I remember making illustrations for a Lord of the Rings calendar of my own, back when I was 18, a college art project, so its fair to say that LoTR and many of the Tolkien artists were a pretty big influence to what I do
Mardu is mostly beatable, although, because of the powerful of their cards, you probably wont be able to make a deck that absolutely crushes it
This means you can Chain block to get the effect you want to resolve to be guaranteed, as opponents can only Chain to the last card in the Chain
Most of these commanders are also birds themselves birds tend to help other birds or have something in common with them but we also have to factor in the color identity, since most birds are blue and/or white, and thus a red or black bird commander would miss many of the good birds available
He does, however, have Artifact Lancea sided as well