Welcome to another article in the Ikoria Commander Showdown from CommandBeacon.com. We're getting into our secondary Commander options for each of the decks now. This time we have Xyris, the Writing Storm against Tayam, Luminous Enigma in a Temur Vs Abzan match up. I guess it should be Kestria Vs Indatha but that's too much effort
Xyris, the Writing Storm
Let's start with Temur/Kestria/RUG because if you don't know I have a bit of a bias. What an interesting snake leviathan we have here, a 3/5 which spits out snake tokens when your opponents draw beyond their first draw step card. Well, that never happens, who runs draw spells anyways. Well, it's a good thing it can hit players and have them draw equal to the damaged dealt, what an odd but very suiting ability for multiplayer games. Will you take the Commander damage and let us draw cards?
Really though this is a snake who likes his wheels and is exponentially stronger the more opponents you're facing. It's the difference between 7 to 21 snakes and I can tell you which I'd prefer. This is a swarm strategy for sure with Xyris it just so happens to be a lot of wheels to enable the swarm. It has disruption and a constant feed of cards to really make a game difficult for players who need more than a turn to set up a strategy. Tutors aren't as good when you have to discard or shuffle everything constantly. I enjoyed playtesting this snake draw swarm deck and it looks like a solid multiplayer deck to run so looking forward to shuffling it up.
Tayam, Luminous Enigma
Next, we have Tayam, Luminous Enigma the giver of vigilance counters that it then feeds for recursion. The nightmare beast doesn't do much on its own as a 3/3 for 4 but what it can enable by eating counters off creatures is impressive. The vigilance counters to start which apply to any creatures but being able to reuse Persist and Undying is incredible. A decent graveyard, a wide board, and enough mana? You're set. Tayam will be munching away all those counters to bring things back, those things may have even more counters including the vigilance counters, and thus the circle of death continues.
This deck has been loaded up in several ways, to go hard on counters to feed Tayam, to go wide on creatures to put counters on, and to go crazy because I was able to put so many combo variations into this. Out of the Abzan Commanders, I feel like Tayam lets you be the most creative with deck building and toolbox options. With the counter eating ability and recurring permanents you can reuse abilities and bring back even land, Tayam is very eco friendly that way. There are more combos and fringe choices than I can put down here so take a look at the full breakdown if you're interested in the decklist.
Another round of Commanders built and added to the pile but we're only halfway through yet, not to mention Ikoria legendary options as well. These two seem like a lot of fun in a multiplayer pod and go wide in different ways, I think they're both quite solid choices as Commanders. So what's the pick? Tokens and draw or counters and recursion? For a full breakdown of Xyris and Tayam check out their respective deck articles on Command Beacon. Until next round of decklists and rambles take care and Happy Easter.
