Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today, we are going to take a look at Orca, Siege Demon!

Orca is a seven mana 5/5 with trample, whenever another creature dies, put a +1/+1 counter on Orca and when they die, they deal damage equal to its power divided as you choose among any number of targets.

Game Plan

Orca is a decent commitment for seven mana, and they can make use of their high power in not just combat, but also as a way to deal damage when they die divided as much as we are able to depending on how large Orca’s power is.

Orca triggers on any creature dying so we can make do with a lot of removal, but we can also play into going fast with our smaller creatures, accruing damage over time while also having creatures that can die with some additional benefit and then we bring Orca in as our finisher.

Support

We are playing aggressively to build up to a big threat, meaning we need ways to generate small creatures that we don’t mind dying or have ways to sacrifice themselves in order for us to get Orca bigger.

Urabrask’s Forge immediately comes to mind since it gets an oil counter at the beginning of combat on our turn and then it makes an X/1 Phyrexian Horror creature token with trample and haste where X is the number of oil counters on the Forge that sacrifices themselves at the beginning of the next end step.

In the early rounds it’s just a cheap attacker, but as it grows it becomes more and more of a damage dealer while also being able to be blocked easily that it will die while also having the end step sacrifice trigger as a guarantee that it will die to trigger Orca.

There is also cards like Infantry Shield which gives the equipped creature menace and mobilize X where X is the power of the creature. Mobilize makes that many 1/1 Warrior tokens that are tapped and attacking that also sacrifice themselves at the beginning of the next end step.

If we expect our creatures to die a lot, we can also make use of Avenger of the Fallen, which has mobilize X where X is the number of creatures in our graveyard, again which should be decently filled by the time Orca comes into play.

We can also play into the symmetrical sacrifice effects like Accursed Marauder, Plaguecrafter, and Fleshbag Marauder which have it so that each player sacrifices a creature to guarantee at minimum one creature dying and at most four creatures dying to get Orca bigger and bigger.

Because we are also sacrificing a bunch of our things, Juri, Maste of the Revue becomes a solid secondary way to deal a good chunk of damage because whenever we sacrifice a permanent we put a +1/+1 counter on Juri and when they die, it deals damage equal to its power to any target.

Since we are in black and playing a mana expensive Commander, we can use cards like Supernatural Stamina to have it so that when the creature dies it comes back to the battlefield tapped, meaning that we can build Orca up and have insurance to make sure that we don’t need to spend so much mana bringing them back from the Command Zone.

Ideally we are doing a good bit of damage to our opponents, helped by cards like City on Fire to help us deal some extra damage, but we can use something like Fling to help finish our opponents by sacrificing Orca to deal damage to any target equal to Orca’s power and then spreading the additional damage around to clean up the mess.

Setbacks

The elephant in the room, Orca is a seven mana Commander that needs to be in play and have creatures die in order to get bigger. With Orca more than most other Commanders, we need to have additional ways to get Orca in play as fast as possible while also making sure we can get them back into play after they inevitably get removed.

I don’t often talk about cards that directly bring cards out of the graveyard unless they are a part of the primary strategy of the deck, but this is a deck that works better for us to have a good number of ways to bring Orca out of the graveyard because otherwise the Commander Tax gets way too steep.

What makes things worse for Orca are effects that prevent us from using our graveyard like Leyline of the Void and Rest in Peace because not only does it become much more of a pain to bring Orca back into play, but it also doesn’t let Orca trigger off of our creatures dying. Token creatures do still create a trigger when they die, but nontoken creatures don’t.

Even a Grafdigger’s Cage can make it difficult for us to make Orca affordable to cast, and if it was cast after we put Orca into the graveyard then Orca is stuck until we can find a way to deal with Grafdigger’s Cage or exile Orca to put them back in our Command Zone.

Another issue is that we are playing a low to the ground aggressive deck that is building resources so we can cast Orca, which means that anything that prevents our opponents from taking damage or even a good number of blockers can make it much more difficult for us to win with Orca.

Bracket Rating: High 1, Low 2

Orca is really hampered by their mana costs, which is a shame because I think that if Orca were even two mana cheaper then they would be a solid bracket two deck.

As it stands, Orca is much better in the lower brackets as a Commander that has the potential to deal a good bit of damage while also having the potential to close out a game by using them to attack, fling at an opponent, or sacrifice in order to get a good chunk of damage in.

Thank you for reading, see you all tomorrow!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual