Skills a strong commander should have: they should be cost efficient / cheap and/or easy to cast they should have good stats for their costs they should have as many good effects as possible they shouldn't have any ot to many downsides they should have a high/good coloridentidy they can break parity in some kind of way they have inpact as soon as they enter the board (either they have haste, or a good ETB- or static-Effect or they have triggered ability) Commanders from Tier 0 to Tier 4 are commander who can be easily broken with specific cards
Oh this card is going to screw something up good and Im here for it
I think its better than Harmonize, though, as even getting just two cards back, youll often grab a protection spell and a removal spell, which is a really good combo
Focus on getting tutors like Jim Hawkins, or discard recursion like I Won't Give In should be more important than keeping an otherwise milquetoast Pirate like Owl just for the sake of having one in your hand
We may be tempted to include a more aggressive one-drop like Bloodsoaked Champion in our deck, but it's better synergy to have only colorless creatures to make our colorless-matters cards better