Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Yuma, Proud Protector!

Yuma is an eight mana 6/6 that gets 1 mana cheaper for each land card in your graveyard and whenever Yuma enters or attacks, you may sacrifice a land and if you do you draw a card, and whenever a Desert card is put into your graveyard from anywhere, you create a 4/2 green Plant Warrior creature token with reach.

A lands matter Commander that has an affinity for Deserts, in that whenever a Desert goes to our graveyard we get a decently sized token. Deserts have gained a decent amount of synergy recently due to Outlaws of Thunder Junction, where this Yuma debuted, so naturally having a Desert matters Commander made sense.

The unique thing about this being a lands matter Commander is that it wants us to play a lot of lands, but to also get rid of them in order to make Yuma cheaper, which means that the goal of the deck is to get lands in play and off the field in a way that doesn’t hurt us in the long run.

The first thing that we want are ways to get Deserts that have some way to either get themselves off the battlefield or want to leave the battlefield and ways to get value from sacrificing them.

Dunes of the Dead is a great example of a Desert that wants to leave the battlefield, because while it does add colorless mana, when it goes to the graveyard from the battlefield, we create a 2/2 black Zombie creature token. This means we can play a card like Harrow to sacrifice Dunes of the Dead to get a Zombie while also getting basics into play.

We can also use the Deserts that can sacrifice Deserts for some sort of value, like Ramunap Ruins to deal 2 damage to each opponent, Shefet Dunes to give our creatures +1/+1 for a turn, and even Hashep Oasis to give a creature +3/+3 until end of turn can have its uses as the cheapest of the three to sacrifice a Desert.

Scavenger Grounds is a repeatable graveyard exile card that in a pinch can sacrifice itself to exile all graveyards if necessary, Arid Archway can return a land from play into our hand and if it was a Desert we can surveil 1 that also happens to tap for two mana, and Survivor’s Encampment to tap creatures we control to fix our mana.

If we want a Desert that has some value attached to it, then we can always use Cactus Preserve, a Desert that can become an X/X Plant creature with reach for three mana where X is equal to the greatest mana value of among our Commanders, which means that it becomes an 8/8 creature that can block many things and keep us in a defensive position until we cast Yuma.

If we want to add a Game Changer to the deck, this is where something like Crop Rotation can become effective because we can get the best land for what we need from our deck while also getting a land into the graveyard. Now if we have access to it, Field of the Dead also works because of how often we are getting lands in play and off the battlefield, we will most likely be able to get consistent triggers off of it, but the deck can function without Field of the Dead.

The next thing that we need to look for are some Desert synergies, as well as cards that synergize well with lands being in our graveyard.

Hazezon, Shaper of Sand is great for this because they allow us to play Deserts from our graveyard, and whenever a Desert enters the battlefield under our control, we create two red, green, and white Sand Warrior creature tokens.

We can help make this easier for Hazezon and Yuma by using Dune Chanter, which turns lands we control and lands we own that aren’t on the battlefield into Deserts along with their original types, allows our lands to tap for mana of any color, and can gain us a bit of life while also milling cards.

Of course the classic way to get lands from out of our graveyard is Ramunap Excavator, but there is also Ancient Greenwarden which also allows us to play lands from our graveyard, but also has the benefit of if a land entering the battlefield causes a triggered ability of a permanent we control to trigger to trigger again.

This can make Landfall triggers go from strong to overwhelming, which means for something like a Tireless Provisioner, we can get two Treasures or two Foods or one of each whenever we trigger Landfall, we get an additional mana from Lotus Cobra, and we can even get more combat phases from something like Moraug, Fury of Akoum.

If we want to go the aggro route, then we can also play Rumbleweed, which like Yuma also gets 1 mana cheaper for each land in our graveyard, has vigilance, reach, and trample and also when it enters gives creatures we control +3/+3 and trample until end of turn, potentially giving us a way to close the game.

Speaking of win conditions, we need ways to make sure that we can actually close out the game.

With the Deserts that are entering and leaving the battlefield or just going to the graveyard, something like Desert Warfare is actually going to be extremely helpful for us. It allows us to get our Deserts back into play, or other lands if we have Dune Chanter in play, and if we control five or more Deserts, we make that make Sand Warrior tokens with haste.

There is a lot of token generation going around, so having something like Warleader’s Call not only makes our creatures stronger, but also deals 1 damage to our opponents whenever a creature we control enters. While not giving the creatures a buff, we can also use Impact Tremors to also deal 1 damage to our opponents whenever a creature we control enters.

This can also be a sneaky way to have Jetmir, Nexus of Revels come in as a surprise finisher because the more creatures we have in play the more abilities he gives to our creatures while also buffing them. We can easily get up to nine creatures in play to give our creatures +3/+0, vigilance, trample, and double strike to close out the game.

There are also plenty of creatures with Landfall that can help fulfill that condition easier, Scute Swarm being the one that’s the easiest to get working and out of hand or even Springheart Nantuko can give us at the very least Insect creature tokens whenever we play a land.

Yuma as a Commander serves as an engine to help us gain value from Deserts going into the graveyard while also making tokens for us to use for a go wide strategy. While the Deserts become the focal point of the deck, Yuma is the glue that holds the deck together, and while they don’t have inherent protection on their own, we can still cast them for cheap if we have enough lands in the graveyard.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual