Akim, the Soaring Wind might look like a lot of Jeskai Commanders we've seen over recent years, but actually this bird dino gives us a lot of leeways when building and brewing up a deck with an interesting twist, quite unlike the Jeskai brews we've seen. Should we build around flyers, go bird tribal or maybe just rely on big tokens having double strike? Either way, we go we know we are making tokens but you may be surprised at the multiple layers of strategy this Commander brings.
The beauty of Akim is that ANY token you make triggers its ability to then create a bird token. So your focus switches from simply making as many tokens as you can at once, to make them as often as you can on everyone's turn.
Cards like Smothering Tithe and Curse of Opulence are already good in Boros-based decks but gain even more value with Akim. Looking at tokens this way very much reminds me of the way you end up looking at card draw in an Ephara, God of the Polis deck. You switch from the mass one-shot draw cards and focus on incremental value at instant speed. And when we're talking about instant speed and flash, you know if we're leaving mana up on our opponents turns, counterspells can't be far behind. That being said, this brew doesn't lean super heavily on the flash or instant speed token making spells (but that is yet another way this brew could have gone) because we had to make way for our main theme: Enchantments.
It turns out Jeskai has enough very good enchantments (Shark Typhoon for example) that not only create tokens as we play spells but as we play more enchantment spells. The enchantress theme really takes off if we manage to get Elsha of the Infinite out there, as we get to cast our enchantments from our library AND at instant speed to boot.
In the end, there are so many ways to go with Akim, despite at first glance thinking we have just another run of the mill token deck that makes it even harder to get tokens (than something like Kykar) but what we really have is a very fun, strategy specific Commander that asks you "How do you want to build and play this deck?" whether than dictating what cards it needs to function.
Unfortunately, this philosophy is something that the Commander product specifically has been including less and less of, with many generals from these sets practically coming with their own EDHRec link right in the rules text. At least with Akim, there's a bit more light at the end of the tunnel than we first thought, so brew away my friends!
