Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Jalira, Master Polymorphist!

Jalira is a four mana 2/2 that for two and a blue, tap, and sacrifice another creature, you reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a nonlegendary creature card, then you put that card onto the battlefield and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.

Transforming one creature into another is well and truly an interesting aspect of blue in Magic that I think should be explore more personally. As it stands though, turning one of our little creature tokens into a massive creature will have to do.

The plan is to get a decent number of creature tokens in play, all the while the rest of our creature suite will be massive creatures that we can cheat out into play, with a couple of tricky ways to take advantage of Jalira’s ability multiple times because there are no restrictions on when we can cheat the creatures into play.

The first thing we need are reliable ways to get creature tokens into play.

Shark Typhoon, while six mana to play, can be a relatively easy way to get tokens into play because whenever we cast a noncreature spell we create an X/X Shark creature token with flying where X is the mana value of the spell. In a pinch we can also use the Cycling ability to draw a card and make an X/X Shark token with flying.

We need to have as few smaller creatures in our deck in order to get the most value from Jalira as we can, though we can make do with some if they provide a way to make tokens like Chrome Host Seedshark, which incubates X whenever we cast a noncreature spell where X is the mana value of the spell, and we can pay two mana to turn that Incubator token into a Phyrexian creature token as needed.

Another creature to consider when making the deck is Reef Worm, which when it dies we make a 3/3 Fish token that when it dies it makes a 6/6 Whale token that when it dies makes a 9/9 Kraken token, which is great when we want creatures we want to sacrifice for value.

Ideally what we want are cheap spells that can make a token and have some utility purpose like Hard Evidence which makes an 0/3 Crab token and investigates, Callous Dismissal which bounces a nonland permanent and has Amass 1, and Desculpting Blast which bounces a nonland permanent to its owner’s hand and if it was attacking we make a 1/1 Drone artifact creature token that can only block creatures with flying.

The next thing we need are ways to manipulate the top cards of our library in order to get the big things we want, as well as big creatures that provide a solid enters the battlefield effect or big stats we can use effectively.

Manipulating the top of our library isn’t too difficult because there are cards like Index which lets us look at the top five cards of our library and arrange them in any order we would like, which is ideal to make sure we draw what we need when we need it and to get the bigger creatures away from our hand.

Brainstorm draws us three cards and has us put two cards back on top of our library which we can use to get rid of big creatures from our hand and put them in our library, Mystic Speculation let’s us scry 3 with a Buyback cost of two additional mana to take advantage of it multiple times, and Ponder let’s us look at the top three cards of our library and put them back in any order and we have the option to shuffle if we want and then we draw a card.

As far as big creatures we want to play, then we have a bevy of options. Lord of Change is a solid option because when it enters we draw three cards, and it is a 6/6 with flying and ward 3 which also makes it difficult to interact with when it gets into play.

If we want difficult to interact with and has big stats then there is Inkwell Leviathan which has Islandwalk, trample, and shroud while being a 7/11, Stormtide Leviathan which has Islandwalk as well and turns all lands into Islands and prevents creatures without flying or Islandwalk from attacking and is an 8/8, and Star Whale which is an 8/8 with flying and vigilance that gives other creatures we control ward 2 and can even has Suspend 6 for two mana if we draw it early.

While we cannot get legendary creatures with Jalira, there are plenty of other massive options we can get, especially if we look at our colorless options like Ulamog’s Dreadsire which is a 10/10 that can tap itself to make a 10/10 Eldrazi and Ulamog’s Crusher which has Annihilator 2 and must attack each combat if able as an 8/8 as well.

If you have access to it, a Blightsteel Colossus can be extremely effective because it has trample, infect, and indestructible and if it would go to your graveyard from anywhere it gets shuffled back into your deck, which also means we can sacrifice it in a pinch to get something else and it would shuffle itself back into the deck, and if I’m correct on how the way the triggers are ordered it can potentially bring itself back into play. Darksteel Colossus would serve the same function, is much cheaper, but doesn’t have infect.

The last thing we need are ways we can repeatedly make use of Jalira’s ability to cheat more and more creatures into play when we want.

Ideally we get ways to reduce the cost of Jalira’s ability with something like Heartstone, which reduces the cost of each creature’s activated ability by one mana, but it cannot reduce it to less than one mana. Since Jalira’s ability has at least one blue mana we can use this just fine.

If we don’t want a symmetrical version of this effect we do have Training Grounds which reduces the cost of activated abilities of creatures we control by two mana, with the same proviso of not being able to reduce the ability to less than one mana, through from there we are limited to cost reduction abilities.

We can copy the ability though with something like Rings of Brighthearth which if we activate an ability that isn’t a mana ability then we can pay two mana to copy it, choosing new targets if we want. We can use the saved mana from Training Grounds for the Rings to get two copies of the spell and still only sacrifice one creature.

However we also need ways to untap Jalira to make repeated use, and one of the cheaper ways we can do it is through something as simple as a Twiddle, which for one mana can untap a creature, artifact, or land.

If we want a big creature version of this that also works very effectively because it let’s us use it every upkeep we can use Tidal Force, which at the beginning of each upkeep we can tap or untap target permanent, which if we have the mana for Jalira we can use Tidal Force to untap her to get another creature our or if we don’t have an ideal creature to sacrifice or have no mana, we can tap down an opposing creature to protect ourselves.

Jalira is an engine Commander, in that the deck is built around her and cheating as many big creatures onto the battlefield as we can, which having a way to cheat out big things from our library is a nice thing to have for us to play a little more on the aggro side of things, a rare sight from blue.

However, this strategy is also very much glaring our opponents in the face, meaning that they will save removal for Jalira because she can enable us to get massive creatures into play very quickly, and they can be real haymakers if our opponents don’t answer in time.

We have plenty of access to counter spells, even ones that make creature tokens, but then we need to make sure that we also have enough mana up to use Jalira’s ability or to even cast Jalira in the first place. Thankfully, this deck is also fully capable of using Polymorph or Mass Polymorph to great effect if we absolutely need to.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual