Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Balmor, Battlemage Captain!

Balmor is a two mana 1/3 with flying and whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, creatures you control get +1/+0 and gain trample until the end of turn.

As I have been writing these blogs, I have come to realize that I do enjoy spell slinging decks with a neat gimmick, and I enjoy aggro decks with a neat way to help make it more viable, and Balmor scratches both of those itches pretty well, incentivizing playing cheap spells that make your creatures bigger.

That’s going to be the plan, get a ton of cheap creatures in play that either gain benefits from cheap spells or make tokens when we cast cheap spells, a ton of cheap spells to stack the damage, and other ways we can make our damage output lethal.

The first thing we need are cheap creatures, ideally ones that can attack immediately and ideally have some sort of a benefit from casting cheap spells.

Stormchaser Mage is perfect in this case because it is a two mana 1/3 with flying, haste, and prowess which when all three of these abilities are combined with a spell slinger type deck and the additional boost of +1/+0 and trample from Balmor, this cheap creature becomes much more of a threat.

Wee Dragonauts is a creature that while they don’t have haste does have flying and gains +2/+0 until end of turn whenever we cast an instant or sorcery, Crackling Cyclops gets +3/+0 until end of turn whenever we cast a noncreature spell, and Umara Mystic gets +2/+0 until end of turn whenever we cast an instant, sorcery, or Wizard spell.

Speaking of Wizards, we do have a lot of Wizards we are playing with so Adeliz, the Cinder Wind also becomes a pretty solid consideration since they have flying and hast and whenever we cast an instant or sorcery spell, Wizards we control gain +1/+1 until end of turn.

On the non-Wizard side of creatures we can use Monastery Swiftspear as a one drop creature with haste and prowess, Haughty Djinn whose power is equal to the number of instants and sorceries in our graveyard and makes them cost 1 mana less to cast, and Khenra Spellspear to have a creature with trample and prowess that can transform into Gitaxian Spellstalker which has trample, ward 2, and double prowess.

We can also use Veyran, Voice of Duality to at take advantage of us getting a ton of triggered abilities activating since when if casting or copying an instant or sorcery causes a triggered ability of permanent we control to trigger, it triggers an additional time, while also having the Magecraft ability to get +1/+1 whenever we cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell.

The next thing we need are spells that are either cheap for us to cast a a bunch of or gain us an advantage from casting a good number of spells.

Lock and Load is a solid spell because it draws us a card and then we draw a card for each other instant and sorcery we’ve cast this turn. This becomes significantly better because we can Plot it for later and it allows us to later cast it without paying its mana cost after we’ve gone through a bunch of other instants and sorceries to help refuel our hand.

Teleportal is a solid enough spell because it can give a creature we control +1/+0 until end of turn and it can’t be blocked for a turn, but we can also Overload it for five mana to target all creatures we control in order to give them all this sizeable bonus to swing a massive amount of damage. In a similar vein, Dynacharge is a one mana way to give a creature we control +2/+0 until end of turn but can also be cast with Overload to give it to all creatures we control.

Going back to the Wizard synergies in the deck, Wizard’s Lightning and Wizard’s Retort, a one mana more expensive Lightning Bolt and Counterspell respectively that each become one mana cheaper to become more like the the cards they are referencing if we happen to control a Wizard.

Mana can be a bit of a concern for the deck, but luckily for use we can use cards like Battle Hymn to make red mana for each creature we control, Seething Song to make five red mana, and Storm-Kiln Artist to make a Treasure token whenever we cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell and whose power increases by +1/+0 for each artifact we control.

We can also employ the usual number of mana reducers that are available in our colors like Goblin Electromancer that reduces the cost of instants and sorceries we cast by one mana, Stormcatch Mentor which does the same while also having haste and prowess, and Mindsplice Apparatus which gets an oil counter at the beginning of our upkeep and makes instants and sorceries we control cost one mana less for each oil counter on it.

In order for us to win, we need to have ways to cast as many instants and sorceries as we can, ideally as cheap as we can.

Mizzix’s Mastery is perfect for this because normally it would let us copy and then cast a single instant or sorcery from our graveyard for free after exiling it, but if we cast it with Overload then every single instant and sorcery in our graveyard can be copied and then cast for free.

Another way we can benefit from this is through Ral, Monsoon Mage who makes our instants and sorceries cheaper by one mana, and whenever we cast an instant or sorcery we can flip a coin where if we win we can transform him into Ral, Leyline Prodigy who gets additional loyalty counters for each instant and sorcery we had previously cast and then ultimate him to exile the top eight cards of our library and cast instants and sorceries from among them for free.

Speaking of Ral, there is also Ral, Crackling Wit, which gains a loyalty counter whenever we cast a noncreature spell and then has the ultimate of drawing us three cards and then gives us an emblem of giving our instants and sorceries Storm.

This can send our spell slinging into the stratosphere letting us cast cards like Song of Totentanz to make X 1/1 Rat tokens that can’t block and giving our creatures haste into a veritable army of Rats that can immediately attack or even other cards with Storm like Empty the Warrens can get doubly effective with making a ton of Goblin tokens with double Storm.

If we can’t get that working, then we can also make use of something like Past in Flames to give each instant and sorcery in our graveyard Flashback with a Flashback cost of their mana cost while itself also has Flashback so we can cast a ton of spells, gain a bunch of mana, and then cast them all again to have Balmor boost all of our creatures to deal lethal damage.

Balmor is an engine Commander through and through, in which the deck has ways to get creatures out and gets them bigger and bigger while we are casting cheap spells that give us value so we can cast more spells and get the chain reaction working.

The issue that will come is that since Balmor is cheap to cast and can get into play pretty early, if we do there is the risk of Balmor getting targeted early. There is also the risk of our board being cleared often once our opponents realize what our game plan is in making sure our board remains free of creatures.

We have some access to interaction, but most of our spells are going to be focused on us casting cheap spells and fewer interaction pieces then we may like because it doesn’t cantrip us. We can sacrifice a couple of these cheap spells for more interaction, which is probably ideal, but we have to sacrifice some damage.

There also comes the point where there is a chance we can cast a ton of spells and deal a bunch of damage, but it isn’t enough for us to win the game, which leaves us vulnerable to retaliation. We need to be aware of what spells we can cast, how much mana we have available, and be diligent with our buffs in making sure we have the accurate amount of damage to win us the game.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual