacrificing creatures in order to draw our deck and discarding to Greater Good’s effect and to hand size, and on our last opponents turn we sacrifice more creatures to get creatures back onto the battlefield so we can swing with them on our turn.

If that game plan isn’t possible we can also use Psychosis Crawler to have our opponents lose 1 life whenever we draw a card, and with the amount of draw power we have we can easily deplete our opponents by drawing card, so long as Psychosis Crawler stays alive.

In order to use Jenova to win, we need to make sure she is big enough via effects like Reyhan, Last of the Abzan, which if a creature we controlled with +1/+1 counters dies or is put into the Command Zone, we can put that many +1/+1 counters on target creature. Meaning any counters we put onto creatures we control from Jenova can come right back to her, making her bigger and bigger.

Canopy Gargantuan is also a great way to get a bunch of counters onto Jenova and our other creatures, because at the beginning of our upkeep we put +1/+1 counters on other creatures we control equal to their toughness, which at base means that Jenova gets five +1/+1 counters each upkeep.

We can then either attack with Jenova, or use one of the few Fling cards in our colors like Rite of Consumption, which sacrifices a creature as an additional cost to deal damage to an opponent equal to that creature’s power and we gain life equal to the damage dealt this way.

Jenova is an interesting value Commander in that in order to get the most value out of her, we need to do utilize our turns effectively. We need to set up creatures in our precombat main phase, go to combat to put the +1/+1 counters on creatures that we want to die, sacrifice them on our postcombat main phase or on our next turn.

It is a slow accrual of resources, which means that we are susceptible to be taken out early if we don’t have some board presence, but if we play correctly then we can find the tools we need to win the game. We can out draw our opponents, to the point where decking ourselves out is a possibility, meaning we should be able to draw what we need to win the game.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual