Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today we are going to be taking a look at Jolene, the Plunder Queen!

Jolene is a four mana 2/2 that has whenever a player attacks one or more of your opponents, that attacking player creates a Treasure token. If you would create one or more Treasure tokens, instead create those tokens plus an additional Treasure token, and you can sacrifice five Treasures to put five +1/+1 counters on Jolene.

Game Plan

It’s always interesting to see how Treasure based Commanders are designed because they usually either play into big mana go brrrrr, or they play on using Treasures specifically to get sort of value from them.

Jolene incentivizes your opponents to attack each other in order to gain a Treasure, all the while you get two Treasures from just attacking your opponents, but you can also use those Treasures to make Jolene bigger in order to win via Commander Damage.

An interesting line for an aggro Commander, but there are a few ways we can take advantage of making a ton of Treasures, along with some alternative ways of using Treasures.

Support

The first thing we need are as many ways to make Treasure tokens as we can, and luckily for us we have several ways to accomplish this.

It can be as simple as Strike It Rich, which for one mana we create a Treasure token and we can cast it again later with its flashback of three mana once we have Jolene in play to get more value from it.

Gold Rush is a neat little combat trick that creates a Treasure token and gives a creature +2/+2 for each Treasure we control until the end of turn. This can be helpful in the early game as just a Treasure maker, or can help Jolene swing out big in the later game.

Bootleggers’ Stash was a card that had a lot of hype when it was first released, but has since cooled down dramatically because for six mana our lands gain the ability to tap to make a Treasure token. While not great for most green decks, for Jolene it’s absurd because it let’s our lands essentially tap for double mana that has a lot of utility for some of our other Treasure payoffs.

Those payoffs can include Magda, Brazen Outlaw which let’s us sacrifice five Treasures to cheat an artifact or Dragon onto the battlefield, or Magda, the Hoardmaster who let’s us sacrifice three Treasures to make a 4/4 Scorpion Dragon with flying and haste at sorcery speed.

Both of those also help us make Treasures because whenever a Dwarf we control becomes tapped we make a Treasure token or whenever we commit a crime we make a Treasure token.

Rain of Riches is also a great payoff for the Treasures because it enters with two Treasure tokens and the first spell we cast each turn that used mana from a Treasure token has cascade, which means big spells are on the table for us to make a lot of use out of.

If we want a way to make even more use of the Treasure mana, then there is Roxanne, Starfall Savant who has whenever we tap an artifact token for mana, we produce a mana of any type that artifact token produced, meaning double mana from our Treasures and the Meteorites she makes that deal 2 damage to any target and taps to add mana of any color.

Of course Commander Damage is one of our primary avenues of victory, but we can also win with cards like Hellkite Tyrant, which steals all artifacts a player controls when it deals combat damage to that player and at the beginning of your upkeep if you control twenty or more artifacts, you win the game.

Setbacks

I do think what sets Jolene from being a menace at Commander tables is that she doesn’t have a lot of inherent evasion abilities that can make her a viable threat.

She doesn’t have trample or menace or a way to become inherently evasive, and while there are ways we can make that happen, we need to make sure that Jolene stays in play to make the most use out of those sorts of abilities.

Voltron type Commanders also happen to suffer from what could be surmised as “main character syndrome” in that our deck is going to be heavily relying on one creature to do a majority of the work, which leaves us out in the open for retaliation from our opponents or a lot of focused removal on Jolene.

Since our deck is designed to get a lot of Treasures we shouldn’t have too much of an issue recasting Jolene, but at a certain point it will become untenable to keep bringing Jolene back into play, even if we do get a ton of protection spells.

While Jolene’s ability can help incentivize our opponents into attacking each other, that only goes as far as you not appearing to be a threat and it doesn’t take much for people to notice you gathering all of your Treasures and building up a board to take a massive swing later.

It also becomes devastating when a Cyclonic Rift or a Coastal Breach goes into play and you have no way to respond to them and see all of your Treasures go away as every nonland permanent gets bounced to your hand.

Bracket Rating: 3

Jolene has a solid game plan that can spiral out of control if left unchecked, which at higher brackets the decks should be able to keep the deck in check.

I initially had the thought that Jolene could be Bracket 4 because you can use mass land denial cards in order to make it so that you’re the only one who is able to use mana from your Treasures, but then I realized that makes Jolene worse because in order for Jolene to get bigger you need to sacrifice what would be your only sources of mana.

While you’ll have your opponents telling you to please not take their mana, and you shouldn’t take them just because you can, otherwise you’ll end up in the same predicament.

Because of that, Jolene can stay in the middle of the brackets because of the solid game plan while also having several different directions to take the deck to make it your own.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual