Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Garnet, Princess of Alexandria!

Garnet is a two mana 2/2 with lifelink and whenever Garnet attacks, you may remove a lore counter from each of any number of Sagas you control, then put a +1/+1 counter on Garnet for each lore counter removed this way.

Garnet’s strategy plays into Sagas fairly heavily, and with how she gets stronger with each lore counter removed, this can mean that she can pretty big if we have a decent number of Sagas, as well as her being able to make our Sagas last even longer so we can get more value from them.

She also happens to have lifelink, so our game plan of having Sagas in play that we can gain continuous value from can also have a bit of a life gain synergy attached to it, along with our usual Enchantress benefits we can take advantage of.

The first thing that we need are the Sagas that we can gain as much value from having their lore counters removed to have their effects continuously trigger.

Summon: Magus Sisters is great because it is a Saga creature that has haste and the three chapters that are available are all really solid, and while they are chosen at random, getting the options of putting three +1/+1 counters on a creature, putting a shield counter on a creature and gaining 3 life, and having the Magus Sisters fight a creature an opponent controls are good to have at our disposal.

Another Saga creature we can make use of is Summon: Yojimbo, which exiles an artifact, enchantment, or tapped creature an opponent controls when it enters, and we can hover between chapters 2 and 3, which have it so that until our next turn creatures can’t attack us unless their controller pays two mana for each of those creatures and if we need the mana we can have it go to chapter 4 to make X Treasure tokens where X is the number of opponents who control a creature with power 4 or greater.

As far as noncreature Sagas, there are still great options like Elspeth Conquers Death, which exiles a creature an opponent controls with mana value three or greater when it enters, we can have it hover to make it so noncreature spells our opponents control cost two more mana to cast until our next turn and we can even have it go to the final chapter to bring back a creature or Planeswalker back from our graveyard with either a +1/+1 counter or an additional loyalty counter.

There are also the prototype Saga creatures that came from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty like Jugan Defends the Temple, which makes a 1/1 Human Monk that can tap to add a green mana, us hovering to put a +1/+1 counter on each of up to two target creatures, and we can even transform it into Remnant of the Rising Star, which has it so we can pay X as a creature enters to give that creature X +1/+1 counters as it enters and as long as we control five or more modified creatures, Remnant gets +5/+5 and trample to go along with its flying.

The next thing we need are ways to protect our enchantments as well as other enchantment synergies that we can make use of.

Sterling Grove is great because it gives other enchantments we control shroud, and since Garnet doesn’t target, we can still get the lore counters of our shrouded Sagas and if we want to get a specific enchantment in our deck, then we can pay one mana and sacrifice this to tutor an enchantment to the top of our library.

Soaring Lightbringer is pretty good because it gives other enchantment creatures we control flying and whenever we attack a player, we create a 1/1 Glimmer token that is tapped and attacking the player, which also incentivizes us to attack more players rather than focusing on one.

There are also the myriad of Enchantress like cards like Mesa Enchantress, Verduran Enchantress, Satyr Enchanter, and Eidolon of Blossoms which have it so when we either cast an enchantment spell or when an enchantment we control enters in the case of Eidolon of Blossoms, we draw a card.

Ondu Spiritdancer works pretty well with our deck as well because whenever and enchantment we control enters, we may create a token that’s a copy of it once each turn, which can either get us more Sagas we can take advantage or value engines from our other enchantments.

Satsuki, the Living Lore is pretty interesting because we can tap to put a lore counter on a Saga we control at sorcery speed, and when they die we can either bounce a Saga or enchantment creature we control to its owner’s hand or return a Saga from our graveyard to our hand.

Since a lot of creatures we control happen to be enchantment creatures, we can also play Yuna, Hope of Spira which during our turn gives Yuna and enchantment creatures we control trample, lifelink, and ward 2 while also being able to return an enchantment from our graveyard to the battlefield with a finality counter.

We can also deal with those finality counters by using Scholar of New Horizons which enters with a +1/+1 counter and we can tap it to remove a counter from a permanent we control to find a Plains from our library and if an opponent controls more lands than us we can put that Plains onto the battlefield tapped, otherwise we put it into our hand instead.

The last thing we need are the life gain cards that we can use with all the incidental life gain that we have access to as well as ways to protect Garnet.

Cradle of Vitality is massive for us because whenever we gain life, we can pay one and a white to put a +1/+1 counter on target creature for each 1 life we gained, which after a couple of turns attacking with Garnet should net us a good number of +1/+1 counters from the life she gains us.

In a similar vein we can also use Light of Promise, an Aura that gives the enchanted creature the ability that whenever we gain life we get to put a number of +1/+1 counters equal to the amount of life we gained on the enchanted creature.

If we manage to also develop a decently wide board, then we can also use Nykthos Paragon, which whenever we gain life we may put that many +1/+1 counters on each creature we control, but we can only do this once each turn.

Now, our opponents will come to realize what we are doing fairly quickly, so any form of protection for Garnet will become paramount. Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves are solid inclusions because they both give the equipped creature haste, but the Boots give hexproof and the Greaves give shroud, each are good and can be used to our benefit.

Other ways we can protect Garnet can be what cards like Rebuff the Wicked which counters target spell that targets a permanent we control, Tamiyo’s Safekeeping which gives a permanent we control hexproof and indestructible until end of turn while also gaining us 2 life, and Ultimate Magic: Holy which can give permanents we control indestructible until end of turn and if it was cast from exile, like from its Foretell ability, then we can prevent all damage that would be dealt to us this turn.

Garnet is a pretty straightforward Sagas Commander that combines Enchantress, Voltron, and life gain into a solid and sustainable deck that can deal well and potentially win games.

Since our deck is heavily reliant on our Commander and our enchantments, mass enchantment removal and enough targeted removal against Garnet can slow the deck down pretty significantly. There are ways for us to recover, and with how much life we can gain we can survive a decent amount of aggro, if we cannot gain access to our Sagas then we are in danger.

Garnet is a decently resilient deck that falls to enchantment based board wipes, of which exist but are not always played, and we can actually fair decently well if Garnet gets removed a couple of times because of her being two mana to cast.

This deck is actually pretty resilient, mostly because of the Enchantress spells drawing us cards, the life gain cards keeping us ahead of aggro, and the Sagas providing consistent value, Garnet is actually a really solid Commander that manages to hold its own.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual