Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Olivia, Mobilized for War!

Olivia is a three mana 3/3 with flying and whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control you may discard a card, and if you do you put a +1/+1 counter on that creature, it gains haste until end of turn, and it becomes a Vampire in addition to its other types.

Olivia is a neat Commander because she is meant to be a discard Commander for cards with Madness, but she also happens to become a build your own Vampire typal deck because she turns your creatures into Vampires.

We can play Vampire typal cards in order to take full advantage of a bunch of now Vampires while also combining it with a discard strategy to cast some spells for cheap or gain other advantages from discarding cards.

The first thing we need are creatures that would benefit from gaining haste, so ideally creatures with attack triggers.

Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin is perfect for this deck because not only does Krenko gain haste to immediately trigger the attack, but he also gets a +1/+1 counter in order to immediately get an additional Goblin token in play when he does attack.

In a similar vein, Krenko, Mob Boss can immediately tap itself in order to start the massive Goblin accumulation process, and all of these Goblins coming in from both Krenko’s also happen to trigger Olivia in being able to discard a card to get stronger and gain haste.

If we want a creature to give us more value from discarding cards there is also Inti, Seneschal of the Sun who has an attack trigger which can let us discard a card to put a +1/+1 counter on a creature we control and give it trample. Not only that but Inti also let’s us exile the top card of our library whenever we discard a card and let’s play that card until our next end step.

We can also take advantage of creatures with Myriad, like Warchief Giant in order to get more damage through against our other opponents while also getting more cards discarded, Grave Titan to get a ton of Zombies into play from when it enters and attacks, and Avenger of the Fallen who has Mobilize X where X is the number of creatures in our graveyard to make use of any creatures we’ve discarded.

The next thing we need to consider are cards that benefit from either being discarded or care about cards being discarded while they are in play.

Madness is one of the mechanics that Olivia was made in consideration for meaning that we should start there with cards like Dark Withering, a six mana destroy target nonblack creature goes from being an over costed kill spell into a very efficient one mana kill spell because of Madness.

Terminal Agony goes from a four mana kill spell to a two mana kill spell, Call to the Netherworld can return a black creature card from our graveyard to our hand for free because of Madness, Fiery Temper becomes a Lightning Bolt, and Alms of the Vein becomes a one mana drain an opponent for 3 life and we gain 3 life.

One of the better Madness payoffs, especially for an aggressive deck like ours is Shadowgrange Archfiend who is normally a seven mana 8/4 that has a Madness cost of three mana and pay 8 life. The best thing is that when it enters then each opponent sacrifices a creature with the greatest power among creatures they control, and we gain life equal to the greatest power among creatures sacrificed this way.

Another series of mechanics we can build around are any mechanics that let us cast things from the graveyard. Flashback is one of the most ideal ones since Olivia would have been designed with that in consideration, so Faithless Looting is one of the better cards for the deck since we can draw two cards and discard two cards in the early game for one mana or in the mid to late game if we need card advantage and want to make use of it again or if we had to discard it.

Since we are going to be discarding a bunch of cards, we need to make use of them in any way we can. Cards like Cryptcaller Chariot become a boon since whenever we discard one or more cards we make that many tapped 2/2 Zombie creature tokens.

Ivora, Insatiable Heir is a trample creature that gets bigger and bigger whenever we discard a card and when it enters and deals combat damage we make a Blood token to further fuel any discard plays we have and Change of Fortune can get more cards in our hand by discarding our current hand and drawing cards equal to the number of cards we discarded this turn.

One of the pricier ways to get value from us discarding is Bone Miser, who is Waste Not on a creature and triggers off of us discarding cards, meaning if we discard a creature we make a 2/2 Zombie token, if we discard a land we add two black mana, and if we discard a noncreature and nonland card we draw a card.

Lastly, we are going to use Vampire typal support in order to help us close out the game, especially since we can get a decent number of “Vampires” in play with Olivia in play.

Stromkirk Captain is an example of a solid way to boost our Vampires even further because it gives our other Vampires a +1/+1 boost and first strike, which if we made a decent number of creatures into Vampire, which can definitely be helpful for us to get rid of problematic blockers or attackers.

As an additional way for us to get value from having a ton of Vampires in play would be Olivia’s Wrath, which gives non-Vampire creatures -X/-X equal to the number of Vampires we control, which can absolutely help us clear a board to get a ton of damage through.

Cordial Vampire puts +1/+1 counters on each Vampires we control whenever it or another creature dies, Vampire Nocturnus has us reveal the top card of our library and so long as it is black it and other Vampires we control get +2/+1 and flying, and Blood Tribute has an opponent lose half of their life, rounded up, and if we pay its Kicker cost of tapping a Vampire then we gain life equal to the amount of life lost this way.

If we want to help close out the game faster while putting ourselves in a better position, then we should play Malakir Bloodwitch, which when it enters then each opponent lose life equal to the number of Vampires we control and we gain life equal to the total amount of life lost this way.

Olivia is an engine Commander in that she needs to be in play for us to get our deck able to do what it wants to do. She is pretty integral to our strategy because she gives the creatures we want to have haste and a +1/+1 counter while also making them Vampires and being a consistent discard outlet.

While we do have other ways to discard cards, her being the Commander means we have a repeatable discard outlet in our Command Zone to use as we need in order to win, which also means that if she continuously gets targeted then it becomes harder and harder for us to cast her.

Another issue we can run with is that we discard all of our cards and don’t have access to enough card advantage to keep us at parity against our opponents. Thankfully Olivia’s ability is optional, but our deck does revolve around discarding cards, which means we may need to discard cards that we don’t want to in order to gain some short term advantage.

Such is the risk with discard decks, but Olivia does incentivize an aggressive play style to help potentially compensate for us discarding a ton of cards.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual