Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Verrak, Warped Sengir!

Verrak is a three mana 2/2 with flying, deathtouch, lifelink and whenever you activate an ability, if life was paid to activate it, you may pay that much life again and if you do you copy that ability, and you may choose new target for that ability.

Verrak is a Panharmonicon type of ability that triggers whenever we pay life to activate an ability, so this means that we are going to be going all over the place with our life totals since we need our life to copy those abilities and to stay alive.

Our plan is to get cards that have activated abilities that advance our game state, all the while having cards that gain us life as well so we can make sure we don’t lose the game to our own greed and hubris to build up to a massive amount of resources we can use to win the game.

The first thing we need to do are get creatures in play with activated abilities that help us gain value, whether that be cards, mana, or tokens.

Treasure Dredger is a solid early creature to get into play because when we pay one mana, tap and pay 1 life then we make a Treasure token, which with Verrak in play gets us two Treasure tokens for one mana and 2 life.

In a similar vein we have Forsword Paladin, which is a one drop that we can pay two mana, tap, and pay 1 life to make a Treasure token and we can pay three mana to give a creature +2/+0 until end of turn, where if mana from a Treasure was spent to activate that ability then that creature gains deathtouch, which is a little more situational, but can be pretty useful.

Underworld Connections is a pretty solid card because we can enchant a land to give it the ability to tap and pay 1 life in order to draw a card, which means in the midgame when we have a decent amount of mana, we can tap that land and pay 2 life to draw two cards when we need to refuel our hand.

We can use Unspeakable Symbol to pay 3 life to put a +1/+1 counter on a creature, we can pay 2 life to Cycle Street Wraith to draw a card, Phyrexian Reclamation to pay two mana and 2 life to return a creature from our graveyard to our hand, and Bloodtracker which lets us pay one mana and 2 life to put a +1/+1 counter on it and when it leaves the battlefield we draw a card for each +1/+1 counter on it.

The next thing we need are ways to make sure that we don’t lose too much life by gaining enough life to compensate.

Tainted Sigil is a card that works pretty well for us because we can tap and sacrifice it to gain life equal to the total life lost by all players this turn, meaning that not only can we pay a lot of life on our turn copying activated abilities, but we can also employ drain effects to gain even more life because of the life lost by our opponents.

We can also get a similar use of this ability by using Children of Korlis, which we can sacrifice to gain life equal to the life we’ve lost this turn, which if we manage to combine it after using Tainted Sigil to bring our life total back up and pay that life again for something else, we can get a massive swing of life.

Astarion, the Decadent is pretty solid for us to not only gain life, but to also have our opponents lose life because at the beginning of our end step we either have target opponent lose life equal to the amount of life they lost this turn or we can gain life equal to the amount of life we gained this turn, which can set us up pretty well.

Archivist of Oghma can gain us 1 life and draw us a card whenever an opponent searches their library with flash as well, Oketra’s Last Mercy to have our life total become our starting life total at the cost of our lands not untapping our next untap step, and The Wind Crystal to double the amount of life we gain whenever we gain life and to give our creatures flying and lifelink until end of turn.

We can also turn us paying life into removal by using Font of Agonies, which has it so that whenever we pay life we put that many blood counters on Font of Agonies and for two mana and remove four blood counters from Font of Agonies to destroy target creature, meaning we have easy access to a way to remove creatures whenever we pay life all at the cost of two mana.

The last thing we need is a way to win the game, and we actually have several interesting ways to win.

One of the most interesting ways to do so is to have Near-Death Experience in play, which has at the beginning of our upkeep if we have exactly 1 life, we win the game. We have that in play along with something like Stunning Reversal in our hand to have so that the next time would lose the game this turn, we draw seven cards and our life becomes 1.

We can then back that up with a card life Angel’s Grace, which has it so that we can’t lose the game and our opponents can’t win the game this turn and until end of turn, damage that would reduce our life total to less then 1 reduces it to 1 instead.

Now this doesn’t help against life loss effects, but for that we have Flare of Fortitude, which we can cast by sacrificing a nontoken white creature instead of its mana cost and until end of turn our life total can’t change and permanents we control gain hexproof and indestructible.

If we want another way to win while our life total is dramatically low, then we can make use of Repay in Kind, which has each player’s life total becomes the lowest life total among all players, which we can then drain our opponents with an Extort trigger from something like Life Insurance which has Extort and makes a Treasure token and we lose 1 life whenever a nontoken creature dies.

What’s an even better way for us to use Repay in Kind to win us the game, then we can use Phyrexian Unlife, which has it so we don’t lose the game for having 0 or less life and as long as we have 0 or less life, all damage dealt to us is dealt as poison counters, so if we make it so we pay life to get us to 0, then we can use Repay in Kind to have our opponents go to 0 and we win.

There is also a less complicated way for us to win the game by using a way for us to discard a card, like say a Bloodsoaked Altar which lets us tap, pay 2 life, and sacrifice a creature to make a 5/5 Demon token with flying and then use Strands of Night to pay two mana, 2 life, and sacrifice a Swamp to bring a creature from our graveyard onto the battlefield.

For the price of 8 life we get two 5/5 Demon tokens and a big creature that will secure us the game like say a Summon: Knights of Round to get a ton of Knights alongside that eventually makes our creatures indestructible while providing a +2/+2 bonus.

Verrak is a way to take a way to copy activated abilities for the price of extra life to become an engine of value that let’s us get a ton of things quicker and can let us be very flexible with our life totals in order to get us into an advantageous position.

What becomes risky, especially if we are playing some of the more elaborate ways to win, it can be pretty risky keeping our life total that low for too long before someone finds a way around it to take us out of the game because we weren’t paying attention to how much life we had and didn’t notice our opponents having ways to get our life totals to 0.

Remember, life is a resource, but the only life that matters is the last one, and Verrak plays really close to that line where we can risk losing the game because we got greedy, but that risk is what’s going to put us ahead in the early game and can snowball advantage towards our favor if our opponents can’t deal with us.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual