Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Esix, Fractal Bloom!

Esix is a six mana 4/4 with flying and the first time you would create one or more of tokens during your turns, you may instead choose a creature other than Esix and create that many tokens that are copies of that creatures.

Esix is an interesting take on a tokens Commander where, depending on our token making outlet, we can get a number of token copies of a variety of creatures, which can lead us down a few different roads depending on which creature we decide to make token copies of.

There are a couple ways we can go about this, but what I’m thinking is that we need to quickly generate the mana that we need to cast Esix and our win conditions as well as a way to make a ton of tokens all at once during our turns and have ways to get value from those tokens.

The first thing we need is the mana to cast both Esix and our spells that will make a lot of tokens.

Skyshroud Claim is a pretty easy include because even though it is four mana to cast, we get two Forests onto our battlefield for it, which also happen to come in untapped, which means that we can cast Esix earlier to start getting the benefits pretty quickly.

There is of course the Elf trio of Llanowar Elves, Elvish Mystic, and Fyndhorn Elves, all of which tap to add a green mana, but also become pretty solid targets for Esix if we want to copy them to get more access to a lot of mana.

Another creature that we may want to consider as a target for Esix to copy is Wood Elves, which when it enters we search our library for a Forest card and put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle. Even making two token copies of Wood Elves can ramp us fairly quickly and really help us get more mana. If we don’t want to be limited to Forests, then Farhaven Elf does the same but with any basic land and the land comes in tapped.

Kodama’s Reach and Cultivate search our library for two basics and puts one on the battlefield tapped and the other into our hand, Rampant Growth searches for a basic and puts it into play tapped, Explore let’s us play an additional land this turn and draw a card, and Growth Spiral draws us a card and let’s us put a land from our hand to the battlefield at instant speed.

Since our strategy also happens to be fairly heavily creature based, we can use Growing Rites of Itlimoc to our advantage to look at the top four cards of our library and put a creature card from among them into our hand when it enters and if we control four or more creatures at the beginning of our end step, then we can transform it to Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun which can either add a single green mana or a green mana for each creature we control.

The next thing we need are ways to generate a lot of tokens, and since Esix is a may ability we can actually be quite flexible on this.

Asinine Antics is an interesting card to include in this deck because we can cast it as though it had flash if we pay two more mana to cast it, which we won’t do since Esix triggers on our turns only, and it can create a Cursed Role token attached to each creature our opponent controls.

This makes it very dependent on what our opponents are playing, meaning that if they have big creatures that are threats we can give the Cursed Role tokens, but of they have a bunch of small creatures we can instead make token copies of a creature we control.

Twitching Doll is also another interesting choice that can tap to add a mana of any color while adding a nest counter, and we can then sacrifice it to create a 2/2 Spider token with reach for each nest counter on it, which again is variable to what we need for the moment.

Threefold Thunderhulk enters with three +1/+1 counters and when it enters or attacks we create a number of 1/1 Gnome tokens equal to its power and we can pay two mana and sacrifice an artifact to put a +1/+1 counter on it, which can be pretty useful especially since it is an enters trigger as well as an attack trigger, meaning we can make token copies of it in order to make even more Gnome tokens to fill up our board and potentially sacrifice for later.

Deep Forest Hermit enters with four 1/1 Squirrel tokens while also giving Squirrels we control +1/+1 at the downside of also having Vanishing 3, Beacon of Creation makes a 1/1 Insect token for each Forest we control and shuffles itself into our library so we can do it again, and Master of Waves enters and makes a number of 1/0 Elemental creature tokens equal to our devotion to blue and they keep them alive by giving Elemental creatures we control +1/+1.

One of the more tricky ways for us to make a bunch of token copies of something we want is by using Oko, the Ringleader, which has a +1 of drawing us two cards and if we committed a crime then we discard one card and if we didn’t we discard two instead, a -1 to make a 3/3 Elk, and the -5 being what we are aiming for making a token copy of each nonland permanent we control, which can be a lot of tokens at once.

The last thing we need are our win conditions, and there are actually several avenues we can take with it.

Since our strategy is very much creature based, we can use something like End-Raze Forerunners to give creatures we control +2/+2, vigilance, and trample until end of turn and if we manage to make a ton of token copies of it then it can be a clean sweep of our opponents.

Master Biomancer is pretty solid as well since it gives other creatures we control +1/+1 counters equal to Master Biomancer’s power as that creature enters and makes them a Mutant in addition to their other types, which again if we manage to make a ton of token copies of it can make our creatures massive.

Since a majority of our creatures will also be token copies, we can even defend ourselves by using Perplexing Test, which can either bounce all creature tokens to their owners’ hands or return all nontoken creatures to their owners’ hands, which can be helpful if we fall behind against a token deck or clear the way for our token creatures to deal the damage we need to win.

A way for us to have a ticking time clock that can win us the game but will immediately put a target on his back is with Biovisionary, which at the beginning of the end step if we control four or more creature named Biovisionary we win the game. With the token generation we have access to we can potentially pull this off quickly, but once that hits the board people will be gunning for it to stop us from winning, but if people don’t have an answer then it is a way for us to win.

Esix is an interesting vector on a tokens Commander in that it takes the tools we have to make tokens and uses it to make token copies of creatures, which opens up what would normally be a go wide aggro strategy and adds big mana options or cheeky win conditions.

However, with the strategy being very creature based, board wipes are going to be the bane of our existence, especially if we have a board that is just starting to be set up. Even is we have access to ways to prevent those board wipes like counter spells, we need to be actively aware of when to use it to stop us from losing.

This is also a deck where mass bounce can be particularly devastating, because our token copies of things disappear when they would go into our hand, whereas with a board wipe we might have some card that can make use of death triggers in some regard, and since our nontoken things go to our hand, then we need to redeploy everything which can be countered or removed before we have a chance to use them again.

Still, Esix is a neat puzzle of Commander that would take a classic tokens strategy and adds variety to the deck in order to make it much more interesting to play.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual