Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Otharri, Suns’ Glory!

Otharri is a five mana 3/3 with flying, lifelink, haste, whenever they attack you get an experience counter and then you make a 2/2 red Rebel creature token that’s tapped and attacking for each experience counter you have and for two generic, a white and a red mana and tap an untapped Rebel you control to return Otharri from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped.

Rebels are a surprisingly synergistic creature type, especially for one that was developed really early in Magic’s history. They made a comeback in Phyrexia: All Will Be One and have a few appearances in other sets so there are plenty more Rebels to consider.

The goal of the deck is simple, get Otharri and a bunch of Rebels in play and go wide for a massive attack.

The first thing we need are to get Rebels onto the battlefield, and there are plenty of ways to get that working.

Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero is one of the premier Rebels and probably the most reliable way to not only tutor any Rebel from our library onto the battlefield, but to also get Rebels from our graveyard back in our library for only three mana.

Lightbringer and Lawbringer are some potentially solid targets for Lin Sivvi because they can tap and sacrifice themselves to either exile a black creature for Lightbringer or exile a red creature for Lawbringer, and they are also three mana so they can be tutored into play for cheap and come back to the library for cheap as well.

We also have access to the whole slew of Ramosian creatures of Ramosian Sergeant, Ramosian Lieutenant, Ramosian Captain, Ramosian Commander, and Ramosian Sky Marshal to tutor a Rebel of an ascending mana value from two to five or lower from our library to our battlefield and Ramosian Revivalist to bring a Rebel with mana value 5 or lower from our graveyard to the battlefield and Defiant Falcon also able to tutor a Rebel of mana value three or less onto the battlefield and able to fly.

Since we are aiming to get a bunch of Rebels in play, Snow Villiers is a great choice because he has vigilance and his power is equal to the number of creatures we control, Reveille Squad can untap all creatures we control if we are attacked and it is untapped, and Cho-Arrim Bruiser to tap two creatures whenever it attacks.

Now that we have a decent number of Rebels, we should make sure that the tokens Otharri makes get as much help as possible.

Roar of Resistance gives creature tokens we control haste, which doesn’t really apply to the tokens that Otharri makes, but what is more important is that whenever one or more creatures attack we may pay one and a red to give creatures attacking our opponents and/or Planeswalkers that they control +2/+0 until end of turn. We can stack the triggers in a way that Otharri’s tokens get made first and then the Roar of Resistance trigger activates for our tokens to get massive.

Windcrag Siege is also a great card for the deck because while it does give us the option to make a 1/1 Goblin token that gains lifelink and haste until end of turn at the beginning of our upkeep, what is better for us is the Mardu mode in which if a creature attacking causes a triggered ability of creature we control to trigger, it triggers again, which means more experience counters and more attacking Rebels.

Speaking of experience counters, a card from the Edge of Eternities precon decks was revealed and would seem to help make things much better for us. Patrolling Peacemaker enters with two +1/+1 counters and whenever an opponent commits a crime (i.e. targets an opponent, anything they control, and/or cards in their graveyard) then we can proliferate.

While there aren’t many options to proliferate in our colors, there are still a couple of solid options we have available. Norn’s Choirmaster proliferates whenever a Commander we control enters or attacks, Proud-Pack Rhino enters and either gives a shield counter to a creature or proliferates, and Volt Charge deals 3 damage to any target and then proliferates.

There are also plenty of other ways to buff our creatures like Enduring Courage, which whenever another creature we control enters it gets +2/+0 and haste until end of turn and can come back after it dies as a creature as just an enchantment as well as something like Warleader’s Call which gives creatures we control +1/+1 and whenever a creature we control enters it deals 1 damage to each opponent.

If we want a Rebel way to give our tokens an advantage then there is Neyali, Suns’ Vanguard who gives attacking tokens you control have double strike and whenever one or more tokens we control attack a player we exile the top card of our library and during any turn we attacked with a token we can play that card.

The last thing we need is to make sure that we can get our damage through to win us the game.

There are several routes we can take, but my personal favorite is through damage multipliers like through Gisela, Blade of Goldnight where if any source would deal damage to an or a permanent an opponent controls then that source deals double the damage instead and for protection also has if any source would deal damage to us or permanents we control, we prevent half of that damage.

City on Fire and Fiery Emancipation deals triple damage if a source we control would deal damage to a player or permanent, Isengard Unleashed also triples damage but also has damage be unpreventable and has flashback, and Gratuitous Violence has sources we control deal double damage.

Another great way to get damage through to our opponents would be something like Warstorm Surge, which whenever a creature we control enters, it deals damage equal to its power to any target, which if we have a couple of power boosters and damage multipliers in play we could potentially close out the game fairly decisively.

We can also make sure that we have more creatures to help us against the crack back through Renewed Solidarity which let’s us choose a creature type and gives creatures of that type +1/+0 and at the beginning of our end step, for each token we control of the chosen type that entered this turn we create a token that’s a token that’s a copy of it.

Otharri is an easy enough Commander to grasp in that it wants to attack to start getting Rebels into play to start the damage train going and then we have other Rebels supplement the deck as well as being available to help get Otharri out of the graveyard.

The fact that Otharri has some for of recursion is great because all we need is to get one Rebel in play and four mana to get Otharri back into play and to start the train rolling again.

The issue does come if there are multiple board wipes and us not having enough Rebel or ways to get Rebels back into play, but Otharri interacting with a counter that is difficult for our opponents to interact with does make it a bit easier for us to reestablish our board presence to win the game.

I have done plenty of aggro decks that tend to follow the same pattern, but what I like about Otharri is that they have built in recursion to help fight against one of the most common issues that aggressive decks have, which is dealing against board wipes.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual