Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Anafenza, Unyielding Lineage!

Anafenza is a three mana 2/2 with flash, first strike, and whenever another nontoken creature you control dies, Anafenza endures 2 which either puts two +1/+1 counters on Anafenza or you create a 2/2 white Spirit token.

Anafenza presents an interesting way to play a white Commander in having to have a sacrifice deck which is in a color that has very few ways to sacrifice creatures. There are plenty of creatures in white that can sacrifice themselves for some sort of value, but a deck can’t just run all of those in a deck.

There is a healthy balance of creatures that can sacrifice themselves among other ways we can sacrifice our creatures or creatures that also happen to have dies effects in which we can make Anafenza work well. We can even have it be a split priority deck, where we can play it as a go tall deck or a go wide deck depending on the circumstance.

The first thing we need are creatures that can sacrifice themselves, and luckily in white there are plenty we can choose from.

Kami of False Hope is pretty simple in that we can sacrifice it in order to prevent all combat damage that would be dealt this turn. It is one mana to cast and can keep us from immediately dying if an opponent happens to get ahead in terms of establishing a board.

Another creature that works well in that regard can be Children of Korlis, which can sacrifice itself in order to gain life equal to the life we’ve lost this turn. A pretty solid effect that allows us to survive attacks that would have normally been lethal while also being able to recuperate what we lost.

Benevolent Bodyguard can sacrifice itself in order to give a creature protection from a color of our choice until end of turn, Remorseful Cleric can sacrifice itself to exile all cards from a player’s graveyard, and Selfless Spirit as a classic way to give creatures we control indestructible until end of turn.

What’s also very helpful is that all of these creatures are one to two mana so they are cheap to cast and also happen to have low power, meaning that we can even gain value from playing them with things like Welcoming Vampire and Enduring Innocence, each of which draw us a card whenever a creature with power 2 or less we control enters the battlefield, once a turn for each.

The next thing we need is other sacrifice outlets that we can use with other creatures that we want to sacrifice that can’t sacrifice themselves.

There are more white sacrifice outlets then I was expecting, and they all can be pretty useful in making sure you stay alive. Martyred Rusalka let’s us pay one white and sacrifice a creature to prevent a creature from attacking, which is great to stop any attack triggers we don’t want happening.

Dusk Rose Reliquary requires us to either sacrifice a creature or an artifact as an additional cost to cast but it let’s us exile a creature or artifact as long as it stays on the battlefield, and what’s better is that it also has ward 2 to make it a little more of a pain to remove.

Duty Beyond Death also requires us to sacrifice a creature to cast it but it also gives creatures we control indestructible and put’s +1/+1 counters on each creature we control, which helps Anafenza in either direction we happen to take the deck in by making her stronger or all the Spirits we control get stronger.

As far as creatures we control that want to be sacrificed, we have several options there as well. Ao, the Dawn Sky is great because when they die we either look at the top seven cards of our library and put any number of nonland permanents with a total mana value four or less onto the battlefield or we can put two +1/+1 counters on each permanent we control that’s a creature or Vehicle, again helping with both strategies.

Hallowed Spiritkeeper is great because when it dies, we make X 1/1 Spirit tokens with flying where X is the number of creatures we have in the graveyard, which if we are sacrificing a lot of creatures then we can make an extra wide board.

Light of the Legion is also a pretty good pick, especially in a go wide strategy for Anafenza, because when they die we put a +1/+1 counter on each white creature we control, and since each Spirit we make with Anafenza is white, the more we make the bigger they get.

The last thing we need are ways to get the most of either strategy and can let us be able to pivot if we need to.

Valkyrie’s Call is an excellent way for us to make repeated use of our creatures sacrificing themselves because when a nontoken, non-Angel creature we control dies we return it onto the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter and they have flying and become an Angel in addition to their other types.

This means we can double sacrifice those creatures in order to get more Spirit tokens with Anafenza or to make Anafenza even bigger if we decide to go tall, and we can also do this with something like Raise the Past, which returns all creatures with mana value two or less from our graveyard to the battlefield, which when played in conjunction with Valkyrie’s Call to get up to four uses out of a creature for eight +1/+1 counters on Anafenza or four 2/2 Spirits.

If we wanted to focus on more of a go tall strategy then we could use Priest of the Crossing, which at the beginning of each end step we put X +1/+1 counters on each creature we control where X is the number of creatures we control that died this turn, which if we have an instant way we can sacrifice something can get Anafenza pretty big pretty quick.

Angelic Aberration is more of our speed if we wanted to take the deck in a go wide direction because when it enters we sacrifice any number of creatures we control with base power or toughness of 1 and then make that many 4/4 Eldrazi Angel tokens with flying and vigilance, which means we get double the number of tokens from Anafenza.

We can also do a combination of both if we decide to use Cathar’s Crusade, which puts a +1/+1 counter on each creature we control whenever a creature we control enters, and if we make use of Field of Souls, which makes a 1/1 Spirit token with flying whenever a nontoken creature we control dies, and combine that with the previously mention Valkyrie’s Call, then we can get a massive board very quickly.

Anafenza is a slow burn toolbox Commander, in that our strategy is a steady build up of resources in either making Anafenza able to one shot our opponents with Commander damage, or our board being wide enough to deal enough damage to win us the game.

The difficulty with the deck is that it can be a slower deck, meaning really fast and aggressive decks can out pace us if we don’t build our defenses enough. There is also the risk of us not being able to utilize death triggers against things that exile our creatures or if we can’t get our creatures to our graveyard.

If that’s the case, then our strategy weakens significantly if we can’t get rid of what’s stopping us from getting things into our graveyard. Our curve also runs pretty low for the most part, and against other go tall decks we can lose out if they have ways to trample through.

However, Anafenza is a flexible deck that can focus on either the go tall aspect of endure, the go wide aspect of endure, or can even combine both so you can switch to either if one looks to be more difficult to get online.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual