Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about The Lady of Otaria!

The Lady of Otaria is a five mana 5/5 that you may tap three untapped Dwarves you control rather than pay this spell’s mana cost, and at the beginning of each end step, if a land you controlled was put into a graveyard from the battlefield this turn, reveal the top four cards of your library then you may put any number of Dwarf cards from among them into your hand, putting the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.

An interesting combination of being a Dwarf typal Commander while having some synergies with your lands leaving the battlefield, which leaves some interesting ways to play that can be explored a bit, especially with some land sacrificing strategies making their appearance in recent sets.

The plan is to have a ton of Dwarves, get as many in our deck as we feasibly can without too much issue and have ways that we can benefit from sacrificing our own lands, potentially on our opponents turns since The Lady of Otaria mentions each end step.

The first thing we need are our suit of Dwarves, and we have over sixty to work with to our benefit.

Since we will likely be tapping Dwarves to cast The Lady of Otaria, Magda, Brazen Outlaw becomes an obvious include in the deck because one is that she gives a +1/+0 bonus to our other Dwarves, whenever a Dwarf we control becomes tapped we create a Treasure token and we can sacrifice five Treasures in our to tutor an artifact or Dragon onto the battlefield.

Gimli of the Glittering Caves is pretty good since he gets a +1/+1 counter whenever a legendary creature we control enters the battlefield and whenever he deals combat damage we make a Treasure token, which we should be able to do so decently often especially since he has double strike.

Speaking of Gimili’s there is also Gimli, Mournful Avenger, which has indestructible as long as two or more creatures died under our control this turn and whenever another creature we control dies we put a +1/+1 counter on Gimli and if it was the third time this happened then Gimli fights a creature we don’t control.

As far as utility Dwarves go, Dwarven Recruiter becomes an easy pick since whenever they enter the battlefield we can search our library for any number of Dwarf cards, reveal the, shuffle our library, and then put them on top of our library in any order, which can help turbo out a lot of Dwarves into our hand from The Lady of Otaria.

We can also pad out the number of Dwarves in our deck by using Seven Dwarves, of which we can have up to seven of them in our deck, and they all get +1/+1 for each other creature named Seven Dwarves that we control, which if we want a mass number of cheap Dwarves to help us cast The Lady of Otaria early, Seven Dwarves really helps with that.

The next thing we need are ways to have our lands go into the graveyard, ideally with some sort of value attached so we don’t fall far behind.

Roiling Regrowth is very much one of the classic ways of sacrificing lands to get some sort of value because we sacrifice a land so that we get two basic lands and have them enter the battlefield tapped then shuffle our deck.

Entish Restoration does something very similar because we can sacrifice a land in order to get two basic lands onto the battlefield tapped, but if we happen to control control a creature with power 4 or greater we get three basic lands onto the battlefield tapped.

If you don’t mind a Game Changer in a deck there is of course Crop Rotation, which has us sacrifice a land in order to get any land from our library onto the battlefield, of which we have options like Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth to make every land a Forest, Demolition Field to sacrifice to destroy a nonbasic an opponent controls while also getting a basic, and Drownyard Temple to have a land that we can sacrifice consistently and return it to the battlefield tapped for three mana.

While we are going to sacrificing our lands, we can also make excellent use of ways we can play lands from our graveyard to get a constant recursive value like a Conduit of Worlds which let’s us play lands from our graveyard and we can also tap to cast a nonland permanent spell from our graveyard if we really need to get something in play.

If we have a ton of lands in our graveyard then Splendid Reclamation which can return all land cards from our graveyard onto the battlefield tapped, which if we are consistently getting them into our graveyard can mean we get a good chunk of lands. Plus if we combine this with something like Spelunking then those lands come in untapped.

The last thing we need are ways to win, which we can definitely do with our Dwarves but some additional bits of help are always good, especially if they benefit from our land shenanigans.

Baloth Prime is a great example because even though it enters the battlefield tapped with six stun counters, but whenever you sacrifice a land you create a tapped 4/4 Beast creature token and untap Baloth Prime to start chipping away at those stun counters, and has a neat way to sacrifice lands to gain us 2 life.

As far as Dwarves go, Mine Layer is a way to act as a control piece because for two mana we can put a mine counter on a target land so that when a land with a mine counter becomes tapped it is destroyed, with them being removed when Mine Layer leaves the battlefield, which even getting it in play to threaten blowing up lands will have it eat a removal spell, or at the very least blow up a land or two, our or our opponents.

If we have lands come back from the graveyard onto the battlefield, then Titania, Protector of Argoth also becomes a great card because not only does she return a land from our graveyard onto the battlefield, but when a land goes from our graveyard to the battlefield then we make a 5/3 Elemental creature token, and it counts for any land so any mass land retrieval becomes even better.

With Magda, Brazen Outlaw making a ton of Treasure with us tapping our Dwarves, we can also make great use of artifacts that give our Dwarves a boost to overwhelm our opponents like Banner of Kinship which has us choose a creature type and it enters with a fellowship counter for each creature we control of the chosen type and then creatures we control of the chosen type get +1/+1 for each fellowship counter on it.

The Lady of Otaria is pretty solid as a mix of a Dwarf typal Commander and a lands sacrifice Commander in that one strategy supports the other, and The Lady of Otaria also helps us deal with the Commander Tax pretty well, allowing us to tap three Dwarves and only pay the additional relevant Commander Tax rather than paying five mana plus Commander Tax.

The issues that come with playing The Lady of Otaria are that a lot of Dwarves are very situational, and while we are padding the deck out with Seven Dwarves, there are plenty of other Dwarves that aren’t the best. There is also the potential issue that we aren’t able to recur as many lands as we like because our graveyard was exiled.

While being able to tap three Dwarves to cast The Lady of Otaria is a massive boon, what hurts the deck is that if there is a board wipe that gets rid of our Dwarves, then we do have to pay what we need to cast The Lady of Otaria again.

Still, a pretty decent Dwarf typal engine along with some land sacrifice does make for an interesting way to play a deck, especially with how good some of Dwarves are.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual