Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Tourach, Dread Cantor!

Tourach is a two mana 2/1 with a kicker of two black mana, protection from white, whenever an opponent discards a card, put a +1/+1 counter on Tourach and when he enters the battlefield, if they were kicked, then target opponent discards two cards at random.

Tourach is pretty interesting as a Commander because using discard as the outlet for a Voltron type of Commander can be pretty polarizing, especially since Tourach is targeted discard if he was cast when kicked. What works best for a discard Commander is thinking of it as a long term mill strategy, where you get cards into your opponents hands and then remove them.

The game plan is pretty straightforward; we give cards to our opponents and then we have plenty of ways to take cards out of their hands to make Tourach bigger and also while we help deal a bit of damage over time and keeping Tourach safe and limiting what our opponents can do with all the cards we are having them draw.

The first thing we need are ways for our opponents to get cards into our opponents hands, ideally while also dealing a bit of damage to them.

Sign in Blood is very much the easiest example to go to because the effect allows target player to draw two cards and lose 2 life, which can be used for us if we need to get a couple of cards in our hand or we need ways to get more cards into our opponents hands.

Another way to do so that also happens to fuel Tourach is Geier Reach Sanitarium, which is a land that has each player draw a card and then discard a card, which can really juice up Tourach even more than some of our other methods of discard, which we’ll get to soon.

Insatiable Avarice is a neat little tricky card for us because it has two modes to it, one that let’s us tutor a card to the top of our library and another that let’s target player draw three cards and then lose 3 life, which we can use to get the card we want and have an opponent draw some cards.

Damnable Pact is a way to have someone draw a lot of cards while losing a lot of life because of the X cost, Blood Pact and Painful Lesson have a player draw two cards and lose 2 life, and Peer into the Abyss has a player draw cards equal to half their library rounded up and lose half of their life, also rounded up.

The next thing we need are ways to restrict our opponents from playing all the cards that they draw.

Damping Sphere is an underrated card in my opinion because it restrict lands that produce a lot of mana by making any land that would make two or more mana make only one colorless and each spell a players casts costs one mana more to cast for each other spell that player has cast that turn.

Defense Grid is also a solid way to put pause on our opponents casting spells on other people’s turns since if they do then Defense Grid adds a three mana tax to spells cast not on that player’s turn, and since a lot of our spells are sorceries, we are least effected by this.

If our opponents do want to cast a lot of spells, we can also use Painful Quandary where whenever an opponent casts a spell that player loses 5 life unless they discard a card, which when Tourach is out can possibly mean picking between a rock and a hard place.

We can also start turning the card draw we give to our opponents into even more damage by using Underworld Dreams, which deals 1 damage to whenever an opponent draws a card. if you happen to have a Sheoldred, the Apocalypse that effect is much better because or opponents lose 2 life when they draw cards while we gain 2 life when we draw cards, but that card is still very expensive.

Once we get our discard cards going, we can also shut down any potential graveyard strategies in a myriad of ways. Leyline of the Void is the easiest to suggest because if we start with it in our opening hand then we can put it into play for free and have our opponents exile cards that would go to their graveyard.

While Tourach can dodge a lot of removal because of the protection from white, we still need ways to keep Tourach in play as well with something like like Not Dead After All being pretty helpful because it brings a creature back after it dies tapped under its owner’s control with a Wicked Role token on it.

Now comes the main attraction, us discarding all the cards our opponents controls to boost up Tourach and drain our opponents.

Bad Deal is a great for Tourach because we draw two cards while each opponent discards two cards and all players lose 2 life, which makes it much easier for Tourach to get six +1/+1 counters while we also draw two cards.

Unnerve has each opponents discard two cards, Tasigur’s Cruelty has each opponent discard two cards while also being able to be cast for cheaper because of Delve, and Strongarm tactics has each player discard a card then each player who didn’t discard a creature card loses 4 life.

Pox can be a bit of a rough card to use namely in that each player loses a third of their life, discards a third of the cards in their hand, sacrifices a third of the creatures they control, then sacrifices a third of the lands they control, rounding up each time. if you don’t want to have to do land sacrifice, then Fraying Omnipotence also works because each player loses half of their life, half the cards in their hand, and half the creatures they control, rounding up each time.

We also have the many other ways we can gain a benefit from discarding cards, Waste Not being a very popular option because whenever an opponent discards a creature card we make a Zombie, if they discard a land we add two black mana, and if it is neither then we draw a card.

Megrim deals 2 damage to an opponent whenever they discard a card, Liliana’s Caress has them lose 2 life (technically important distinction in some cases) whenever they discard a card, and Tinybones, Bauble Burglar has it so whenever an opponent discards a card it is exiled with a stash counter and we can play cards with stash counters on our turn using mana of any type to cast spells and can have each opponent discard a card.

If Tourach is going to be a major win condition, then we also have access to a wheel in Dark Deal, which has each player discard all cards in their hand and then draw that many cards minus one, which make Tourach enormous, and we reap all the benefits of the other cards we have that care about discard

Tourach is a straightforward Commander in that we want our opponents to have as many cards as possible in their hand so we can discard them and gain as many benefits as we can manage from them discarding all the cards.

The issues come with Tourach being susceptible to non-white removal spells and to board wipes, and the fact that while we are having our opponents discard cards, they are choosing what cards to discard, which means we could be sculpting them a perfect hand.

Tourach can be tricky to pilot effectively because of this, and it can be hard to have other other cards we play that benefit from us discarding cards to stick because while Tourach has protection from white, our other cards aren’t as lucky in being able to dodge removal.

Still, Tourach can be pretty fun in lower powered tables because you are having people draw more cards while advancing the game by having people lose life and racing to not lose all of their life or mill themselves out while you also build up your own board to swing out.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual