Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Huatli, Poet of Unity!

Huatli is a three mana 2/3 that when she enters you search your library for a basic land an put it into your hand and for three and two either white or red she transforms into the Saga Roar of the Fifth People, whose first chapter is create two 3/3 green Dinosaur creature tokens, then gains the ability to give other creatures you control the ability to add either red, white, or green for the second chapter, search your library for a Dinosaur card, reveal it and put it into your hand for the third chapter, and the fourth chapter is giving your Dinosaurs double strike and trample until end of turn.

That was a lot to say that Huatli is made for being a Dinosaur Commander, and as someone who enjoys their Dinosaurs, I am a fan of this. not only does she get you a land if you happen to be short, but the abilities given by the Saga side help you cast your bigger Dinosaurs and get you the Dinosaurs that you want.

Dinosaur good stuff is the plan of the deck, and maybe we can also play around with the lore counters on Roar of the Fifth People in order to circumvent the downside of this sending Huatli to the graveyard once all four chapters have resolved.

The first thing we need are the utility creatures to help supplement our Dinosaurs, which include cost reducers and Dinosaur buffs.

Kinjalli’s Caller is a one mana way for us to get our Dinosaurs cheaper by one mana. We also have access to Otepec Huntmaster to reduce the cost of our Dinosaurs by one and tap to be able to give a Dinosaur we control haste for a turn, and Knight of the Stampede who reduces the cost of our Dinosaur spells by 2.

There is also a cost reducer in the form of a Dinosaur using Marauding Raptor, who reduces the cost of all creature spells by 1, but whenever another creature we control enters it deals 2 damage to that creature and if it was a Dinosaur that was dealt damage this way then Marauding Raptor gets +2/+0 until end of turn.

We also have access to a Dinosaur tutor in the form of Priest of the Wakening Sun, who at the beginning of our upkeep we may reveal a Dinosaur to gain 2 life, and if we pay five mana and sacrifice it we can search our library for a Dinosaur and put it into our hand.

While a slower tutor, we can also use Forerunner of the Empire, which when it enters we can put a Dinosaur on top of our library and whenever a Dinosaur enters the battlefield under our control we may have it deal 1 damage to each creature.

Poetic Ingenuity is an interesting way for us to ramp because whenever one or more Dinosaurs we control attack, we create that many Treasure tokens and whenever we cast an artifact spell the we make a 3/1 Dinosaur creature token once each turn.

The next thing we want to do is play around with the lore counters on Roar of the Fifth People so keep it in play as long as possible in order to set up our board better.

Garnet, Princess of Alexandria is great in this regard because whenever she attacks you may remove a lore counter from each of any number of Sagas we control and put a +1/+1 counter on Garnet for each lore counter removed this way, meaning we can keep Roar of the Fifth People online while getting Garnet stronger and stronger.

We also have a modal of shifting the number of lore counters in Clash of the Eikons, which can add a lore counter, remove a lore counter, or act as a fight spell meaning we have a solid amount of utility for it as we need it in the game.

If we want a specific part of Roar of the Fifth People, then we can use Barbara Wright, who gives all Sagas we control Read Ahead, which means when a Saga we control enters we can skip to the relevant chapter and use that ability, so if we have an established board of Dinosaurs and flip Huatli, then we can immediately skip to the final chapter to give all Dinosaurs we control double strike and trample.

There is also a way for us to keep using Huatli when she becomes Roar of the Fifth People in a Dinosaur way by using Displaced Dinosaurs, which has historic permanents we control enters as 7/7 Dinosaur creatures, which means we can even attack as a Saga creature, though she won’t get the last chapter benefit if we get her back on the battlefield.

Now comes the best part of making any Dinosaur deck, and that is choosing the Dinosaurs that go in our deck.

Zacama, Primal Calamity doesn’t get a lot time to shine, mostly because their enters the battlefield ability of being able to untap all lands we control is relegated to being cast, but with how we are discounting our spells and being able to use our creatures to tap for mana, we can make Zacama work well to potentially get rid of some utility creatures, a problematic artifact or enchantment, or on occasion gain some life.

Apex Altisaur can be used to start getting rid of a bunch of small creatures because it fights when it enters and has an Enrage trigger in which when it takes damage it fights another creature we don’t control, meaning that if we go up against a token player then we can potentially get rid of a decent number of them, plus we can also use something like Tamiyo’s Safekeeping to turn it into a one sided board wipe.

Regisaur Alpha gives other Dinosaurs we control haste and brings in a 3/3 Dinosaur token, Palani’s Hatcher also gives our other Dinosaurs haste and makes Dinosaur Eggs into Dinosaur tokens, Earthshaker Dreadmaw comes in and draws cards for each other Dinosaur we control, Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant to dump a bunch of Dinosaurs onto the battlefield, and of course Colossal Dreadmaw is a 6/6 with trample.

We also need to talk about Gishath, Sun’s Avatar, probably the premier Dinosaur Commander (which can be the alternate Commander) because whenever it deals combat damage to a player we reveal that many cards from the top of our library and put any number of Dinosaurs from them onto the battlefield and the rest on the bottom of our library in a random order. The reason why Gishath isn’t the primary Commander is that I think it’s much more fun to work for a Dinosaur payoff than have the payoff be in the Command Zone.

That’s why I think that Huatli makes for a solid enough Dinosaur value Commander. We play many of the same cards as say a Gishath deck, but instead of our opponents holding their removal for the moment when we do cast Gishath, we work up a board to set up for a Gishath win, or a Ghalta stomp fest.

Typal value Commanders come in many different flavors, and rather than having a value Commander that does all the work for us, I think it can make a deck last longer and feel more fun if we need to do a bit of work in order to get to the big Dinosaur payoffs.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual