Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Daxos of Meletis!

Daxos is a three mana 2/2 that can’t be blocked by creatures with power 3 or greater and whenever Daxos deals combat damage to a player, exile the card of that player’s library, you gain life equal to that card’s mana value, and until end of turn you may cast that card and you may spend mana as though it were mana of any color to cast it.

Blue and white theft is not something most people would expect, but it does make for an interesting playstyle and puzzle for us to solve. Since we can only cast spells and not take lands, we need to make sure that we have the mana to get to be able to do what we want.

The plan is to do as much ramping as we can, get a decent number of ways to make sure Daxos isn’t destroyed or blocked in order to cast our opponents spells.

Our first priority is to get as much mana as we can, and the more often we can get it the better.

Monologue Tax is not as annoying to deal with as a Smothering Tithe (and is much cheaper) because it triggers whenever an opponent casts their second spell each turn, which in a format like Commander can be pretty easy to accomplish and can generate us some Treasures pretty reliably.

Deep Gnome Terramancer can be used as a way to get more longer lasting mana sources since if a land would enter our opponents control and it wasn’t played, then we can tutor a Plains card from our library to the battlefield tapped once per turn, which we can also cast at flash speed to surprise an opponent if they happen to fetch or use a ramp spell.

Archeomancer’s Map is also really good to help us catch up if our opponents happen to be ramping a lot because when it enters we get two basic Plains into our hand and whenever a land enters the battlefield under an opponents control and they control more lands then we do, then we can put a land from our hand onto the battlefield.

We can also take advantage of banking mana, since we can use mana of any color to cast the spells we take from our opponents, by using Horizon Stone, which has it so that if we would lose unspent mana, that mana becomes colorless instead, meaning that before it gets to our turn if we have some mana open that we didn’t use, we can tap our lands to have some extra floating mana to use.

The next thing we need are additional ways to make sure that Daxos can get in to deal damage while keeping him safe.

Security Bypass is perfect for this because as long as the enchanted creature is attacking alone, it cannot be blocked and whenever it deals combat damage to a player, it connives, which means we draw a card and then discard a card, putting a +1/+1 counter on the creature if we discarded a nonland card.

We aren’t entirely focused on dealing Commander Damage, but we can gain additional triggers from Daxos dealing combat damage multiple times, like say we happened to enchant him with Twinblade Blessing, which we can cast at flash speed, and gives the enchanted creature double strike, meaning two triggers from Daxos.

As far as making sure that Daxos stays safe, we have several options available. The umbra armor spells are good, with Hyena Umbra giving +1/+1 and first strike and Eel Umbra giving the enchanted creature +1/+1 and can be cast at flash speed, gives the enchanted creature a way to survive being destroyed for at least one removal spell.

Gift of Immortality is probably one of the best ways to make sure that Daxos stays around because when the enchanted creature dies, we return that creature to the battlefield under its owner’s control and we also return Gift of Immortality to that creature at the beginning of the next end step.

Trailblazer’s Boots gives the equipped creature nonbasic landwalk, Whispersilk Cloak has it so the equipped creature can’t be blocked and shroud, and of course Lightning Greaves can give the equipped creature haste and shroud.

Since Daxos also gains us some life, we can have some life gain synergies in the deck in the form of something like Light of Promise or Sunbond, both of which give the enchanted creature have whenever we gain life we put that many +1/+1 counters on the enchanted creature.

There also a variety of creatures that can give Daxos some form of protection like Pippin, Guard of the Citadel which can tap to give a creature we control protection from a card type of our choice, Mother of Runes to give another creature we control protection from a color of our choice, and Giver of Runes which gives another protection from colorless or from a color of our choice.

Since our goal is to play our opponents cards, we should do what we can to make the most out of them or manipulate what cards we can get.

While benefits from theft are much more limited in our colors, we do have a couple of options, one of which being Staff of Eden, Vault’s Key which takes a target legendary permanent not named Staff of Eden, Vault’s Key from a graveyard onto the battlefield under our control and we can tap to draw a card for each permanent we control, but don’t own.

The other biggest payoff for stealing our opponent’s things is of course Agent of Treachery, which when it enters we take control of target permanent and at the beginning of our end step if we control three or more permanents we don’t own then we draw three cards.

We can also do what we can to manipulate what card we can get with Daxos by using specific counter spells like Memory Lapse, which counters target spell and if a spell is countered this way we put it on top of its owner’s library instead of the graveyard, meaning if an opponent is casting some game winning spell, we can use Daxos to help us cast it instead.

Lapse of Certainty is a white version of this effect which can surprise our opponents since most people may not expect a white counter spell, Sudden Setback puts target spell or permanent on the top or bottom of their library which can either set us up to cast later or get rid of it for a while if our opponent wants to not let us have it, or Commit which puts a spell or nonland permanent second from the top of an opponent’s library and also have Memory as the Aftermath to wheel everyone for seven cards.

There are also plenty of cards that let us look at the top card of our opponent’s libraries like Wizened Snitches which has players play with the tops of their libraries revealed, which means we can better choose which opponent to attack with Daxos to get the most value from.

Daxos is pretty unique as a theft Commander in that he is in a unique color combination for theft that needs to be a bit more creative in how we take advantage of casting our opponents spells and making sure we can actually get it working.

And that is where the deck can struggle, since we need outside sources to make sure that Daxos can deal the damage we need to take an opponent’s card, we cannot take lands to help us ramp, and we can only cast that spell this turn meaning we need some amount of mana to make sure we can cast it.

All the while, making sure that Daxos can stay protected enough in order to do what we need to do so we can cast our opponents spells, provided that we get a spell from it.

It is a neat puzzle to solve and one that I think can still be made well, if a bit of work is done to tune the deck in an ideal manner.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual