Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Firesong and Sunspeaker!

Firesong and Sunspeaker are a six mana 4/6 that gives red instant and sorcery spells you control lifelink and whenever a white instant or sorcery spell causes you to gain life, they deal 3 damage to target creature or player.

Firesong and Sunspeaker do an interesting thing in giving our red instants and sorceries life gain and our white instants and sorceries burn, which is a neat way to not only help us get some potential burn wins, but also helps us use life gain strategies that we would normally not be able to use.

The goal of the deck is to mix aspects of a burn deck with aspects of a life gain deck and combine the two into a mix that will help keep our opponent’s life totals low while ours remain high.

The first thing we need to look for are cheap spells that we can cast to make the most out of Firesong and Sunspeaker’s ability.

Multicolor cards that can do both are actually one of the most effective ways for us to use Firesong and Sunspeaker’s ability since they count as both a red and white spell, meaning we can double dip with the second ability.

Sacred Fire deals 2 damage to any target and we gain 2 life, which becomes we deal 2 damage to any target, gain 4 life, and deal 3 damage to two creatures or players since a white spell gains us two different instances of life from the lifelink that was given to it from Firesong and Sunspeaker for also being a red spell, and it also happens to have Flashback so we can do it again.

In a similar vein, Lightning Helix becomes a monstrous way for us to deal a bunch of damage and gain life since normally it would deal 3 damage to any target and we gain 3 life, it then becomes three instances of dealing 3 damage, with one being any target and the other two being creature or player, while gaining 6 life.

Even if we discount the multicolor spells, we can turn a Lightning Bolt into a Lightning Helix for just one mana, Chaplain’s Blessing gains us 5 life and then can deal 3 damage to a player or creature for one mana, Divine Offering destroys an artifact and gains us life equal to that artifact’s mana value, and Electrodominance deals X damage to any target while also letting us cast a spell of mana value X or less from our hand for free.

The next thing we need are cards that benefit from us having a high life total and cards that can help us deal some extra damage.

Rune-Tail Kitsune Ascendant is a simple enough card to get online because when we have 30 or more life we can flip it to Rune-Tail’s Essence, which prevents all damage that would be dealt to creatures we control, which means we can use damage based sweepers without worrying about our creatures dying as well as being able to more freely block against our opponents.

Imodane, the Pyrohammer can have so if an instant or sorcery we control that deals damage to a single creature they deal that much damage to each opponent, Stormwild Capridor prevents noncombat damage from being dealt to it and then puts a +1/+1 counter on itself for each 1 damage prevented, and Satyr Firedancer has is so if an instant and sorcery we control deals damage to an opponent they deal that much damage to a creature they control.

Blaze Commando is also a great card for us to get active because whenever an instant or sorcery spell we control deals damage, we make two 1/1 Soldier creature tokens with haste onto the battlefield, and while Firesong and Sunspeaker are the ones that technically deal the damage from our white life gain spells, we still have plenty of instants and sorceries that can deal damage that we should be able to set up some creatures pretty easily.

Balefire Liege is great because it gives other red creatures we control +1/+1, other red creatures we control +1/+1, whenever we cast a red spell they deal 3 damage to a player or Planeswalker, and whenever we cast a white spell we gain 3 life.

We also have plenty of access to extra life gain and damage doublers, with one of the better ones for the late game being Gisela, Blade of Goldnight which has it when a source we control would deal damage to an opponent or a permanent they control it deals double damage instead and if a source would deal damage to us or permanent we control, we prevent half of that damage (rounded up).

The last thing we need to help us win are ways we can combine life gain and dealing damage.

Star of Extinction is a way for us to deal a massive amount of damage to all creatures and Planeswalkers and to destroy a problematic land, which in turn also happens to gain us an incredible amount of life, especially if we are going up against an opponent who has a lot of creatures.

This combined with effects like Phyrexian Vindicator can make things especially brutal against our opponents since if damage would be dealt to the Vindicator then we prevent that damage and deal that much damage to any other target.

Combos like this have existed for a long time with cards like Stuffy Doll, an indestructible creature which when it enters we choose a player and whenever it is dealt damage, it deals that much damage to the chosen player and something like Blasphemous Act, which gets one mana cheaper for each creature on the battlefield and deals 13 damage to each creature.

We have plenty of ways to make sure that we protect our creatures, like with some of the previously mentioned option and Rem Karolus, Stalwart Slayer which prevents damage from spells dealt to us or another permanent we control while also adding an additional 1 damage whenever a spell we control deals damage to an opponent or a permanent they control.

One of the best ways we can make use of these massive damage dealing sweepers however is with Toralf, God of Fury, which has it whenever excess noncombat damage is dealt to a creature or Planeswalker an opponent controls, that excess damage is dealt to any other target, other than that permanent, meaning a Star of Extinction can win us us the game from all the excess damage dealt being aimed at our opponents.

Firesong and Sunspeaker provide a nice twist on combining a burn deck with a life gain deck to very interesting results. While we can use something like Felidar Sovereign to win the game from having a lot of life, I think it is much more interesting to use burn spells to gain us life and life gain spells to burn our opponents.

The biggest downside the deck has is the fact that Firesong and Sunspeaker are six mana to cast and is very vulnerable to being destroyed if we don’t happed to pack in some ways to protect them. They are the primary engine of the deck, where the deck becomes dramatically less effective if they are not in play.

While we may be able to avoid being targeted by doing some light life gain and ramp, we can only get away with it for so long before our opponents realize what we are up to once Firesong and Sunspeaker show that they can be a threat.

I do want to see more of these two in the future because playing around with spells having abilities is a neat concept that has only occasionally been explored and having a Commander that does so in such an interesting way is a fun way to build a deck, in my opinion.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual