Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Coram, the Undertaker!

Coram is a four mana 0/5 who gets +X/+0 where X is the greatest power among creatures in all graveyards, whenever Coram attacks each player mills a card, and during each of your turns you may play a land and cast a spell from among cards in graveyards that were put there from libraries this turn.

Turning not just your graveyard into resources, but also making use of your opponents graveyards is an interesting way to build a graveyard matters Commander, which also helps deal with the issue of your having to make sure that your graveyard is sculpted perfectly and if it is interacted with then your game plan is ruined.

The game plan is simple, mill everyone to get stuff into the graveyard and play as much stuff as we can.

The first thing that we need to do is have everyone mill cards, and if we can get an advantage from it then all the better.

Locke, Treasure Hunter is a great way for us to get a decent amount of mill going since whenever he attacks each player mills a card and if a land card is milled this way then we get to create a Treasure token and until end of turn we can cast a spell from among those cards as well. It also helps that Locke can’t be blocked by creatures with greater power, which helps him get a bit of damage through.

Mindwrack Harpy can really turn up the mill because at the beginning of combat on our turn each player mills three cards, Ghoulcaller’s Bell is one mana and can mill each player one card just by tapping it, and Eye Collector can mill each player whenever it deals combat damage to any player.

We can also massive one time mill cards like Breach the Multiverse, which not only mills each player ten cards, but we can take a creature or Planeswalker from each player’s graveyard and put those cards onto the battlefield under our control, with them being Phyrexians among their other types.

The Binding of the Titans is a cheap way to not only have each player three cards with its first chapter, but to exile two potentially problematic cards from graveyards gaining 1 life for each creature for the second chapter, and to return a creature or land from our graveyard to our hand for the third chapter.

There are also the late game mana sink mill cards like Dread Summons, which has each player mill X cards and for each creature card milled this way we create a tapped 2/2 Zombie creature token, which can help us solidify a board presence.

The next thing we need to look for are ways to help get Coram’s power higher to make him a much more reliable threat.

Malignus is an interesting creature in that its power and toughness is equal to half the highest life total among our opponents rounded up, and since it’s power is a star which indicates that it is a characteristic-defining ability, that means there is always a value associated with it regardless of which zone its in, meaning that if this is in the graveyard and the highest life total among our opponents is 40, Malignus’s power is 20, which means Coram gets a +20/+0 boost since his power is determined by him being in play.

Ancient Ooze is another creature with a characteristic-defining ability (CDA) to determine its power, which is the total mana value of creatures we control, which if we manage to steal a decent number of creatures from our opponent’s graveyards it can definitely add up.

Beast of Burden’s power is determined by the total number of creatures in play which is an excellent boon to have when playing against a token’s deck, Coiling Woodworm’s power is determined by the number of Forests on the battlefield which goes great with Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth, and Lord of Extinction whose power and toughness is equal to the total number of cards in all graveyards.

Even if we don’t have CDA creature in the graveyard, there are still plenty of other creatures we can use in order to get Coram’s power up. Yargle and Multani is a vanilla creature that has base 18 power, Titanoth Rex has 11 power and can get itself into the graveyard by cycling itself for two mana and can put a trample counter on a creature when it does cycle, and even Death’s Shadow has 13 power with its ability needing it to be in play to make it weaker.

Remember, Coram let’s us play spells and lands from among cards milled that turn, meaning that we can potentially play these creatures in the future so if we are able to play say an Apex Devastator to get four cascade triggers, then we should have that option available to us.

The last thing we need is a way to win, and since we are stealing stuff from our opponent’s graveyards anyway, might as well do it a lot more.

Virtue of Persistence serves double duty here in being a solid removal spell early on by its Adventure Locthwain Scorn giving a creature -3/-3 until end of turn while also gaining us 2 life, but when it’s in play we can bring back a creature from a graveyard onto the battlefield under our control.

Ardyn, the Usurper is also a way for us to gain value because it gives Demons we control menace, lifelink, and haste which while we normally wouldn’t have many Demons, his second ability let’s us exile a creature from a graveyard at the beginning of combat and make a token copy of it onto our side of the battlefield, except it is a 5/5 black Demon.

Rise of the Dark Realms is a solid way for us to get all creatures from all graveyards onto our side of the battlefield, and we can make them even more effective if we have a haste enabler like Mass Hysteria in play to give all creatures haste.

Or if one of the creatures that we bring back also happens to be a Craterhoof Behemoth, then we can give all the creatures we control a massive power and toughness boost and swing in to win the game that way.

Coram serves very well as an engine Commander, in which not only do we have access to our graveyard as a way to gain advantage from, but also our opponents graveyards.

The weakness of the deck comes in if we cannot reasonably get a way to mill ourselves or our opponents, as well as potentially milling out any ramp pieces that we may need in order to not only cast our big spells, but also the big spells our opponents have.

We could also be going up against a faster reanimator strategy and unintentionally aid the ones playing that game, in which we don’t have much room to pivot.

However, I still think that this deck has some interesting lines of play that can be considered that make it one of the more interesting graveyard decks I’ve talked about, at least for me personally.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual