Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Parnesse, the Subtle Brush!

Parnesse is a five mana 4/4 with whenever you or a permanent you control becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, counter that spell or ability unless that player pays 4 life and whenever you copy a spell, up to one target opponent may also copy that spell and they may choose new targets for that copy.

Parnesse provides an interesting play style in which whenever we copy a spell, an opponent also copies the spell. While we do have some protection in the form of Parnesse giving our creatures a sort of ward like effect, it only lasts as long as she is on the battlefield.

We are going to be going for a control strategy, copying spells when we can that we can offer to our opponents to leverage some advantage plays in our benefit while also giving players who may not be ahead on board to have a chance to bring them to parity, leveraging any deals to work for us.

The first thing that we need to look at are ways to copy our spells, which in our colors is not too difficult.

Double Vision is a consistent way to copy our first instant and sorcery each turn, and even though it is five mana, we can still use this as a way to potentially guarantee a counter spell like An Offer You Can’t Refuse from an opponent’s board wipe, save a couple of creatures from removal by using Slip Out the Back to phase a creature out while also giving them a +1/+1 counter, or even to draw more cards from an Opt.

We can also copy spells our opponent cast by using Curse of Echoes, which can enchant a player and whenever that player casts an instant or sorcery spell, each other player may copy that spell and choose new targets for the copy, meaning that if we happen to be going up against a spell slinger opponent, then we can use their spells and rituals against them.

Cursed Recording is a wacky way for us to copy spells, because there is a definite way that it could bit back at us. Whenever we cast an instant or sorcery spell we put a time counter on Cursed Recording and once it has seven or more time counters on it we remove those counters and take 20 damage, but we can tap it to copy the next instant or sorcery spell we cast.

We can mitigate Cursed Recordings downsides with cards like Vampire Hexmage which we can sacrifice to remove all counters from target permanent, but the better way to do that is to use something like Aether Snap, which removes all counters from all permanents and exiles all token.

Wizard’s Spellbook is a great way for us to not only take advantage of spell we cast, but spells our opponents cast as well since it can exile an instant or sorcery from any graveyard and then we can roll a d20 to either copy the card and cast the copy, copy it but paying 1 instead of its regular mana cost, or on a natural 20 we can copy each spell exiled and cast all of them for free.

The next thing we should do is take advantage of the fact that we are copying a lot of spells.

Magecraft is a great ability that not only triggers when we cast an instant or sorcery, but also copy an instant or sorcery. Professor Onyx is a great example of this because whenever we cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, we drain we opponent for 2 life, while also gaining some card selection, an edict effect, and a solid ultimate that can rip an opponents entire hand away or have them lose a ton of life.

Storm-Kiln Artist makes Treasure tokens whenever we cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell and gets bigger for each artifact we control, Sedgemoor Witch creates a Pest token that can gain us life or be used as sacrifice fodder, and Archmage Emeritus to draw us a decent amount of cards.

While not having Magecraft explicitly, Ral, Storm Conduit can deal 1 damage to target opponent or Planeswalker whenever we cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, can scry to help filter our draws, and can also copy an instant or sorcery spell.

If we happen to be taking advantage of casting spells from any where other than our hand, we can use The Twelfth Doctor, who gives spells we cast from anywhere other than our hand demonstrate, which allows us to copy the spell if we also have an opponent copy that spell, and whenever we do copy a spell, The Twelfth Doctor gets a +1/+1 counter.

This synergizes well with Melek, Izzet Paragon, which has us play with the top card of our library revealed and gives us the ability to cast spells from the top of our library and whenever we cast an instant or sorcery from the top of our library we can copy it.

Now comes the spells that we want to copy, which will be an interesting series of cards that we use that when we copy will provide a benefit for an opponent, but not one that can be used against us.

Malicious Affliction is an example of what I’m talking about because we can use it to destroy a nonblack creature and it can copy itself if a creature died this turn. Most creatures we control will either be black, or be a nonblack utility creature that can die if an opponent chooses to target it, so we get more benefit from it.

We are going for a grinding control win, so something like Cruel Ultimatum can be used effectively because if we want to deal with an opponent that is ahead, we can bargain with an opponent who is behind to target the opponent that’s ahead in order for them to deal with what is potentially sacrifice three creatures, discard nine cards and lose 15 life while we get two creatures from our graveyard into our hand, draw six cards, and gain 10 life, while the opponent we made a deal with can get one creature from their graveyard, draw three cards, and gain 5 life.

There is also Maestros Confluence, which allows us to choose three modes with the ability to choose the same mode more than once among returning a monocolored instant or sorcery from our graveyard to our hand, give a creature -3/-3 until end of turn, and goad each creature an opponent controls. If we target a player who has mostly multicolored spells, then we can get up to six monocolored instants or sorceries into our hand for little downside.

If we want to work into a high risk play, there is always the chance to become a spell slinger deck and copy cards like Dark Ritual or Mana Geyser to get a ton of mana that our opponents can’t really use if we target players who don’t use our colors. We can then use all that mana to ritual our way into more cards until we cast a massive number of spells that we can use Tendrils of Agony to drain our opponents for a ton of life because it has Storm.

Parnesse is a complicated Commander to manage, mostly because it can be a downside to let our opponents copy spells we copy since they can turn on us at any moment. There are ways we can mitigate that so we can not lose as much from it, but that can only so so far.

There are ways we can win with Parnesse, but there is a complicated web of lines we can play that we need to be smart in which spells we copy and which spells we don’t copy in order to get the most benefit from them while giving our opponents little benefit.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual