Hello and welcome to the final Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about the the single Magic card that got me interested in the game in the first place, and it just so happens to be a card that is a Commander.

Today we are going to be talking about The Tarrasque!

The Tarrasque is a nine mana 10/10 that has haste and ward 10 as long as it was cast and whenever it attacks, it fights target creature defending player controls.

For all the cards, themes, creatures, references, mechanical complexity, and variety of things that Magic has done, the one card that made me love the game was a big green idiot who fights when it attacks and can attack immediately if cast fairly.

The reason I bought Magic cards in the first place was because the set Adventures in the Forgotten Realms had just released and I enjoy playing Dungeons and Dragons and have been regularly playing for several years. I was curious about getting into Magic, but wasn’t sure about it. With the release of this set I thought that I could afford a Set Booster box and see what came out of it.

In that box, one of the first mythic rare cards I pulled was The Tarrasque, my favorite creature in Dungeons and Dragons and even though I pulled a card that is considerably better, Tiamat, The Tarrasque is one of the cards I hold near and dear to my heart and while I have been downsizing my collection, mostly keeping cards I want, the copy of The Tarrasque I pulled is a card I will keep on for a long time.

So, as I’ve done with 364 other Commanders, let’s get this thing rolling. The game plan is as simple as it gets: ramp to get to cast The Tarrasque, boost it’s power and make it able to deal a ton of damage, protect it so it cannot be destroyed or removed easily, and sweep through our opponents until we win.

The first part of the plan needs us to ramp into making sure that we can cast The Tarrasque reliably.

Rampant Growth is a staple card for a reason because it is a two mana card that let’s us get a basic from our library onto the battlefield tapped. Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach let us look for two basics, put one into play tapped, and the other in our hand.

The mana elf trio of Llanowar Elves, Elvish Mystic, and Fyndhorn Elves work really well here as one drops that make a mana and let us ramp in order to cast our three mana ramp spells even quicker. Nature’s Lore does us one better by letting us look for a Forest card and put it into play, untapped even.

Now we aren’t just going to play pure ramp, we are going to be dipping into some Dinosaurs as well with Topiary Stomper, which let’s us put a basic onto the battlefield and it can’t attack or block until we hit seven lands, which shouldn’t be that hard for us.

Hulking Raptor is another big body that we can use to attack and give us mana because it is a four mana creature with ward 2 and at the beginning of our precombat main phase we add two green mana, which can be use for more ramp or help us cast The Tarrasque a bit earlier.

We can also make use of cost reducers to make that nine mana cost be a little more tenable earlier by using Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma, which makes creature spells we cast with power 4 or greater cost two mana less and when it attacks, each creature we control with power 4 or greater gets +1/+1 and gains trample until end of turn.

Most people also tend to not play mana rocks in green decks because of how efficient the ramp in green is, but considering our Commander is nine mana, then you bet I am putting Sol Ring in the deck along with Emerald Medallion to make all of our green spells cost one mana less.

There are also plenty of mana doublers like Mana Reflection which makes mana producing permanents we control tap for twice that much mana, Caged Sun which let’s us choose a color to give creatures of that color +1/+1 and lands we control that produce that color to produce an additional mana of that color, and Castle Garenbrig which normally adds a green mana but for four mana and tap we can make six green mana that can only be used for creature spells and creature activated abilities.

The next thing that we need to focus on are ways to boost The Tarrasque and ways to protect both The Tarrasque and ourselves while we set up to cast it.

With regards to boosting it, Power Fist is wonderful because it gives the equipped creature trample and whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, put that many +1/+1 counters on it, which also happens to pair well with The Earth Crystal which makes our green spells one mana cheaper and doubles the number of +1/+1 counters that would be put on a creature while also having a way to add +1/+1 counters on up to two creatures on its own.

Archdruid’s Charm is a solid modal card that can let us tutor for a land or creature and if it was a land to put it into play tapped or in our hand if it was a creature, puts a +1/+1 counter on a creature we control and have it deal damage equal to its power to a creature that we don’t control, or can exile an artifact or enchantment.

To help boost the amount of damage The Tarrasque can do, we can have cards like Unnatural Growth which doubles the power and toughness of all creatures we control during each combat, Choose Your Weapon to be a modal instant that can either double target creature’s power and toughness until end of turn or deal 5 damage to target creature with flying, and Exponential Growth to double target creature’s power X times.

Now we need to talk about protecting The Tarrasque, and mass exiling is one of the more difficult things to deal with. Luckily for us we have access to The Moment, which at the beginning of our upkeep we put a time counter on it, for two mana and tap we can untap a creature we control and have it phase out for as long as The Moment is in play, then for three mana and tap we destroy each nonland permanent with mana value less than or equal to the number of time counters on it and then it sacrifices itself.

As far as other forms of protection are concerned, we also have a bevy of options available to us like Tamiyo’s Safekeeping to give a permanent we control hexproof and indestructible until end of turn while also gaining us 2 life, Gaea’s Gift to put a +1/+1 counter on target creature as well as giving it reach, trample, hexproof, and indestructible until end of turn, and even just Withstand Death to give a creature we control indestructible until end of turn.

