MTGNexus

Alela, Artful Provocateur
Extus, Oriq Overlord // Awaken the Blood Avatar

So I've made a deck last year with Alela using modal creatures (such as Shepherd of the Flock // Usher to Safety and Bestow creatures) and various return effects (such as Cloudstone Curio and Volrath's Stronghold) to reuse those creatures in all of their forms. Though, since Extus come along, I'm wondering if I should shift my allegiance to the Overlord instead.

Alela can generate creatures with artifact/enchantment casts and provides offensive boost, with blue as back up against threats. Extus on the other hand is more reliable on returning creatures from the dead simply by casting instant/sorcery, and excels at aristocrat theme thanks to itself being a sac outlet in command zone. It's a tough choice, and I have trouble building both at the same time because some key cards overlap with each other (like V's Stronghold), and I also want to avoid repeat a theme over two decks.

What do you say?

Extus has strong synergies with instants/sorceries, Alela has strong synergies with artifacts and enchantments. Without knowing the exact decklist, hard to say which of those card types is more relevant (although as you would be changing colors, that would probably shift anyway). That said, I do like the Extus + adventure synergy - using one adventure to recur another adventure card sounds like a glorious pile of value. Plus, your commander would also be a modal card, which... seems on theme.

Considering most modal creatures use instants and sorceries as their other mode, I'd probably go with Extus, as not only does he trigger off adventures and instant/sorcery modes, but he can also recur "instants and sorceries" by returning creatures to your hand.