Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Lonis, Genetics Expert!

Lonis is a three mana 1/2 with Evolve and whenever one or more +1/+1 counters are put on Lonis, we investigate that many times and whenever we sacrifice another Clue, we put a +1/+1 counter on another creature we control.

This version of Lonis continues the trend of caring about Clue tokens and sacrificing them, which in and of itself is an interesting play style. However, being me, I was playing a bit of Edge of Eternities draft when one of the Rare cards I picked inspired me to find a Commander that would fit.

While we may not be fulfilling the exact ideal of what Lonis is trying to do, they do in fact have an aspect that I do want to use to it’s fullest because it is such an odd choice to play when there are so many other potential strategies that can be played.

This is going to get really weird and janky, but let’s give it a shot!

The first thing that we need to do is to talk about the card that inspired the deck, as well as ways to get it where we need it.

Moonlit Meditation is an Aura that enchants an artifact or creature we control and the first time we would create one or more tokens each turn, we may instead create that many tokens that are copies of the enchanted permanent.

Since Lonis can investigate whenever it gets +1/+1 counters, the game plan is to get Lonis bigger and to get a ton of value from the token copies of creatures we make. In order to accomplish this, we need ways to get Moonlit Meditation into our hand.

There aren’t many ways to tutor Auras into our hand, but there are a couple of ways like Shrine Steward which can tutor for an Aura or Shrine when it enters in order find Moonlit Meditation, and even though it is five mana to cast, we should be able to ramp fairly easily in our colors.

We also have access to Drift of Phantasms, which is normally a three mana defender with flying, but more importantly has the ability Transmute, which means we can discard it from our hand in order to search for a card with the same mana value as itself, reveal it, and put into our hand.

Library of Lat-Nam is a bit of a gamble since we give an opponent the choice to have us either draw three cards at the beginning of the next upkeep or they let us search for a card in our library, and it can be an interesting political tool to exploit in letting us search for Moonlit Meditation.

If we want to get a bit creative, and don’t mind having a Game Changer in the deck, Gifts Ungiven is a great way to get two cards into our hand and two into the graveyard, and if we choose three great options and Moonlit Meditation, then our opponent may not see what we are planning. However, if an opponent does catch on to our plan and sends it to the graveyard, then we can use something like a Regrowth or an Auroral Procession to bring it back to our hand.

If Moonlit Meditation is in the graveyard because the creature it is attached to is destroyed or we want to attach it to a different creature, then we can use Aether Helix to bounce a permanent to its owners hand and return a permanent from our graveyard to our hand, which we can also use on Lonis to reset their +1/+1 counters if we can’t reliably put more on each turn.

The next thing we need are creatures that we can use to take advantage of Moonlit Meditation, which is going to primarily comprise of enters effects while also finding ways to get +1/+1 counters onto Lonis.

Coiling Oracle is an excellent advantage engine for us to get cards into our hand or in play since when it enters we reveal the top card of our library and if it is a land card we put onto the battlefield, otherwise we put the card into our hand, and the more of these triggers we get the quicker we ramp and the more cards we get into our hand.

Pond Prophet draws a card when it enters, Dreamdew Entrancer taps creatures and puts stun counters on them, and Quandrix Cultivator helps us put basic Forests and basic Islands onto the battlefield whenever it enters.

Once creature that can help Lonis get massive, especially if we have more token copies of them in play is Master Biomancer, which has each other creature we control enter with a number of +1/+1 counters equal to the Biomancer’s power while also having them become Mutants in their additional types.

The more and more Biomancers that come into play, the bigger and bigger they get, which also means that the bigger and bigger Lonis gets from all the +1/+1 counters being added, which makes more and more Biomancers who get bigger and bigger, and if we bounce Lonis back to our hand and recast it, we get even more Biomancers.

The last thing that we need is a way to win, and there are a couple of routes we can go in.

Spine of Ish Sah is a card that destroys target permanent when it enters, and when put into the graveyard we return it to our hand. Now the idea of this is very simple in that we get the Spine out while Lonis is not in play, enchant it with Moonlit Meditation, play Lonis who should have a way to get a ton of counters on them, make a ton of copies of the Spine of Ish Sah to clear our opponents board, while also potentially including lands in the mix.

If you don’t want to include lands while also having a much more proactive way to interact with our opponents, then we can also use Meteor Golem which when it enters we destroy target nonland permanent an opponent controls while also having a 3/3 creature.

Keep in mind that since we can enchant artifacts, we can enchant artifact lands like Seat of the Synod, Tree of Tales, Tanglepool Bridge, and Darksteel Citadel as a way to ramp to an insane degree or to synergize with some Landfall abilities like Eusocial Engineering to make a ton of 2/2 Robot creature tokens.

While Lonis can definitely be played as a regular Clue synergy Commander, I think that it is much more interesting to have an off the wall strategy that no one is expecting using a random bulk rare from a set, as Commander was intended.

Sure, this is a fragile combo that relies on a lot of moving parts to get working and there is ample opportunity to screw up, but that is the fun of working with jank strategies and it can be ideal for a lower powered deck that is trying to accomplish such an oddball strategy that your opponents don’t see coming, but one that can make them laugh and have fun all the same once the machine gets rolling…hopefully.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual