Edge of Eternities is right around the corner, and while I'm personally the most excited about a long-awaited Standard rotation, there are also some cool new mechanics and legendary creatures. One that caught my eye right away was revealed early in the spoiler season, that being Sami, Wildcat Captain. For 6 mana, this Boros commander is a 4/4 with double strike and vigilance that gives all your spells affinity for artifacts. No, you didn't misread that, they give one of the strongest keyword mechanics in Magic to every spell you cast. There are a ton of things to do with Sami, so let's break down five strategies for Sami, Wildcat Captain.

Big Colorless Cards

EDH has a plethora of big, game-ending colorless cards that are held back by their exorbitant mana costs. Just in the past six months WotC has printed two huge bombs in Ugin, Eye of the Storms and Summon: Bahamut, and last year's Modern Horizons 3 gave us a new trio of Eldrazi titans. With Sami and a handful of artifacts, these cards and more could be yours for free. The best part is that big artifacts can reduce the costs of future big artifacts. Imagine playing your commander with four or five artifacts in play and, on the next turn, chaining together Akroma's Memorial, Cityscape Leveler, Portal to Phyrexia and whatever else your heart desires. Throw in an Ugin and an Ulamog and the game will be yours in short order.

Treasures

Treasure tokens are notoriously powerful in EDH, and they are doubly so when combined with the Affinity mechanic. Basically, the way casting spells work is that you declare your intent to cast them, then pay the appropriate costs. This means that if you were to cast, for example, Myr Enforcer with five treasures on board, you can declare your intent to cast it for 2 mana, reduced by Affinity, then use the treasures to pay that 2 mana. Essentially, treasures can produce double mana for Affinity spells, which is every spell if we have Sami in play. Because Sami's color identity is Boros, there is no shortage of strong treasure cards to play in this deck like Goldspan Dragon, Captain Lannery Storm, Smothering Tithe and Professional Face-Breaker.

X Spells

Flooding the board with treasures and playing big colorless spells for free can be fun, but what if we pushed Sami's ramp ability to its limits? If every treasure we create or mana rock we cast essentially makes 2 mana, we can start throwing around massive X spells. The first one that comes to mind is a recent card from Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Hell to Pay is a sorcery that costs X and a Red mana that deals X damage to target creature, then creates a number of tapped treasure tokens equal to the excess damage. With Sami, this is a removal spell that also acts as a ritual, adding to our Affinity count the turn we play it then allowing us to cash them in for more mana the next turn. With all this mana, we can cast Crackle with Power or Jaya's Immolating Inferno to close out the game by burning our opponents or create a bunch of tokens with Finale of Glory or Decree of Justice.

Artifact Tokens

Treasures aren't the only disposable artifact tokens around, so what if we build a deck that creates as many myr, servo, clue, food and blood tokens as possible? We can spend our early game setting up a pile of artifacts using cards like Astrid Peth to make food, Thraben Inspector to make clues and Servo Schematic to make servos. All of these can help cast spells like Illustrious Wanderglyph, Myr Battlesphere and Threefold Thunderhulk to make even more tokens once we cast Sami. Once we get enough artifact creatures out, we can cheaply cast finishers like Moonshaker Cavalry and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite or slowly burn our opponents with Reckless Fireweaver or the recently revealed Weftstalker Ardent from Edge of Eternities.

Equipment

If you're looking for a more value-based, low-to-the-ground archetype for Sami, you could always give equipment a shot. Like with the big artifacts strategy, once you get Sami down it is very easy to chain together equipment cards and snowball to victory, especially when you add a Sram, Senior Edificer or an Armory Paladin into the mix to draw cards as you cast them. Many powerful equipment cards have low mana values, so you don't need many artifacts on the board to get the ball rolling. Once you get going you can cast some big haymakers like Batterskull, Kaldra Compleat or Final Fantasy's Ultima Weapon. The best part is that since Sami lets you cheat on the mana costs, you can use your mana pay equip costs instead, effectively negating one of the biggest downsides to equipment cards. It also helps that Sami is pretty good at holding equipment, having two very strong keywords for voltron decks in double strike and vigilance.