Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Zara, Renegade Recruiter!

Zara is a five mana 4/3 with flying and whenever Zara attacks, you look at defending player’s hand and you may put a creature card from it onto the battlefield under your control tapped and attacking that player or a Planeswalker they control, then you return that creature to its owner’s hand at the beginning of the next end step.

Theft decks tend to be an interesting puzzle in how taking the things from our opponents work as well as the duration for the theft. In Zara’s case the theft is temporary and we get to steal only creatures, but we get the benefits from those creatures enters the battlefield triggers as well as damage triggers and potentially death triggers.

The plan is to have a way to get as much information as possible so we know which opponent to attack to get the best creatures to steal, have ways we can gain some benefit from those creatures, as well as have ways to make sure our opponents don’t get those creatures back.

The first thing we need is to make sure that we gain as much information on what our opponents have in their hand.

Telepathy is the cheapest and most reliable way to do this since it is a one mana enchantment that has each of our opponents play with their hands revealed. This is the best version of a hand peek spell that we have access to, because it isn’t symmetrical and affects everyone else except us.

While it would be nice to only have one version, redundancy does help and while it isn’t as effective, there is also Wandering Eye, which has every player play with their hands revealed, which while not ideal since it is symmetrical, it is a creature with flying that can chip in a bit of damage or block.

With those being continuous ways to look at our opponent’s hands, we can also play with some one time ways to look at their hands to help us if we can’t get those cards in play or they get destroyed. Gitaxian Probe comes to mind since we can pay 2 life to cast it to look at another player’s hand and then draw a card.

Peek of course is what the effect is colloquially named after and like Gitaxian Probe it let’s us look at another player’s hand and draw a card, but we do have to pay one mana to cast it. Clairvoyance also let’s us look at an opponent’s hand and then at the beginning of the next upkeep we draw a card, which has it’s use cases because it can also be cast at instant speed.

I do also want to mention Spy Network, which let’s us look at an opponent’s hand, the top card of their library, and any face down creatures they control while also letting us look at the top four cards of our library and put them back in any order. A lot of value for one mana at instant speed.

The next thing we need to do is to take as many creatures as we can, because it’s better for us to take as many creatures as we can to make use of them to help us win.

Relentless Assault is a cheap way for us to untap creatures that attacked this turn and make an additional combat phase after the current main phase while also making another main phase for us to use for whatever we need.

Great Train Heist is another great way to give us an additional combat phase at instant speed during our combat phase, also untapping all creatures we control. It’s also modal in that it also can give creatures we control +1/+0 and first strike until end of turn and can let us choose an opponent and whenever a creature we control deals combat damage to that player, we make a Treasure token.

Combat Celebrant can be exerted when it attacks in order untap all other creatures and make an additional combat phase, Full Throttle makes two additional combat phases that untap all creatures that attacked this turn, and Fury of the Horde can make an extra combat phase and an additional main phase while being able to be cast by exiling two red cards from our hand instead of its mana cost.

One of the best extra combat spells we can use is one that can benefit our strategy very well in Breath of Fury, an Aura that when the enchanted creature deals combat damage to a player we sacrifice that creature and attach the Aura to another creature, untapping all creatures we control and making an additional combat phase. If we can get a good chain going, we can steal all the creatures in our opponent’s hands and have a chain of combats that also sacrifices the creatures we steal if we move the Aura to them.

The last thing we need is a way to make use of our opponents creatures before they return to our opponent’s hand.

Goblin Bombardment is one of the most effective ways of getting this done since all we need to do is sacrifice a creature in order to deal 1 damage to target creature or player, and we can also make use of that creature’s death effect if it happens to have one while also dealing a bit more chip damage to an opponent or creature that they control that is still in play.

Industrial Advancement is a neat card that I didn’t know existed because at the beginning of the end step we can sacrifice a creature we control to look at the top X cards of our library where X is the mana value of the sacrificed creature and put a creature from among them onto the battlefield, which helps us replace the creature we stole and makes use of any death triggers that the creature may have.

We can also use a bit of burn to deal the last bit of damage as necessary with cards like Thud and Fling, which let us sacrifice a creature and deal damage to any target equal to the power of the creature we sacrificed, or Warstorm Surge which has it so whenever a creature enters the battlefield under our control, it deals damage equal to its power to any target.

If we need one last salvo of damage and have a decent number of creatures in play then we can also play Soulblast, which has us sacrifice all the creatures we control equal to deal damage equal to the total power of creatures we sacrificed to any target.

While we’ve focused a lot on red ways to make use of the creatures, we can also use cards like Polymorph to destroy a creature we stole in order to cheat a creature from our library onto the battlefield, again making use of any death triggers and replaces the creature we stole with one of our own.

Mirage Mockery can also be helpful for us depending on the creature we stole since we can either create a token copy of an artifact creature we control or a token copy of a nonartifact creature we control, or if we have the mana and the proper targets then we can Entwine to do both options for added value.

Zara is a proactive theft Commander in that we need to attack in order to steal an opponent’s creature for a turn and we need to find ways to make sure that our opponents can’t get those creatures back in a way to retaliate against us.

The issues that the deck faces are against decks that aren’t creature focused or have creatures that can’t attack, which in an aggressive deck like ours can prove to make things difficult to deal with if we can’t steal any effective creatures from their hand.

Zara is also five mana to cast and has no inherent protection and no immediate way to attack without other cards, meaning that most of the time we need to wait until our turn again to attack with Zara in order to start taking creatures, which telegraphs it and it gives our opponents plenty of time to save their removal spells for Zara, making it more difficult to do what we want.

I still think that Zara being a much more proactive theft Commander is a much more interesting way to play the archetype and has us be a bit more creative in taking our opponents things and can be a great way to add some politicking to the game if that’s your thing, i.e. promising not to steal one players creatures for some benefit.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual