Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Orvar, the All-Form!

Orvar is a four mana 3/3 with changeling, whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, if it targets one or more other permanents you control, create a token that’s a copy of one of those permanents and when a spell or ability an opponent controls causes you to discard this card, create a token that’s a copy of target permanent.

While we will likely never use the last part of Orvar’s ability, there is a lot of potential for Orvar to get pretty nutty. The fact that we can create a token copy of any permanent we control, under to proviso that we need to target it with an instant or sorcery can lead to a lot of potential shenanigans.

The goal of the deck is pretty simple, we get some decent permanents on board and then target them with cheap instants and sorceries when Orvar is in play in order to start accumulating token copies of whatever we need so we can get to a massive turn that wins us the game.

The first thing we need are cheap instants and sorceries that target one or more permanents we control that we can get the most benefit from.

Thermal Flux is a one mana instant that turns a nonsnow land into a snow land until end of turn or vice versa, and also draws us a card at the beginning of the next turn’s upkeep. This is incredibly useful because it allows us to create land token and ramp in blue.

This means other cheap instants and sorceries that can target lands become incredibly cheap ramp spells. Dream’s Grip can tap or untap a target permanent or do both when cast with Entwine, Shimmering Mirage can change a land’s type for a turn and draw a card, and Twiddle can tap or untap an artifact, creature, or land.

Speaking of targeting artifacts, we can also have instants and sorceries that can target our artifacts to create token copies of them, like Moonlace which can turn a target spell or permanent colorless. Not only can we target a mana artifact to get an additional token copy, but given that we can also target our enchantments with that also means we can copy them as well.

We can even get additional value from copying our creatures by using something like Quasiduplicate, which creates a token copy of a creature we control, which gets us an additional token copy because of Orvar, and we can also cast it from our graveyard by discarding a card as an additional cost so we can get two more copies of a creature we control.

So now that we have the instants and sorceries we want to cast, next comes up what we want to make token copies of.

Since a lot of spells target creatures, those would be ideal and Peregrine Drake is actually a really good target to copy. While is a five mana 2/3 with flying, it also happens to untap up to five lands when it enters, meaning that we can use it to untap any five lands by targeting it with a cheap cantrip like Fleeting Distraction to give it -1/-0 until end of turn and draw us a card.

If we really want to get nutty then we can use something like Snap, which bounces a creature to its owner’s hand and untaps up to two lands, which means we can target the Peregrine Drake, create a token copy, untap up to seven lands, recast Peregrine Drake to untap up to five more lands and we are doing pretty well.

We can combine all of these land untap shenanigans with High Tide, which let’s Islands tap for an additional blue mana in order to get a ton of mana to use to cast bigger and bigger spells.

As far as artifacts are concerned we can create token copies of things like Cloud Key, which we can use as a way to get our instants and sorceries even cheaper since we can declare a card type among artifact, creature, enchantment, instant, or sorcery and make spells we cast of that type cost one less to cast.

Since our removal is pretty light because we are in blue, we can create token copies of Aether Spellbomb, which for a blue mana and sacrifice itself can bounce a creature to an opponents hand or for one mana and sacrifice itself it can draw us a card, all the while not needing to tap to do so which is also pretty good since a lot of cantrips that can target artifacts often tap or untap.

For the few cards that can target enchantments, we can also create a copy of Declaration of Naught, which has us choose a card name and let’s us use a blue man to counter the spell that has that name, meaning that if we get multiple copies early enough we can prevent our opponents from casting their Commanders or other high threat spells for extremely cheap.

The last thing we need is a way to win the game, which we have a couple of options to work with.

Since I tend towards aggro strategies, one I found is through Precursor Golem, which when it enters the battlefield it makes two more 3/3 Golem artifact creature tokens and has it so when a player casts an instant or sorcery that targets only a single Golem, it copies it for each other Golem we control, targeting a different Golem.

While this can backfire tremendously against removal spells, being able to make a ton of Golem tokens through its own ability and through Orvar can give us a massive amount of damage, and even something as simple as a Leap, which gives a creature flying and draws us a card, can have us be able to deal a ton of damage.

Another option we have access to is Vesuvan Duplimancy, which whenever we cast a spell that targets a single artifact or creature spell we control we create a token copy of that artifact or creature except it isn’t legendary. This means we can make a token copy of Orvar that isn’t legendary, which means if we target the nonlegendary Orvar with an instant or sorcery, we can make another token copy of a nonlegendary Orvar.

This means that Orvar can become a near exponential threat, because when we target the third Orvar with a spell we make two token copies because of the other two Orvar’s in play, meaning we have five. That then makes four copies, which makes eight copies, then sixteen, then thirty two and so on and so on.

After that all it takes is a Ruin Crab, which has a Landfall trigger of milling all of our opponents three cards, and something as simple as a Mind Games which taps an artifact, creature, or land to target a land and all of the sudden our opponents mill everything because of all the Orvar triggers making token copies of that land.

Orvar is a value Commander in that it can generate a ton of value from casting a bunch of instants and sorceries, which can lead to a lot of interesting options of play.

That being said, Orvar is a well known enough Commander by the hive mind of Magic players to be considered a threat, meaning that Orvar will be likely be targeted for removal pretty quickly once they hit the battlefield.

Most of our deck can have ways to protect Orvar and we can cycle through our deck pretty quickly, but in order for us to make the most out of Orvar, we need to get them in play when we have a decent amount of set up already in place.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual