Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today we are going to take a look at Tam, the Possibility!

Tam is a three mana 2/4 that has Planeswalkers spells you cast cost 1 less to cast and for all five colors and tap, you proliferate X times where X is the number of Planeswalker types among Planeswalkers you control.

Game Plan

We end our week of looking at Reality Fracture by looking at one of the headline cards of the set, Tam. I know that a lot of people have complained that this Tam is a five color good stuff Commander that likes Planeswalkers and boring design and yadda, yadda.

While there have been a lot of five color Commanders lately that are either hyper specific on a particular creature type or strategy built around from a new set, I do think that Tam has a lot more potential in how they can be built.

Focusing primarily on different Planeswalkers is the catalyst of the deck, but since we can in fact proliferate, there are a lot of counters we can play around with.

Support

Since we need to have a lot of Planeswalker types in order to get the most value from Tam, I think starting there is going to be ideal.

Getting a Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy in the deck can be a great way for us to slowly accrue some card advantage and when he does transform into Jace, Telepath Unbound then we can again start to gain more and more advantage to set us up into a favorable position.

Ajani, Nacatl Pariah is solid for having an aggressive start, where we get two bodies in play and when the Cat Warrior token we control dies we can transform Ajani into a creature making factory that can buff the Cat Warrior tokens he makes while also having a not too difficult to achieve ultimate that can clear the board in a significant manner.

Chandra, Chill of Compliance also works really well since with both of her +1 abilities we can surveil a Planeswalker into the graveyard that then goes into our hand or make a blue mana that we can use to cast a Planeswalker spell. We can then use the rest of her abilities to tap down a problematic artifact or creature or to ultimate into a consistent draw engine.

We can delve even further into the Planeswalker synergies by using Commodore Guff, who puts a loyalty counter on a Planeswalker we control, makes a Wizard that can add red mana that can only be used to cast a Planeswalker, and draw us X cards and deal X damage to each opponent where X is the number of Planeswalkers we control.

There are also plenty of non-Planeswalker cards we can use like Ichormoon Gauntlet which gives all of our Planeswalkers the ability to proliferate and a -12 to take an extra turn after this one. To add on to it, whenever we cast a noncreature spell we can put an additional counter on a permanent we choose.

Oath of Nissa fixes our mana tremendously in that not only can we look at the top three cards of our library to get a creature, land, or Planeswalker into our hand, but we can also spend mana as though it were mana of any type to cast Planeswalker spells.

Carth the Lion makes it so that whenever they enter or when a Planewalker we control dies we look at the top seven cards of our library and put a Planeswalker from among them into our hand and also has our Planeswalkers get an additional +1 to activate their loyalty abilities.

Way of the Necromancer also becomes a solid way for us to make use of our Planeswalkers dying by adding a loyalty counter to each Planeswalker we control, Way of the Pyromancer gives our Planeswalkers the ability to add red mana, and Oath of Gideon makes two 1/1 Kor Ally creature tokens and has our Planeswalkers enter with an additional loyalty counter.

Since we have access to a proliferate strategy, we can use poison counters as a win condition with Prologue to Phyresis to give each opponent a poison counter and draw a card, use energy counters from Aetherworks Marvel to cast spells for free from the top six cards of our library, or even something like Urabrask’s Forge which uses oil counters to make a massive body with haste and trample that can swing in and do a ton of damage.

If you really want to get experimental with counters, Otharri, Suns’ Glory can be a way for us to win through an aggro strategy by proliferating a bunch of experience counters since when it attacks we get an experience counter and then create a number of 2/2 Rebel creature tokens that are tapped and attacking for each experience counter we have.

Helix Pinnacle can be another way for us to win since we can use it as a mana sink in the early game and then proliferate a bunch of counters onto it with Tam. The Millennium Calendar also falls into being an alternate win condition because it gets time counters whenever we untap our permanents, doubles the number of time counters it has for two mana, and when it has 1000 or more counters, we sacrifice it and have each opponent loses 1000 life.

Setbacks

The major issue that Tam decks will face is that while Planeswalkers can effectively be ways to mitigate damage coming to us because our opponents want to get rid of them quickly, that won’t always be enough for an aggro player to ignore them and hit us directly.

We do have access to creatures that can help block for us, as well as Planewalkers that can make tokens for us, but that will be pretty slow for us since we are a five color deck and we need to make sure that our mana base is working with us.

This also includes Tam’s activated ability, where if we don’t have mana of all five colors or have a way to generate mana of those five colors, then we are not going to be in an ideal situation. What’s more, Tam is reliant on different Planeswalker types being in play, which means it behooves us to play all sorts of Planeswalkers rather than focusing on a couple.

We may have difficulties casting some of them because a lot of Planeswalkers tend to be in the three to five mana value range, and we also need to make sure that they stay in play in order to get the value we want from Tam.

Our win conditions, while being fun, are really fragile and require our opponents not letting us get away with them. While Helix Pinnacle is difficult to interact with, it isn’t impossible to do so, poison counters will make us the archenemy of the table, and The Millennium Calendar staying in play to even get half the counters we need is a tough ask.

Bracket Rating: High 2, Low 3

I do like Tam as a Commander. While the preference to playing a pure Planeswalker deck is very much apparent in the design, I do like that there are a lot more possibilities that we can play with in order to win us the game.

A lot of people complain that this Tam is lazy design, and in some regard they are right. While Tam is basically telling you to only play Planeswalkers and the five mana ability feels pretty tacked on to make Tam the default Planeswalker Commander, I do think that there is much more potential in Tam as a counters matter Commander.

They probably won’t beat Atraxa, Praetor’s Voice in terms of how popular they are as a proliferate Commander, I do think that people are narrowing in on the Planeswalker focus of Tam, rather then using that as a jumping off point to play other counters matter cards.

That’s just my opinion, and I’m just a guy on the internet for all that matters.

Thank you for reading, see you all tomorrow!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual