Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Dion, Bahamut’s Dominant!

Dion is a four mana 3/3 that gives himself and other Knights you control flying during your turn, when he enters you create a 2/2 white Knight creature token, and for six mana and tap you exile Dion and return him transformed into Bahamut, Warden of Light, a 5/5 Saga creature with flying and the first two chapters putting a +1/+1 counter on each other creature you control and gives them flying for a turn and the third chapter destroys target permanent and then exiles Bahamut and returns it back transformed into Dion again.

This is a typal Commander that wants us to go wide, ideally with a large number of Knights in order to give a lot of them flying while also boosting them when Bahamut comes into play. The difficult part would be getting Dion to flip into Bahamut, but going wide is not the hardest part of building the deck.

The plan is to go wide, mostly with Knights but also with other creature types, and then once we hit a critical mass, we flip into Bahamut in order to get a bunch of damage through to win the game, all while having a couple of cards to make it harder for our opponents to deal with our board.

The first thing we need are ways to help develop our board of Knights, ideally through token generation.

Battle Menu is amazing in this regard because it is a modal spell that can make a Knight token, give a creature we control +0/+4 until end of turn, destroy a creature with power 4 or greater, or gain 4 life. While we will be using the mode that makes the Knight token more often then not, having access to the other modes is very useful.

Allied Reinforcements makes two 2/2 Knight Ally tokens, Call the Cavalry makes two Knights with vigilance, and Sigiled Sword of Valeron makes the equipped creature a Knight in addition to its other types while also giving it +2/+0 and vigilance and the ability to make a 2/2 Knight token with vigilance that is attacking when the equipped creature attacks.

If we need Knights quickly, then we can use Waylay to make three Knight tokens that exile themselves at the end of the turn. The reason why we would want some extra bodies, other than blocking, is for something like Silverwing Squadron, which has its power and toughness equal to the number of creature we control, while also being able to make more Knight tokens equal to the number of opponents we have when it attacks.

As we get to the mid game and late game, cards like Summon: Knights of Round become very effective because not only is a Knight themselves, but they also have indestructible and make three Knight tokens each turn as it’s chapters resolve and then for its last chapter it gives all creatures we control +2/+2 until end of turn and an indestructible counter.

The next thing that we should do is get Knights that have some utility to them, especially if they have a way to do it at instant speed.

Werefox Bodyguard is an excellent way to exile something for a period of time at instant speed while also being a Knight. While we most likely not be using its second ability to sacrifice itself to gain life, it can be useful as a way to keep things at a decent parity if necessary or as a bargaining chip.

Since our goal is to build up a wide board, we can use Knight-Errant of Eos and cast them via Convoke to look at the top six cards of our library and put up to two creature cards of mana value X or less where X is the number of creatures that convoked them, which if we have a wide enough board could be two creatures of mana value five or less.

Warren Warleader being a Knight is surprisingly helpful since it can make a token copy of itself via their Offspring ability, which means that whenever we attack we can get two triggers of either making a 1/1 Rabbit that is tapped and attacking or attacking creatures we control get +1/+1 until the end of turn, or a combination of both if we so desire.

Dauntless Bodyguard can be used to give a creature indestructible by sacrificing itself, Westfold Rider can sacrifice themselves to destroy an artifact or enchantment, or Skyhunter Strike Force which has melee and as long as we control our Commander our other creatures gain melee as well.

Silverblade Paladin is an interesting way for us to make Dion or Bahamut more effective since it has Soulbond, and as long as it is paired with another creature, those two creatures have double strike. With Bahamut on board giving all of our creatures flying, Silverblade Paladin can give either Bahamut or another big creature we control more ways to deal damage to our opponents.

The last thing we need are ways that make it difficult for our opponents to deal with a wide board of creatures that are attacking.

Legion Loyalty is a great and simple way to get value from giving creatures we control myriad, and by making a ton of creatures from all the creatures that we have that are attacking everyone can definitely make things more difficult for all of our opponents to deal with. While Dion and Bahamut don’t get much benefit from having myriad because of the legend rule, the token copies do get their enters effects which can make either more Knight tokens or buff creature we control even more.

If we want to protect our board, we have access to Guardian of Faith, which is a Knight with flash that can come in and allow us to phase any number of target creatures we control, which can be extremely helpful since phasing does not kill creature tokens like exiling does, meaning that we can save a wide board of mostly token creatures from a board wipe.

While it can be expensive mana wise, we also have access to Everything Comes to Dust, which is an exile based board wipe that exiles all creatures except creatures that share a creature type with a creature that convoked it, all artifacts, and all enchantments, which if we play on the Dion side can potentially exile a whole bunch of non-Human, non-Noble, and non-Knight cards, artifacts and enchantments in the late game to help us get damage through.

If we want an absolutely clear path for attack via an exile based board wipe, then we can also use Winds of Abandon, which for two mana can exile a creature we control while giving that creature’s owner a tapped basic land, but if we pay the Overload cost then we exile all creatures we don’t control, and that should make it easy for us to swing in for a ton of damage with all the Knights we control.

Dion is a typal Commander that is easy enough to understand, and while it can fall prey to board wipes and removal in general, Knights are a decently resilient creature type that has several creatures with incidental protection abilities that allow them to avoid common targeted removal spells in certain colors.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual