With Naya I am giving serious consideration to rebuilding Hazezon Tamaar and if I ever get around to building a Naya deck I am sure I will go over my thoughts on that in its own thread.
Here though are my thoughts on a Bant deck. I do have plenty of options for directions I can take the deck, unlike a lot of other combinations that seems so one sided (see the aforementioned Grixis options in addition to things like Boros that tend to favor combat above all else). This is an oversimplification of those colors of course: there are more options than I am giving them credit for but a lot of options do seem to fit within these narrow confines. Bant though seems a bit more broad.
The main issue I seem to have though is that even with the broader options of the color combination, none of the individual commanders appeal to me. Arcades, the Strategist wants to be Defenders Matters and I had tried to build a deck around it at one point but quit early on in the deckbuilding process. Chulane, Teller of Tales is too generic (and gets a bit of hate) and Derevi, Empyrial Tactician also gets a lot of hate. Plus if I am not trying to combo or stax the ability doesn't seem appealing enough.
Falco Spara, Pactweaver, Kros, Defense Contractor, and Perrie, the Pulveriser are too focused on counters matter which doesn't sound fun. And of course there are the various combat oriented commanders (which Perrie also falls under) that aren't appealing to me either.
There are the Enchantress commanders that I have given a lot of thought to utilizing but Enchantress never seems to end up being as fun as I expect it to be. Either it overloads the game with significant advantage or it gets blown out by Bane of Progress or something. I do keep coming back to it but it just never feels right.
Rigo, Streetwise Mentor looks like one of the more promising options but seems like it might go too far into the idea of strict optimization to get the full use out of it. And because the creatures would tend to be small, optimization almost becomes a necessity but that means there aren't a ton of options for different includes that can still let the deck win consistently.
So, even with all of the options out there for me, few really push in a direction I actually care about. Though, as shown by the title of this thread, there is one that seems like it could end up being a decent commander: Jenara, Asura of War. She offers a bit of generic-ness that allows me to pivot later if I ever find a Bant general I like more than her and still ends up being more than just a body for the colors. I had Rubinia here before but the comments below convinced me to try Jenara out.
Here is where I am for now:
This is not meant to be final but it allows for me to start the conversation and put my thoughts down about what I want to do and where I want to go. I also want to leave this somewhat generic in case I want to move into a different direction. I am still not opposed to Chulane, Teller of Tales but Chulane is too generically good as to be close to oppressive which lessens the fun.
In the end, I think I am hoping for a new Bant commander eventually that can replace Jenara and I don't want Partners either so I am sort of stuck with Jenara for now as the best I can get. I might go back through the options again though to see if there is just something I missed.