Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Yahenni, Undying Partisan!

Yahenni is a three mana 2/2 with haste, and whenever a creature an opponent controls dies you put a +1/+1 counter on Yahenni, and you can sacrifice another creature to give Yahenni indestructible until the end of turn.

Yahenni moves fast and benefits from creatures your opponents control dying in order to gain a benefit, plus having a sacrifice outlet that provides some form of protection for Yahenni is a bonus. The question is, what is the best way to approach Yahenni?

While we can definitely go for an aristocrats strategy, I think that going Voltron would be much more interesting. We’ll have some aristocrat aspects to be sure, but the main game plan is to get damage through to our opponents using Yahenni, having them get rid of their creatures while we have disposable creatures to make sure Yahenni can deal the damage.

The first thing that we need to look for is a consistent way to get creatures onto our side of the battlfield.

Dreadhorde Invasion is not as good as say Bitterblossom, but it is still a two mana way to get a Zombie Army onto the battlefield on each of our upkeeps, and if we somehow manage to get a Zombie token up to power 6 or greater, then we can start getting some of that life back.

Another way to consistently get some creatures onto the battlefield would be Ophiomancer, which not only makes a Snake token on our upkeep if we don’t have one, but also happens to make a Snake token at the beginning of EACH upkeep if we don’t have one, meaning that we will always have a creature to sacrifice each turn in order to keep Yahenni safe.

Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia can get you a Zombie with decayed onto the battlefield at the end of our turn, Carrion can be used to sacrifice a creature in order to make X 0/1 Insect tokens where X is the sacrificed creature’s power, and Chittering Witch creates a number of Rat tokens equal to the number of opponents that we have.

We should also consider creatures that we can cast for cheap and would benefit from being sacrificed, like my favorite recommendation for sacrifice fodder Greedy Freebooter to get a Treasure token and a scry 1. Nine-Lives Familiar is a pseudo-repeatable sacrifice target since it enters with eight revival counters if we cast it and whenever it dies it comes back at the beginning of the end step with one fewer counters on it.

Bloodghast is a fun creature to have be sacrifice fodder since it can come back from the graveyard whenever we play a land, and if an opponent happens to have 10 or less life, then it gains haste, which is not going to matter most of the time, but it is a nice feature to have on such a cheap creature.

The next thing we need are reliable ways for our opponents to get rid of their creatures, because they may not be willing to do so when Yahenni comes into play.

Braids, Arisen Nightmare is a way for us to not only get an additional sacrifice outlet, but at the beginning of our end step we can sacrifice an artifact, creature, enchantment, land, or Planeswalker and if we do then each opponent may sacrifice a permanent that shared a type with it and if they don’t they lose 2 life and we draw a card.

Some opponents may deny us the card draw by sacrificing a creature and other opponents may lose life and let us draw a card, either way we benefit from it. We can also play Braids, Cabal Minion as a way to have each player sacrifice a creature, artifact, or land at the beginning of their upkeep, if you don’t mind having a Game Changer in the deck, though there is the chance our opponents may not mind sacrificing their mana rocks or lands in order to deny Yahenni from getting stronger..

We can also force our opponents to sacrifice a creature with effects like Fleshbag Marauder, Slum Reaper, or Merciless Executioner. Plaguecrafter can force our opponents to sacrifice either a creature or Planeswalker while having any player who can’t discard a card while Accursed Marauder and Chain Devil forces each player to sacrifice nontoken creatures.

There are also edict effects, with Sheoldred’s Edict being one of the better ones since it is modal and we can force each of our opponents to sacrifice a nontoken creature, a creature token or a Planeswalker if necessary. Soul Shatter is also a great edict effect since each of our opponents would need to sacrifice a creature or Planeswalker with the highest mana value.

Now that have ways for Yahenni to get stronger by our opponents getting rid of their creatures, now we need to get damage in.

The fact that Yahenni is a Vampire means that something like Blade of the Bloodchief is a great way to make Yahenni massive, especially since it triggers whenever any creature dies, meaning that for each creature that our opponent sacrifices Yahenni gets three +1/+1 counters and for each creature we sacrifice Yahenni gets two.

Tarrian’s Soulcleaver can also be a way for us to get more +1/+1 counters onto Yahenni, though we do need to attach it to Yahenni in order for there to be any benefit, but it also gives +1/+1 counters to Yahenni if an artifact goes to graveyard, and if our opponents have a ton of Treasure tokens, then Yahenni can get massive.

There aren’t too many ways for Yahenni to become unblockable, but we do have access to a unique card in Sewers of Estark, a card that was only released as a HarperPrism Book Promo that is still legal in Commander that allows us to pick a creature that is attacking or defending, and if its attacking it can’t be blocked and if it’s defending then we prevent all combat damage dealt to and by the defending creature and creatures its blocking.

Rogue’s Passage is a land that for four mana can make a creature unblockable, Sonic Screwdriver being a utility mana rock that not only make a creature unblockable but also untap an artifact or scry, and Glaring Spotlight to remove hexproof from our opponents creature with the ability to sacrifice itself to give our creatures hexproof and unblockable.

If we want other forms of evasion to give an opponent the chance to save themselves at the cost of more creatures, we can use something like Blood Curdle, which destroys a creature and puts a menace counter on a creature we control or Phantom Blade which destroys a creature when it enters and attaches itself to a creature and gives that creature +1/+1 and menace.

Yahenni can be a very explosive Voltron Commander, so the sooner we can get them into play the sooner we can start whittling our opponents down from Commander damage. While Yahenni can’t avoid exile based removal, they can prove to be a very aggressive Commander once we have a few creatures and +1/+1 counters on them that our opponents will need to drain themselves of a lot resources in order to keep them at bay.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual