Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today we are going to be talking about Fynn, the Fangbearer!

Fynn is a two mana 1/3 with deathtouch and whenever a creature you control with deathtouch deals combat damage to a player, that player gets two poison counters.

Game Plan

Fynn is a fairly straightforward Commander to understand in that we want to populate our battlefield with creatures that have deathtouch that can slip through and win via poison damage, which in the realm of Commander is much easier to do than doing a full 40 damage to three players or even 21 damage to three players.

However, since we are dealing with poison counters we have to be aware that our board will be interacted with heavily, so we are going to account for that with as much protection and speed to win as we can.

Support

There is a wide variety of creatures that have deathtouch that we can use to our advantage, from cheap creatures that have it to some more utility creatures that also happen to have it.

Cards like Ankle Biter, Tajuru Blightblade, Sedge Scorpion, Moss Viper, and Fang of Shigeki are all one mana creatures that have deathtouch, meaning we can get one of these on board turn one, Fynn on turn two and then start getting those poison counters online.

However there are also creatures like Dragon Sniper, another one mana creature with deathtouch but they also happen to have vigilance and reach or Virulent Emissary which has deathtouch and whenever another creature we control enters we gain 1 life.

As we head towards some of the more utility deathtouch creatures there is something like Vastlands Scavenger which has deathtouch and enters prepared with their prepared spell being Bind to Life, which mills seven cards and then puts a creature from among them onto the battlefield.

Hornet’s Nest can work really well as a blocker because while it has defender and not deathtouch, whenever this creature is dealt damage, we create that many 1/1 Insect creature tokens with flying and deathtouch, which we can still use with something like Bushwhack which can either tutor for a basic land to our hand or have a creature we control fight a creature we don’t control if our opponents are being more cautious around us to avoid having their creatures die.

We can also reasonably cheat out some of our bigger deathtouch creatures by using Selective Adaptation, which let’s us reveal the top seven cards of our library and choose from among them a card with a flying, a card with first strike, and so on for a good chunk of keywords that do include deathtough and put one onto the battlefield, the other chosen cards to our hand, and the rest in the graveyard.

Among those chosen creatures could be Hornet Queen, which has flying and deathtouch and when it enters we create four 1/1 Insect creature tokens with flying and deathtouch, so we have five flying creatures with deathtouch that can take out a player in a single swing.

In order for us to do so, we need to be pretty quick, which while is not too widely available in green we do have several tools to do so. Surrak and Goreclaw have it so other creatures we control have trample and whenever a nontoken creature we control enters we put a +1/+1 counter on it and it gains haste until end of turn.

Crashing Drawbridge can sit in play to be an 0/4 defender but we can also tap it to give creatures we control haste until end of turn, and since a lot of our deathtouch creatures happen to be pretty cheap, we can get a bunch on board and then tap the Crashing Drawbridge for a big swing.

We also have access to cards with proliferate, with a great one for us being Glistening Sphere which enters tapped and when it enters it proliferates with us being able to tap it for mana and if an opponent has three or more poison counters on it then we can tap it for three mana of any one color instead.

Setbacks

Playing with poison counters is often a contentious move in Commander, which can lead to some lopsided games from people who absolutely do not like poison counters.

It is incredibly likely that not only will you need to have as many protection spells as you can for Fynn, but also ways to make sure that your board also happens to stay in place in order for you to swing in to get all those poison counters on your opponents.

You will also need ways to make sure that you don’t absolutely get blown out from your opponents trying to kill you before you are able to get your creatures through. Fog effects are going to be pretty important in this regard.

If you are going for a win against a control heavy deck, then you will also need to have cards like Veil of Summer or Autumn’s Veil to make sure that you can get the things you need in play as soon as possible.

The deck is low to the ground so a majority of our threats are cheap to cast, but that doesn’t mean that we are out of the woods yet. Card draw is going to be at a decent premium for our deck if we happen to deploy all we want and our board gets wiped.

Fynn is also a very popular Commander, the most popular green Commander and the 117th highest ranked Commander, meaning that there is a chance that poison counters may be coming your way as well. If that happens, you can use Melira, Sylvok Outcast as a silver bullet to make sure you don’t lose to poison counters, but this also means that you should keep an eye out for Melira as well.

With all of these considerations, our deck space is going to be much more limited when compared to a lot of other decks and archetypes, and even though there will usually be at least one new deathtouch creature to consider for the deck, we may not have anything to cut in order to make room for it.

Bracket Rating: 3

I think that Fynn is a solid Commander that is a solid Commander that not only can help win games fairly quickly, but is also pretty cost effective all things considered.

While Fynn will have to contend with board wipes an targeted removal more than most other Commanders due to the very nature of poison counters. I am not someone who dislikes poison counters, I think that they are an interesting way to win and provide an interesting deck building challenge because of that, but I do know a lot of people despise the mechanic.

Fynn can do well to hold his own in bracket three, but in higher brackets where combo tends to rule the roost, Fynn doesn’t have the tools to deal with those decks adequately, but can hang fairly well against a good number of other decks.

Thank you for reading, see you all tomorrow!

Peace,

From, J.M.Casual