Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Zidane, Tantalus Thief!

Zidane is a five mana 3/3 that when he enters you gain control of target creature an opponent controls until the end of turn, untap it, and it gains lifelink and haste until end of turn and whenever an opponent gains control of a permanent from you, you create a Treasure token.

Zidane is an interesting way to play a theft Commander because whenever we give a permanent to another player we gain a Treasure token, which can be useful in taking control of something again and again in future turns.

The plan for the deck is pretty straightforward, we make use of any ways we can give an opponent control of one of our permanents and then we make a ton of Treasures that we can use for bigger and bigger theft effects that win us the game, especially if we can make continuous use of Zidane’s theft effect in particular.

The first thing we need are additional ways we can take control of our opponents permanents.

Captivating Crew is a solid way for us to do this continuously, especially once we start getting more and more Treasures since we can pay four mana to gain control of a creature an opponent controls until end of turn, untapping it and giving it haste at sorcery speed.

Zealous Conscripts takes a creature an opponent controls for a turn while they have haste to attack as well, Claim the Firstborn is a cheap way to gain control of a creature of mana value three or less for a turn, of which we can cast for free after casting Kari Zev’s Expertise which takes control of a creature or Vehicle an opponent controls for a turn and we can cast a card from our hand of mana value two or less for free.

Since Zidane triggers off of any permanent, we can also use something like Treasure Nabber to our advantage because whenever an opponent taps an artifact for mana we gain control of that artifact until the end of our next turn, which means that the more mana rocks our opponents play, the easier it’ll be for us to cast Zidane and get a benefit from giving the mana rocks back.

We can also take advantage of blink effects so we get multiple uses off of Zidane’s particular theft ability, with Felidar Guardian getting us a potential access for an infinite, but we are instead using it as intended to blink Zidane to get another use of his ability.

Though if we did want to be a bit tricky about getting Zidane’s effect over and over again, we could use The Jolly Balloon Man as a way to make a token copy of Zidane that would be a 1/1 Balloon with flying and haste that would sacrifice itself at the end of turn, but will sacrifice itself to the Legend Rule, but still triggers Zidane’s enters effect.

Not only do we take advantage of stealing our opponents creatures for a turn, but we can also willingly give something of ours to an opponent.

Stiltzkin, Moogle Merchant is excellent for this because we can get them down in the early game and for two mana and tap we can give an opponent control of another permanent we control and if they do we get to draw a card.

Humble Defector can tap to draw us two cards on our turn only and then we give control of them to target opponent, Bazaar Trader can tap to give an opponent an artifact, creature, or land we control, and whenever Goblin Cadets blocks or gets blocked target opponent gains control of it.

Yes Man, Personal Securitron is also pretty good because we can tap to give target opponent control of it and when they do, we draw two cards and put a quest counter on it, again only on our turn. What’s more is that when it leaves the battlefield, its owner (us) creates a tapped 1/1 Soldier token for each quest counter on it.

There are also creatures that switch control of who controls them, like Khârn the Betrayer, which must attack each combat if able and if damage would be dealt to Khârn then that damage is prevented and an opponent of our choice gains control of Khârn and if we lose control of Khârn then we draw two cards.

If we want to play a bit into some group hug strategies then we can also make use of Bucknard’s Everfull Purse which for one mana and tap let’s us roll a d4 and create a number of Treasure tokens equal to the result, with the player on our right gaining control of the Purse.

Now as to how we win, we can make use of all the Treasures we control to cast either big multi theft spells or other uses for that mana.

Insofar as big theft spells, Hideous Taskmaster really puts the spurs on things since when we cast it for each opponent we gain control of up to one target creature that player controls, untaps it, and those creatures gain trample, haste, and annihilator 1 until end of turn, while this is a 7/2 with trample, haste and annihilator 1.

Mob Rule is a interesting modal theft spell in that we can either take control of all creatures with power 4 or greater until end of turn, untapping them and giving them haste or we can do the same but with all creatures with power 3 or less, which gives us flexibility on which we want to do to help us close out the game.

If it’s getting to the point where we need to win the game because otherwise our opponents have a chance to win, then Insurrection is the go to way to take control of all creature while untapping them and giving them haste, and we should have the mana to do so.

There is also the alternate way to make use of our opponents creatures, and that is through fling effects. Brion Stoutarm is a great example because we can pay a red mana and tap him and sacrifice a creature we control to deal damage to any target equal to the sacrificed creature’s power, which also gains us life since Brion has lifelink and he is the source of that damage.

Thud is a one mana sorcery that is a way to sacrifice a creature to deal damage to any target, Self-Destruct has a creature we control deal damage to any target equal to its power and then deal that much damage to itself, and Grab the Reins can either steal a creature for a turn or sacrifice a creature to deal damage equal to its power to any target or both with Entwine.

Zidane is a neat way to play theft, making use of the massive number of temporary Act of Treason effects that get printed in nearly every set and taking the downside of giving those creatures back and giving us the mana to do bigger and bigger versions of the effect, and since Zidane’s ability counts every instance of giving our things to an opponent, we can get a lot of Treasures out of it.

The issue is that since our strategy is going to lean more to an aggressive strategy, we are going to be leaving ourselves open a majority of the time, meaning that if an opponent establishes a board that gets out of control, we are wide open for an attack.

We also don’t too well against creatureless decks, which not every deck is a complete creatureless deck and we can mitigate that a bit with the creatures that switch control of their owner’s, if we have several opponents that don’t play a lot of creatures or creatures that can’t attack like Defender decks, then we need our own creatures to pick up the slack.

Still, Zidane presents a fun way to play an aggro theft strategy that also happens to advance the game for us and build up to a win.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual