Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Vincent Valentine!

Vincent is a four mana 2/2 that whenever a creature an opponent controls dies, we put a number of +1/+1 counters on Vincent equal to that creature’s power and whenever Vincent attacks we can transform him into the Galian Beast, a 3/2 with trample, lifelink, and when it dies we return it to the battlefield tapped.

Vincent is a resilient Commander that wants to deal damage in order to win, and with the Galian Beast having trample and lifelink that can make for some potentially massive life swings, provided the Galian Beast is massive.

In order to do that we are going to be playing a heavy removal deck so that Vincent can get stronger, with us playing a decent number of board wipes to become incredibly effective, along with ways to keep Vincent alive so he can maintain his counters.

First we need to focus on the amount of removal we are going to be playing, a good chunk of which is going to be board wipes.

Mandate of Abaddon is a great board wipe for us to have because we destroy all creatures with power less than a creature that we control, which if we control Vincent or the Galian Beast can be a decent number of creatures, while also keeping them alive.

There are also other conditional board wipes that can clear the board from smaller creatures like Ritual of Soot and Consume the Meek, both of which destroys all creatures of mana value 3 or less, with consume having the conditional bonus of preventing creatures from regenerating.

Gix’s Command is a modal card that has two axis of removal in being able to destroy all creatures that have power 2 or less and having each opponent sacrifice the creature with greatest power they control while also having a way to make a creature we control stronger and gives them lifelink for a turn and can return two creatures from our graveyard to our hand.

We should also have plenty of targeted removal, with the classics of Go for the Throat for mostly generic removal at a very low rate, Fell for a solid removal spell at two mana and sorcery speed, or even something like Marsh Casualties which gives creatures an opponent control -1/-1 until end of turn unless it was kicked it gives those creatures -2/-2 until end of turn instead.

Since there are going to be a ton of board wipes at play, and ones that can get pretty expensive mana wise, we need ways to keep Vincent alive from our own board wipes as well as opponents removal.

Professor’s Warning is a nice piece of modal protection that can give a creature indestructible for a turn or can just put a +1/+1 counter on a creature, which does have its edge case purposes, but we are playing it primarily as a way to make sure that Vincent stays on board.

While the Galian Beast does give Vincent some form of recursion in that it comes back as Vincent if it dies, we want to keep it from being too detrimental in losing all of the counters he has accumulated when he dies.

So even combat trick cards like Alesha’s Legacy and Battle-Rage Blessing which give a creature indestructible and deathtouch can serve as a way to deal a massive amount of damage when the Galian Beast attacks in order to deal with chump blockers and get even more damage through.

Because of draft there are a ton of other versions of this type of effect with some additional effects stapled on to them. Like Maximum Overdrive giving a +1/+1 counter in addition to deathtouch and indestructible, Oblivion’s Hunger giving just indestructible, but also drawing us a card if the creature it targets has a +1/+1 counter on it, and Orcish Medicine giving either lifelink or indestructible while also Amassing Orcs 1.

Indestructible is going to be the primary way we keep Vincent safe, because there aren’t too many other options in black that aren’t generic protection like Swiftfoot Boots or Lightning Greaves, but there are some conditional protection spells like Strength of Lunacy which give a creature +2/+1 and protection from white for a turn.

If you have access to the wide variety of the Sword of A and B then those can be really strong options since they give protection from two colors and provide some other effect like Sword of Fire and Ice dealing 2 damage to any target and drawing you a card when the equipped creature deals combat damage to a player.

Since we are going all in on Vincent as our win condition, we need ways to get him even bigger in order to close out whatever damage he needs.

Unspeakable Symbol is an excellent way to get Vincent even bigger since when he is the Galian Beast he gains lifelink, we can use Unspeakable Symbol as a way to use the life we gained from that massive life swing to put a +1/+1 counter on the Galian Beast or on Vincent if he managed to die and come back on a barren battlefield.

We can also use Infernal Darkness as a way to slow down our opponents for some period of time since it has all lands that make mana make black mana instead of what they normally would make, all at the cost of a Cumulative Upkeep of one black and 1 life.

Now since that changes the type of mana and not the amount of mana produced, we can use that to our advantage to turn any colorless utility lands we have into extra black mana to cast our spells like with Muraganda Raceway adding two colorless once we hit Max Speed adding two black mana instead for a couple of turns.

One of the best ways to guarantee a win with Vincent is by using Hatred, which most people won’t have access to, but it let’s us pay X life to give a creature +X/+0 until end of turn, which can be used with the Galian Beast to take someone out while also able to regain all that lost life plus a bit more because of the additional +1/+1 counters it has along with lifelink.

Vincent is a Voltron Commander, and can be built to that specification severely so. Since Vincent triggers only when a creature an opponent control dies, we are playing heavily into making sure that he can get bigger to make for a massive swing in the game.

This does make us over reliant on him as a win condition, and we can definitely mitigate that by having some other strong ways to deal damage. I do think it would be a much more interesting deck to go all in because it forces your opponents to interact with you rather than durdle around.

It puts a clock on the game that if your opponents don’t deal with or can’t deal with will have them lose, which can be an interesting way to build an archenemy Commander or one that you expect to play if you want to get a lot of games in.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual