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I've always liked characters who absorb the power of people they beat, the most recent example being Rimuru Tempest from the anime "That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime." Mairsil always gave me that kind of vibe, like he's imprisoning people and putting on their faces and powers. Combine that with the fact I don't really like any other Grixis commanders despite loving the color combo and I arrived here for my Grixis deck. I don't have a ton to say here yet other than this general is a combo and control king, dominating most boards he's present on. That being said, the deck is very very reliant on it's commander, and the best way to beat it is to ensure it never lives and I have to pay a billion mana to cast it. That's easier said than done though. As I play the deck more I'll expand this to include combo lines, but for now just understand that the heart of every infinite in the list revolves around Quicksilver Elemental or Mirage Mirror, which is effectively a 2nd Quicksilver. If you don't want to infinite, you should cut those cards from the list.

Some neat combos I will mention: Tree of Perdition can set your opponents to 4 life, then Mairsil kills them in one swing. If you choose to play Spikeshot Elder you don't even need to attack to kill someone this way, but something like AEtherling can make Mairsil unblockable. Alternatively, the card Hateflayer also facilitates this kill without the need of any additional cards.

Gilded Lotus + Quicksilver Elemental + Staff of Domination: This combo allows you to draw your entire deck and produce infinite blue mana, which you can then use to win the game with Walking Ballista. You start by tapping Mairsil, the Pretender for 3 blue mana with the lotus ability, then untap it with staff. Using your remaining 2 blue mana, use Quicksilver Elemental to reset the activations on Mairsil, saving one mana left. Repeat ad nauseum to generate infinite blue. Then you use the Staff's 5 mana ability to draw your deck once you create as many mana as you need. There's all sorts of iterations of this combo in the list, with cards with Pili-Pala and Thran Dynamo or Basalt Monolith, but all of them need Quicksilver Elemental in order to work. Alternatively, you can use Geth, Lord of the Vault to mill players out if you have some spare black mana laying around.

If you have Nevinyrral's Disk and AEtherling exiled, along with something like Anger or another haste outlet available to you, you can wrath the board during every player's turn for 2-3 mana. This is pretty opressive, especially since no one really plays methods of removing cards from exile like Riftsweeper.

We also have a backup plan in the form of wheels + Notion Thief. Using the ability of Jace's Archivist alongside a notion thief will prevent our opponents from ever having cards in their hand to oppose us, and allowing us to draw all the cards we could ever need. Our wheels are fine on their own, and Notion Thief is a fine disruptive card by itself as well, so it fits pretty well here.

When playing the deck, your first priority should always be to find a way to blink or constantly recast Mairsil. This could be something like AEtherling, which is probably the best card in the deck, or something like Conjurer's Closet. Either way, that's the starting point. You don't want to strand Mairsil on the battlefield without a way to exile more cards underneath it, and you also don't want it's commander tax to get too high. Once you can blink it, start searching for ways to draw cards, like Arcanis the Omnipotent or Pendant of Prosperity, which happens to interact absurdly well with Mairsil. Once you get card draw online, you want to set up disruptive pieces like Nevinyrral's Disk or other removal abilities while starting to assemble your combo cards. Of course, in faster pods you might not need to bother setting up interaction, but if your board states tend to get cluttered you want removal asap to deter people from sending their excess at you. If you can get Disk online alongside Aetherling it's really hard to lose, and once you get 4-5 cards exiled it's hard to lose either. Just be conscious that you will usually be the one at the table with the least permanents, which will cause others to attack you simply because they can. That's why the removal is so crucial.

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92% Casual

Competitive

Date added 4 years
Last updated 3 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

5 - 0 Mythic Rares

50 - 0 Rares

19 - 0 Uncommons

11 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.64
Tokens Sheep 0/1 G
Folders Past Decks
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