Legendary Creature — Elemental Octopus

Octavia, Living Thesis

Mana value10EDHREC#5,663

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The Commander

This spell costs {8} less to cast if you have eight or more instant and/or sorcery cards in your graveyard.

Ward {8}

Magecraft — Whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, target creature has base power and toughness 8/8 until end of turn.

Guide

Gameplan

Fill your graveyard with instants and sorceries to deploy Octavia early for {2} , then cast cheap spells to trigger Magecraft, turning Octavia (or any creature) into an 8/8 each time and beating down through her Ward 8. You're a mono-blue spellslinger control deck that uses card draw, counterspells, and cantrips to stabilize, then closes with a single hard-to-kill threat.

Strengths

Ward makes Octavia extremely resilient to targeted removal
Cheap to recast (often ) once your graveyard is loaded, surviving board wipes
Magecraft pumps any creature to 8/8, enabling instant-speed surprise blockers/attackers
Mono-blue gives access to the deepest counterspell and card-draw suite in the format

Weaknesses

Magecraft only sets base 8/8, not stronger — diminishing returns and won't grow tall on its own
Relies on already having 8+ spells in the yard; clunky in the early game otherwise
Vulnerable to board wipes, edicts, and exile effects that ignore Ward
Single-creature beatdown is slow and easily chump-blocked or fogged in multiplayer
Graveyard hate shuts off her cost reduction entirely

Key Cards

Rhystic Study — Premier mono-blue card advantage engine to fuel a spell-heavy deck.
Thassa's Oracle — Lets you pivot a graveyard full of spells plus draw into a clean alternate win.
Gush — Free-to-cast cantrip that fills the yard and triggers Magecraft without spending mana.
Snapcaster Mage — Recasts spells from the graveyard for extra Magecraft triggers and flexible interaction.
Murktide Regent — A second resilient threat that grows from the instants and sorceries you exile.
Rapid Hybridization — Turns Octavia's 8/8 base into evasive lethal pressure and serves as cheap removal.

Upgrade Path

Lower your curve and pack more free or near-free spells (Gush, Mishra's Bauble, Force of Negation) so Magecraft fires repeatedly without tapping out, and add fast mana like Mana Crypt and Sol Ring to deploy Octavia ahead of schedule. Lean into a compact combo finish — Thassa's Oracle plus deck-emptying draw, or Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal — so you don't rely solely on slow beatdown. Tighten the manabase with fetch/duals-equivalents and add more interaction (Pact of Negation, Swan Song) to protect your single threat in cEDH-adjacent pods.

Core Cards

The most-played cards for this commander, built from aggregated deck data (the Mythic Graph). Build public decks to seed it.

Win Conditions

▸Beat down with Octavia as a resilient 8/8 (and pump other creatures) until lethal
▸Thassa's Oracle or Laboratory Maniac after emptying the library with draw spells
▸Suit up Octavia with evasion (Rogue's Passage, Rapid Hybridization) for commander damage
▸Copy-spell storm turns or extra-turn chains that close the game with overwhelming card advantage

Archetypes

Spellslinger — Octavia's Magecraft rewards casting and copying a high density of instants and sorceries.
Control — Mono-blue counters and draw let you protect a single Ward-8 threat to victory.
Voltron — She becomes a recurring 8/8 attacker you suit up and protect from removal.
Combo — Graveyard-stuffed decks can pivot into Thassa's Oracle or storm-style finishers.