Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Kosei, Penitent Warlord!

Kosei is a three mana 0/5 who as long as they are enchanted, equipped, and has a counter on it and whenever he deals combat damage to an opponent you draw that many cards and deal that much damage to each opponent.

This is an interesting mix of a “burn” Commander and a Voltron Commander in that we need a lot of set up in order for Kosei to do what he needs to do in that he needs to be equipped, enchanted, and needs a counter.

These aren’t hard to do, but the challenge comes in making sure that Kosei survives to have all of these on him, which means that we need to play at several different axis in order to make sure he has what he needs.

The first thing that we need to look at are what we need to make sure we get the enchanted aspect and the counters aspect, since those are easier to do in green.

Case in point Forced Adaptation is a one mana Aura that puts a +1/+1 counter on enchanted creature, which immediately fulfills two of the requirements for Kosei while also being cheap to cast, meaning we can cast Kosei and Forced Adaptation on the same turn with little to no major repercussions, unless our opponents choose to destroy Kosei.

If that is the case we use protections spells like Snakeskin Veil which gives a creature hexproof and also gives that creature a +1/+1 counter or Auras that provide protection like Lion Umbra which gives the enchanted creature +3/+3 and reach while also giving umbra armor to protect it if it were to be destroyed.

As far as other Auras we can use there is Well Rested which gives the creature two +1/+1 counters, gains us two life, and draws us a card whenever the enchanted creature becomes untapped once each turn, meaning that we get closer and closer to fulfilling Kosei’s requirements while also gaining life and card advantage.

Mark of Sakiko is interesting because it add green mana equal to the amount of combat damage dealt by the creature and that doesn’t leave as steps of phases end until the end of turn, meaning that we get a little bit of extra mana to cast a couple more spells in order to get some more Auras on Kosei, some additional spells for set up and protection, or more importantly getting Equipment into play.

One of the more difficult aspects of Kosei is making sure we get an Equipment on before Kosei potentially gets removed. Fortunately we have a couple of options available for us.

Hero’s Blade is the ideal Equipment for us since it’s cheap to cast at two mana, gives the equipped creature +3/+2, and most importantly can attach itself to a legendary creature we control when it enters, and this happens to curve perfectly for Kosei.

Hunter’s Bow is another Equipment that can automatically attach itself as it enters the battlefield and then it deals damage equal to its power to up to one target creature we don’t control while also giving the equipped creature reach and ward 2.

We can use something like Lightning Greaves as a way to give Kosei haste and shroud at an Equip cost of 0, though this should be used as one that would work better if Kosei is already enchanted and has a counter on him in order to bypass the issue of having shroud. Lavaspur Boots and Swiftfoot Boots would be better considerations since they give haste and some other form of protection that doesn’t prevent us from targeting Kosei (ward 1 with Lavaspur and hexproof with Swiftfoot).

There are other solid Equipment that we can use that have a cheap Equip cost like Haunted Cloak that gives the equipped creature vigilance, trample, and haste with an Equip 1, Trailblazer’s Boot which gives the equipped creature nonbasic landwalk for an Equip 2 which is great especially against multicolor decks, and Champion’s Helm which gives the equipped creature +2/+2 and hexproof if it is legendary with an Equip 1.

Since we are planning to play a decent amount of Equipment that are attached to Kosei, Brass Knuckles is not a bad card to consider since it copies itself when its cast and so long as the equipped creature has two or more Equipment attached to it then the creature has double strike which while it does have a casting cost of four, it also has Equip 1, meaning we can get both onto Kosei fairly easily.

One of the most useful Equipment we can play takes advantage of the fact that we are in one color and that is Strata Scythe, which has an imprint of exiling a land from our library to give the equipped creature +1/+1 for each land with the same name as the exiled land.

In a similar vein there is also Staff of Titania which gives the equipped creature +X/+X with X being the number of Forest we control, and also makes a 1/1 Forest Dryad land creature token to help get the equipped creature stronger and stronger.

Now we get to the “burn” aspect of the deck in that in order to win we make sure we deal a ton of damage that can’t be dealt with easily.

In order to help make sure we get damage through, we can play things like Prowler’s Helm, which makes the creature unable to be blocked by anything except by Walls and Equip 2 which is pretty easy to achieve.

We can also play ways that helps get damage through with trample like Sword of Vengeance which gives a +2/+0, first strike, vigilance, trample, and haste or something like Audacity which gives the enchanted creature +2/+0 and trample while also drawing us a card when it is put from the battlefield to the graveyard.

The next thing is making our creatures bigger, and while it can be a bit expensive to cast and has a massive downside in tapping the equipped creature when it enters, Colossification does happen to give the enchanted creature +20/+20, which can help end most games which does help justify playing it.

If we want some more ways to get our creature bigger while also providing a downside to our opponents, we also have access to Eldrazi Conscription which gives the enchanted creature +10/+10, trample, and annihilator 2 which can help potentially clear the battlefield a bit.

Equipment wise we can use Belt of Giant Strength which gives the equipped creature base power and toughness of 10/10 and while it normally has Equip 10, it costs X less to activate where X is the power of the creature it target, meaning we can help snowball Kosei into being even bigger if we already have some Equipment and Auras attached to him.

If we want to close the game even quicker, there is also the option of Grafted Exoskeleton which gives the equipped creature +2/+2 and infect, which is really good when combined with Kosei since any damage Kosei would deal would be in the form of poison counters, which could potentially poison all of our opponents with just one unblocked attack.

Kosei is great Voltron Commander with a bit of a “burn” aspect that needs some work in order to be at his most effective. Counters are the easiest thing to put onto Kosei because of us being in green, and enchantments are a close second for green.

Where things get a bit tricky are the Equipment, but even then we have some options. What’s more difficult is that since this is an all in Voltron Commander, meaning that our opponents just need to keep targeting him in order to keep us in check.

We only have so many ways to protect Kosei, but the challenge of having all three things on Kosei in order to make him effective is enticing, and pretty fun in my opinion.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual