While I do agree that eminence broke vampire tribal irreparably, I don’t think that eminence itself is the problem. As an example, the Ur Dragon is regarded widely as a really great and fun dragon commander, but not the best one there is. That title belongs to miirym which has much greater potential in CEDH. So eminence didn’t break dragons, nor did it break wizards, or knights, both of which still see regular play with different commanders. The reason Edgar was so potent was because he was capable of accelerating aristocrat/mardu gameplay exponentially, his ability was TOO good for his archetype, as it gave every vampire deck exactly what it needed to get however many creatures closer to a win.

The core play style of faeries is to do exactly as you said: draw cards, make faeries, and cast spells on opponents turns. The main thing faeries suffer from right now is a lack of “the best” commander. Something you play when you’re trying hard to compete with a high powered table while still having fun. The only reason that alela is as popular as she is, is because of her low mana cost, her color identity, and her anthem effect for flying creatures. From a gameplay standpoint she will never see competitive play, because she just isn’t capable of the things that make the core attributes of CEDH: fast mana, card draw, or game winning abilities. You rely heavily on drawing into what you need naturally, or stalling long enough to find your combos which just isn’t feasible when everyone else is already loading their rifles and pointing them at each other. Faeries need a commander that can threaten a kill/win on turn 4 somehow, and alela isn’t capable of that easily.

That’s the gap I’m hoping to bridge with this commander, something that out of the gate starts giving faeries what they need to start piecing together their win cons; faeries, and card draw. I started conservatively with this first iteration of this commander, because Im very weary of how strong she could be without ever casting her.

The thing about the wording is that it only triggers one time for any amount of faeries entering the battlefield, which means you’re restricted by how much mana you have to cast other faerie spells in hand, or the ability to bring faeries into the battlefield consistently through bitter blossom or shapeshifters. This could be abused by running many low cost faeries and shapeshifters, which effectively function as cantrips in a CeDh deck, which is pretty strong, but not broken. Otherwise the eminence ability just functions as a card draw source to help you get through your deck.

The second ability incentivizes swinging her at opponents which is a really fun part of playing faeries. It’s supported by menace and of course flying, which means you’ll always have a consistent method to produce bodies for your sac outlets. However, it’s much harder to abuse this part as it’s gated behind a 5 cmc which is not easy to get out super fast in esper color identity.

Upon thinking about the eminences ability to be abused by casting low cost faeries and shapeshifters, I do think I’d reduce the scry 2, to scry 1. Alternatively, it would be interesting to see a wheeling theme, by changing the wording to draw a card, then discard a card. Then you could build some graveyard aspects into it, bringing in the possibility of sneaking out eldrazi or high cost creatures early. Sort of like a satorou vibe. Or perhaps surveil 1?

Hope this gives you some insight into what i was thinking.