Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today we are going to be taking a look at Sovereign Okinec Ahau!

Okinec is a four mana 3/4 with Ward 2 and whenever he attacks, for each creature you control with power greater than that creature’s base power, you put a number of counters on that creature equal to the difference.

Game Plan

Okinec is an interesting case of a Commander that rather than either building tall or building wide, we combine the two for the best results.

What works best is if we set up a board of a bunch of small creatures and then set them up with even a small anthem effect, then when Okinec attacks we slowly accrue a bigger and bigger army of creatures.

Combining these two particular strategies does bring its own set of interesting deck building conundrums, but there are plenty of ways we can play around that in a way that is functional and satisfying.

Support

The idea of the deck is to have several ways we can build a board full of creatures and then give them small buffs that will steadily cascade into massive power increases.

Starting with the token generation, there are plenty of ways we can not only generate tokens, but do so at a continuous rate. One of my personal favorite’s is Skrelv’s Hive, which at the beginning of your upkeep has you lose 1 life and makes a 1/1 Phyrexian Mite with Toxic 1 and can’t block.

Another solid option is Brimaz, King of Oreskos, which when they attack or block you create a 1/1 Cat Soldier creature token with vigilance that is either attacking or is blocking the same creature that Brimaz is blocking.

Scepter of Celebration also happens to scale really well with this deck because it gives the equipped creature +2/+0 and trample and whenever that creature deals combat damage to a player, you create that many 1/1 Citizen tokens.

When considering the ways to buff up your creatures, there are a bevy of options to consider. A simple and clean way to do so is through anthem effects like Glorious Anthem, Gaea’s Anthem, and Anthem of Champions which give creatures we control +1/+1. This happens to work really well the earlier we get them and Okinec into play because even having one out allows us to turn a 1/1 into a 3/3 after one combat, then a 5/5, then a 9/9 and so on.

Since we are dealing with an aggressive deck, Beastmaster Ascension works very well for us because it gets a quest counter whenever a creature we control attacks and when it has seven or more quest counters on it, then creatures we control get +5/+5.

The accumulation of counters and buffing our creatures helps us as we deal more and more damage throughout the game, especially if we add a Garruk’s Uprising effect to give our creatures trample so that we can deal get damage through to our opponent.

While this deck would work well with a Craterhoof Behemoth, I actually think that an Overrun could get the job done faster, and if we are really in a pinch we can also use Triumph of the Hordes to win via poison counters if the power buffs aren’t enough to win the game.

Setbacks

As with a lot of go wide aggressive decks, our game plan is very much stymied by board wipes.

Anything that can clear our board of tokens that are getting bigger and bigger each combat can make us a priority threat if someone were to cast a Wrath of God or a Farewell or Cyclonic Rift, with Farewell and Rift being heavy blow outs against our deck.

We can deal with some of that through effects like Heroic Intervention to give our permanents hexproof and indestructible or if we happen to go into the Game Changers list a Teferi’s Protection to have our things phase out, which will help them keep their counters, or if you are on a budget Perch Protection, which if you are willing to give up an extra turn, can help you survive a board wipe.

Okinec is four mana, which for a green deck isn’t too much of an issue, but the problem comes with repeated removal. While we can deal with a couple of removals, the more and more times Okinec is removed can prevent us from fulfilling the potential of the deck.

Less of a pure game play concern is the concern of making sure that you are tracking everything correctly. Since this deck is dealing with a lot of creatures and a lot of counters, making sure that the appropriate amount of each can be time consuming.

Bracket Rating: 3

The deck has a solid theme and game plan, and can offer a bit of variety for how you want to get your creatures bigger, however the go wide and go tall aggressive deck does have a ceiling.

While Game Changers can help, they don’t do as much to help the deck get any stronger, and are more so used for protection and/or for consistency.

Your game plan is pretty solid throughout and is fairly reliable and can be very consistent if played correctly, and if the deck is built correctly it can come back from board wipes fairly well and can resume its game plan.

Thank you for reading, see you all tomorrow!

Peace,

From J.M. Casual