Veil of Summer can be solid against control decks since we draw a card if an opponent has cast a blue or black spell this turn, has it so spells that we control can’t be countered, and gives permanents we control hexproof from black and blue spells until end of turn.

We can back that up with Autumn’s Veil which makes our spells unable to be countered by blue or black spells this turn and creatures we control cannot be targeted by blue or black spells, making it so that we can cast our spells pretty reliably and dodge several forms of removal.

If we are playing against a much more aggressive deck, then we can make use of Fog to prevent all combat damage that would be dealt this turn or Elephant Grass which makes it so black creatures can’t attack us and nonblack creatures need an additional two mana to attack us, and though it does have a Cumulative Upkeep of one mana, we should have enough mana to keep it in play for a while.

The last thing we need are ways to sweep through our opponents to win us the game.

Seedtime is a weirdly specific way to get an extra turn in green, especially since we can only play it on our turn and we can only take that extra turn if an opponent played a blue spell this turn, but a lot of people will not quite expect it so it is a way for us to get another turn to deal a massive amount of damage.

If we don’t mind taking an extra bit of time, we can also use Magistrate’s Scepter which for four mana and tap we can put a charge counter on it and if we tap and remove three charge counters from it, then we get an extra turn.

We unfortunately don’t get much else in terms of extra combats either, but we do at least have one in the form of Genji Glove, which is an Equipment that gives the equipped creature double strike and when the equipped creature attacks, if it is the first combat phase this turn, we get to untap it and have an additional combat phase this turn.

Since our options in getting extra turns and combats are a bit limited, we need to rely on other means of dealing with our opponents, namely through an effect like Overwhelming Stampede, which gives creatures we control +X/+X and trample where X is the greatest power among creatures we control to have all of our creatures deal massive amounts of damage.

If we want a consistent version of that effect, then we can also use Pathbreaker Ibex, which whenever it attacks, creatures we control get +X/+X and trample where X is the greatest power among creatures we control, which again means we have a consistent way to give our creatures at least +10/+10 and trample to deal a huge swath of damage.

But if we absolutely need a way to one shot a couple of our opponents, then we can also use Triumph of the Hordes, which until end of turn gives creatures we control +1/+1, trample, and most importantly infect, which means one attack from The Tarrasque can probably kill an opponent with poison damage.

The Tarrasque is a very straightforward Commander in that we want to ramp to get it into play quickly and deal damage as soon as we can in order for us to win the game, which we can do pretty reliably.

The issues that the deck have are that we need to make sure that we can in fact produce the mana to get The Tarrasque out into play and to make sure that we cast The Tarrasque to give it haste and ward 10, because otherwise it’s just a big green creature that fights when it attacks.

We also need to be aware of mass exile based removal, because while we have plenty of ways to deal with destruction based removal, exile based board wipes are a little trickier to deal with, especially if they exile our other sources of getting The Tarrasque out sooner.

This is also a Voltron deck, which means that we are relying a lot on The Tarrasque to help us win the game, which means that if our opponents do manage to keep us in control with restricting our ramp and boosting effects, The Tarrasque will have a harder time coming into play to win us the game.

The Tarrasque as a Commander is not built for higher bracket play, but that’s fine because it still is a fun Commander to run in lower brackets as more of an inevitability. If our opponents can’t stop us from getting The Tarrasque in play or stop us from boosting it, then they will likely lose the game.

Very much the definition of a battlecruiser Commander, which is what I have come to find what I enjoy most when making some personal decks. While I am a player who likes to find weird strategies and old cards with funny and weird interactions, for the most part I do like playing a big green creature that smashes face and can win games by doing just that.

That’s the charm of Commander, you can enjoy more than one play style and have fun whether you’re looking for something easy to pilot or a complicated Storm line that will win you the game in a couple of turns.

This has been a fun, and admittedly stressful, journey that had plenty of ups and downs. Blogs that I enjoyed writing and some that I struggled with, well over twenty blogs that never saw the light of day because I couldn’t make them interesting, and plenty of weird Commanders that have inspired me to make some personal decks.

What has been the best thing, as cheesy as it is, was the fact that people enjoyed reading these blogs, people from around the world have read these blogs, and some from surprising places that I never would have guessed would have stumbled across this little blog, and with relatively little advertising on my part (I should get better about that).

To everyone who has read and will continue reading, thank you so much, I wouldn’t have kept doing this had there not been some people who actually liked what I read.

There should be a post up about what’s going to happen next, but in short I will be taking a break from all writing until October 31st, Daily Commander will become Weekly Commander, and if people want to have questions answered about the blog or about me, on the previous post you can ask questions in the comments that I will answer in a Casual Chat.

More details about the new blog schedule and other things will be on the previous post, but I do need a bit of a break.

Once again, thank you all for reading and see you all for the first Weekly Commander on October 31st!

Peace out,

From, J.M. Casual