Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to talk about Nalia de’Arnise!

Nalia is a three mana 3/3 that let’s you look at the top of your library at any time, let’s you cast Cleric, Rogue, Warrior, and Wizard spells from the top of your library, and at the beginning of combat on your turn, if you have a full party, put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control and those creatures gain deathtouch until end of turn.

Party was a mechanic that was neat in concept, but one that hasn’t really stuck. Despite that, I think that playing around with the Party mechanic would be neat and Nalia is a way for us to gain a benefit from playing with the Party mechanic.

The idea of the deck is to help fill out the Party, find ways to gain benefits for having a full Party, as well as other typal synergies that we can use for having four creature types to play with.

The first thing we need are ways to fill up our Party, and there are plenty of tricky ways we can accomplish that.

If we just need a way to get a full Party quickly, then a creature with Changeling will suit our needs perfectly. Mirror Entity is one of the better options because we can pay X mana in order to give all of our creatures base power and toughness X/X and make them all creature types, which we can leverage with some of our payoffs later.

Changeling Outcast can’t block and can’t be blocked, Irregular Cohort comes in with another 2/2 Shapeshifter token with Changeling, and Graveshifter can be used as a way to bring a creature from our graveyard back onto the battlefield.

There are also kindred (formerly tribal) spells with Changeling that we can cast since they also count as all creature types and Nalia doesn’t specify only creature spells. This means we can cast something like Crib Swap, which exiles a creature and replaces it with a 1/1 Shapeshifter token or Nameless Inversion to give a creature +3/-3 and make them lose all creature types until end of turn.

Outside of Changelings, since we have four creature types to look at, we have a wide range of creatures to fulfill all sorts of roles in the deck. Lae’zel, Vlaakith’s Champion to add an additional counter on our creatures and Planeswalkers, Selfless Spirit to give our creatures indestructible for a turn, Oona’s Blackguard to give our Rogue’s a +1/+1 counter when they enter and if a creature we control wit ha +1/+1 counter deals combat damage to a player have that player discard a card, and Dark Confidant to get an additional draw at the cost of some life.

The next thing we need are ways to take advantage of having a full Party.

Deadly Alliance is one of the simpler ways to gain an advantage from having a full Party since it turns a five mana kill spell into a one mana kill spell that can target creatures or Planeswalkers if we have al least one Changeling in play.

Thwart the Grave also becomes a great card worth considering because it can return one creature card and one Cleric, Rogue, Warrior, or Wizard from the graveyard back into play and would normally be six mana, but if we have a full Party then this becomes a two mana double Reanimate.

Journey to Oblivion becomes a one mana Oblivion Ring, Base Camp is a land that can fix our mana to cast a Cleric, Rogue, Warrior, or Wizard spell or activate on of their abilities, and Coveted Prize becomes a one mana tutor that also happens to let us cast a spell of mana value four or less from our hand if we have a full Party.

Harper Recruiter can be a way for us to get what we need into our hand because when it attacks we can look at the top four cards of our library and reveal a Cleric card, a Rogue card, a Warrior card, and/or a Wizard card and put them into our hand, putting the rest on the bottom of our library in a random order.

Squad Commander is another way for us to take advantage of having a full Party in that when it enters we make a 1/1 Kor Warrior token for each creature in our party and at the beginning of combat on our turn if we happen to have a full Party, then creatures we control get +1/+0 and indestructible until end of turn.

We also have a selective board wipe in Stick Together, which has each player chooses a party from among creatures they control, and then sacrifices the rest, which serves us better since we are more than likely going to come out of that matter as opposed to our opponents who may have one or two of the applicable Party types.

The last thing we need is to take advantage of the counter aspect of Nalia and help turn that into our win condition.

Felisa, Fang of Silverquill is perfect for this since it can also add counters to creatures we control through their Mentor ability, but more importantly whenever a nontoken creature we control dies, if it had counters on it, we make X tapped 2/1 Inkling creature tokens with flying where X is the number of counters it had on it.

Sigarda’s Summons also becomes a great way for us to take advantage of all the creatures we control with +1/+1 counters on them by making any creature we control with +1/+1 counters on them have base power and toughness 4/4, give them flying, and make them Angels in addition to their other types.

If we lost a lot of things because of a board wipe then we can make use of Solemn Doomguide, which gives each creature card in our graveyard that is a Cleric, Rogue, Warrior, and/or a Wizard unearth for one and a black, which means we can get something like a Sea Gate Colossus to deal some massive damage for a turn.

Or we can flip that and use Damning Verdict as a way to clear our opponents boards a bit since it destroys all creatures that don’t have counters on them, having cast a Requisition Raid first in order to make sure that all the creatures you control have a +1/+1 counter on them first.

Nalia is an engine Commander in the sense that the deck revolves around having a full Party, and getting to that full Party isn’t difficult and can provide some really solid benefits if you manage to get them to stick.

Which is the biggest issue that the deck has because since we depend on four different creature types, board wipes are going to not be great for us. Sure we can mitigate some of that with Changeling creatures, but then those can get removed through targeted removal or though combat.

Nalia does make combat difficult for our opponents since she not only makes all of our creatures bigger, but also gives them deathtouch which does make blocking awkward and is more than likely going to let some damage through.

All we need is the little advantages and damage dealt through combat in order to help us get a win, and there are plenty of resources we can build up and use with the various Party synergies to help keep us in a solid position through out the game and to help us win.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual