RedLegendary Creature — Human SpellshaperJaya Ballard, Task Mage
Mana value3Rank#16,319
The Commander
, 
, Discard a card: Destroy target blue permanent.
, , Discard a card: Jaya Ballard deals 3 damage to any target. A creature dealt damage this way can't be regenerated this turn.
, , Discard a card: Jaya Ballard deals 6 damage to each creature and each player.
Guide
Gameplan
Lead with Jaya as a repeatable burn engine: discard cards to ping creatures and faces for 3, blow up blue permanents in the matchup that hates you most, and eventually nuke the board with the 6-damage Earthquake mode. Build around making discard a resource via reanimation, madness, and wheels, then grind to a mono-red burn or stax-and-burn finish.
Strengths
- Repeatable removal and reach that doesn't require new spells once Jaya is online
- Hoses blue control players hard with cheap blue-permanent destruction
- The 6-to-everything mode is a one-sided-ish board wipe plus burn finisher
- Turns excess lands and dead cards in hand into damage
Weaknesses
- Mono-red means weak ramp, card advantage, and no enchantment/artifact removal outside red
- Every ability needs to tap Jaya and survive a turn, so she's removal-magnet and slow
- Discard cost drains your hand fast without card-advantage engines
- Three-loyalty-style abilities cost a lot of mana; the wipe mode is 7 mana and hits you too
Key Cards
- Anje's Ravager — Refills your hand each combat so Jaya's discard cost becomes free card filtering.
- Bag of Holding — Recurs the cards you discard to Jaya, converting her cost into card advantage.
- Faithless Looting — Stocks the graveyard and digs while feeding reanimation targets you can discard to Jaya.
- Birgi, God of Storytelling — Adds red mana off spell casts to fuel Jaya's expensive activations.
- Reito Lantern — Buys back discarded cards so your hand never runs dry from repeated activations.
- Sunbird's Invocation — Stretches your limited card draw into extra value to keep pace in mono-red.
Upgrade Path
Add fast mana (Sol Ring, Mana Crystals, rituals) and rituals/Birgi-style mana to hit the 7-mana wipe reliably. Improve card flow with wheels, Bag of Holding/Reito Lantern loops, and impulse draw so the discard cost stops hurting; then lean into a tight reanimation or burn finisher package with protection like Lightning Greaves and Deflecting Swat to keep Jaya online.
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
Archetypes
- Spellslinger/Burn — Jaya is a tap-to-burn engine that closes games by aiming damage at any target every turn.
- Reanimator — The discard cost lets you pitch fatties to reanimate with red effects like Feldon or Chandra's Revolution.
- Stax/Control — Repeatable removal plus blue-permanent destruction lets you grind out interaction-heavy tables.
- Madness/Discard Matters — Jaya turns mandatory discards into upside, pairing with madness and graveyard payoffs.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (R), by popularity.
