Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Thrasta, Tempest’s Roar!

Thrasta is a twelve mana 7/7 that costs three less to cast for each other spell cast this turn, trample, haste, trample over Planeswalkers, and Thrasta has hexproof as long as it entered the battlefield this turn.

Thrasta is an interesting way to get a big Commander on the battlefield quickly and while there are plenty of interesting ways to get that to work, there is one card that caught my eye that I’ve been wanting to build around for quite a while.

The plan is to use Thrasta as the fuel for a particular engine in order to get this particular card to work, have ways to get this card into our hand as well as have cards that make use of the payoff of this card in order to win us the game. It’s high powered and needs a Game Changer to get working.

The first thing we need is to get the particular card we want onto the battlefield as soon as possible.

The card I am talking about is of course Food Chain, which has us exile a creature we control and add X mana of any one color where X is the mana value of the creature plus one that can only be used to cast creature spells. Since Thrasta gets three mana cheaper for each spell cast in a turn, this effectively reduces the amount of Commander Tax we pay to zero if we manage to cast a lot of spells in a turn.

So green doesn’t have a too many reliable ways to directly tutor Food Chain into play, but there are still ways we can cheat it out into play. Majestic Genesis let’s us reveal X cards from the top of our library where X is the highest mana value of a Commander we control and put any number of permanent cards onto the battlefield this way.

Genesis Hydra let’s us pay X to cast it and when we do cast it we reveal the top X cards of our library and we may put a nonland permanent card from among those revealed cards with mana value X or less from among those cards onto the battlefield, with the rest of the cards being shuffled into the library and then X +1/+1 counters are put on the Hydra as well.

Genesis Wave is also a way for us to put a lot permanents into play by revealing X cards from the top of our library and put any number of permanent cards from among them onto the battlefield, with the rest of those cards going to our graveyard instead.

We can draw it up with something like a Life’s Legacy to draw cards equal to the power of the creature we need to sacrifice as an additional cost, Regrowth if the card ends up in the graveyard, or Rishkar’s Expertise to draw cards equal to the greatest power among creatures we control while also letting us cast a spell of mana value five or less from our hand for free.

The next thing we need are the cheap spells we want to cast in order to fist cast Thrasta.

Veil of Summer is great because we draw a card if an opponent played a blue or black spell this turn, and spells we control can’t be countered this turn and us and permanents we control gain hexproof from blue and black until end of turn, which gives some form of protection for our things while making them unable to be countered for one mana.

If we wanted to add a bit of redundancy in order to make sure that we can’t get our things countered, then we can also play Autumn’s Veil, which makes it so our spells can’t be countered by blue or black spells this turn and creatures we control can’t be targets of blue or black spells this turn.

There are plenty of cheap to free utility spells we can cast to get Thrasta to only cost two mana like Tormod’s Crypt to exile an opponent’s graveyard, Mishra’s Bauble to look at the top card of a player’s library and draw a card at the beginning of the next upkeep, and Noxious Revival to put a card from a player’s graveyard to the top of their library.

We need to generate a good amount of mana or make our spells cheaper, and depending on the power level of the deck we have several options. For something a bit more low powered then we can use the classic mana dork Elves in Llanowar Elves, Elvish Mystic, and Fyndhorn Elves, Elvish Spirit Guide to discard for a green mana, and Fanatic of Rhonas to either add a green mana or four green mana if we control a creature with power four or greater.

Looking at higher power, we have access to things like Chrome Mox which exiles a nonartifact, nonland card from our hand when it enters to add one mana of the exiled card’s colors, Mox Diamond to discard a land to make sure it stays in play to add a mana of any color, and Lion’s Eye Diamond to add three mana of any one color by sacrificing it, discarding our hand, and at instant speed only.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you want to proxy this deck then by all means do so, but there are plenty of options to get the mana we need without paying a mortgage for cardboard if you want to play with legitimate cards or are in a tournament setting.

The last thing we need are the creature payoffs that will help us win the game with the mana we make from Food Chain.

Walking Ballista is a classic way to get our mana converted into damage because it enters with X +1/+1 counters and for four mana can put a +1/+1 counter on itself, but more importantly can remove a +1/+1 counter from itself to deal 1 damage to any target, which if we have effectively infinite mana with Thrasta and Food Chain, then we can win the game that way.

If we want a more aggro way of winning, we can use Goldvein Hydra which is a Hydra that gets X +1/+1 counters and also has trample, haste, and vigilance while also making tapped Treasure tokens equal to its power when it dies or Mistcutter Hydra which also gets X +1/+1 counters and haste but also can’t be countered and has protection from blue.

We can also use this mana to get a bunch of big creatures out at once, again depending on what power level you want the deck to go. For something on the lower end of the scale you could get something like The Tarrasque which gains haste and ward 10 as long as it was cast and it fights a creature an opponent controls when it attacks or Apex Devastator for quadruple Cascade.

Something higher up in that scale would be to use one of the Eldrazi Titans, with Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger exiling the top twenty cards of an opponents library when it attacks or Emrakul, the Promised End to take control of an opponent’s next turn to make sure that they use all of their resources as bad as possible so that you are better set up to win.

I am personally a fan of the getting big creatures out to deal a bunch of damage, which if a creature doesn’t happen to have haste then we can also facilitate that with Concordant Crossroads to give all creatures haste and swing out with a massive creature like Impervious Greatwurm to deal a bunch of damage.

Thrasta is a Commander that brings the idea of casting a lot of spells in order to get a big Commander in play for cheap and can take it a lot of directions. With the direction we are heading its more of a creature combo strategy where we get a bunch of big creatures in play to swing out in win using mana made from Food Chain and Thrasta.

The problem with that, especially if we take this to higher powered tables, is that people will be expecting us to do something wacky with Thrasta as our Commander and especially so when they know we have Food Chain.

This deck falls more towards a Bracket Four deck where people are going to play a lot of interaction in order to stifle our game plan, and we need to have cards ready to either deal with it, or protect our things in order to make our combo more resilient to have us win while also stopping our opponents from winning the game.

There are a lot of powerful cards the higher the Brackets, and while I tend to lean on Bracket Three and lower, there are times when high powered Magic is pretty fun and Thrasta adds an interesting angle to that, at least in my opinion.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual