Welcome to Aristrodredge. This deck combines to different strategies into one. Izoni, Thousand-Eyed is the commander that glues these two strategies together. The first strategy is getting as many cards into the graveyard as possible. This fuels Undergrowth for Izoni, letting her create more insect tokens when she enters the battlefield. The second half of the strategy is aristocrats. Once we get a bunch of tokens on the battlefield, we can sacrifice them away for value, often draining our opponents in the process. This deck has a tough time beating graveyard hate but we will try our best. With that being said, let's break down the deck.
Time to Mill
So our first job is to get as many cards as possible into our graveyard. This will increase our undergrowth count, give our graveyard a toolbox potential, and it will set up our dredge engines. Doom Whisperer gives us free mill at the price of 1 life per card which is well worth it. Syr Konrad, the Grim has an activated ability that lets us mill the top card of our library. Nyx Weaver and Splinterfright let us dump cards from our library at the beginning of our turn. Grist, the Hunger Tide lets us mill 2 cards and make an insect. This is exactly what this deck wants. The minus ability can also sacrifice a creature and destroy the most dangerous thing on the battlefield. Satyr Wayfinder, Grapple With the Past, and Grisly Salvage all help us get hit our land drops in the early game while filling up the graveyard. Grapple With the Past and Grisly Salvage can both get creatures back instead which can turn the graveyard into a toolbox. Liliana, Death's Majesty has a +1 ability to mill two cards and make a zombie. Underrealm Lich turns drawing a card into looking at 3 cards, putting one into our hand and the rest in the graveyard. Our two all-stars, however, are Undercity Informer and Altar of Dementia. These provide both a sacrifice outlet and mill, which are the two goals of the deck.
We also have several dredge cards. A card with dredge has the ability to replace a card draw with putting cards into the graveyard and returning the dredge card to our hand. This can cause a chain reaction that dumps more and more cards into our graveyard. The nice thing about our commander is that the sacrifice outlet on her lets us draw a card. We can instead choose to dredge with this effect. By far the best dredge card we have and most likely the best card in the deck is Life from the Loam. The problem with dredge is that we forego drawing cards in order to fill our graveyard. Normally, this would mean that we are not naturally drawing lands to play on curve. Life from the Loam takes care of our land drops for us, eliminating the only weakness to the strategy. Our other dredge cards include Golgari Grave-Troll, Golgari Thug, Stinkweed Imp, and Dackmor Salvage.
Finally, we have a couple of cards that let us tutor for a specific card and put that into our graveyard. Fiend Artisan lets us tutor for a creature and let’s us bin one of our creatures on the battlefield at the same time. Buried Alive lets us put 3 creature cards into our graveyard from our library. Some good options include Golgari Grave-Troll, Stinkweed Imp, Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis and Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord.
Increasing Undergrowth
In addition to the milling effects, we have specific cards that help increase the creature count in the graveyard. Burnished Hart, Caustic Caterpillar, Fertilid, Sakura-Tribe Elder, and Shriekmaw all do their job and then go to the graveyard.
Payoffs for Milling
We are running several cards that benefit from having a large graveyard. Golgari Grave-Troll, Jarad, Golgari Lich lord, and Splinterfright get bigger with more cards in the graveyard. Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis and Ramunap Excavator get better with more cards in the graveyard. Spider Spawning and Kessig Cagebreakers produce more tokens with more cards in the graveyard. Finally, Mausoleum Secrets lets us tutor for better things with more creatures in the graveyard.
Lets Make Some Tokens
Because we are an aristocrat strategy, we need to have as many death triggers as possible. Therefore making tokens is a great way to rack up the body count. Fortunately, our commander makes a bunch of insects when she enters the battlefield. And she has a sacrifice outlet on her as well, although it is pretty heavily costed. We need to have other ways to make a bunch of tokens because sometimes our opponents will have graveyard hate or Izoni becomes too expensive to cast. Other than Izoni, our token producers include Avenger of Zendikar, Life / Death, Spider Spawning, Kessig Cagebreakers, and Sifter of Skulls.
The Sacrifice Outlets
A good aristocrat deck should have several ways to produce free ways to sacrifice our own creatures. Our free sacrifice outlets are Altar of Dementia, Ashnod's Altar, Dimir House Guard, and Yahenni, Undying Partisan. Other good sacrifice outlets include Izoni, Thousand-Eyed, Evolutionary Leap, Undercity Informer, and Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord.
Drain our Opponents
We need to have some payoff for our creatures dying. We have several cards that drain our opponents every time a creature dies. These cards get exponentially better in multiples. They all work slightly different from one another. Blood Artist triggers whenever any creature dies, opponents included. But it can only drain one target per trigger instead of each opponent. Poison Tip Archer does the same as blood artist except we do not gain life and each opponent loses life. It also does not trigger when it itself dies. Syr Konrad, the Grim is probably our best drainer because he triggers whenever another creature dies, or gets milled, or leaves the graveyard each opponent will lose 1 life. Syr Konrad is insane in our deck. Finally we have Bastion of Remembrance. This card is really good because it is an enchantment which makes it harder to remove. Although it cannot be recurred like drainer on a creature, it is more valuable to have this effect stick around longer.
Graveyard Recursion
Since we have so many effects that put our cards into the graveyard, we have some ways to bring back key pieces with graveyard recursion. Nyx Weaver, Golgari Findbroker, and Grapple with the Past will let us return any card we want from our graveyard to our hand (Golgari Findbroker can only return a permanent card). Life / Death, Dread Return, Unearth, Victimize, and Liliana, Death's Majesty will return creatures from the graveyard straight to the battlefield.
Putting it All Together
So lets put this deck's strategy together. Our first step is to fill up the graveyard. We can accomplish this many ways and our dredge cards will help cause a chain reaction to mill more cards. Then we will cast a sacrifice outlet and a drainer. Finally we will cast our commander or another token generator. This deck scales with the game as we will naturally develop a larger graveyard.
Alternative Commanders
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord - Jarad kind of fights opponents on a different axis than Izoni. Instead of going wide, Jarad focuses on going tall and then sacrificing those creatures to smash our opponents face. Cards like Splinterfright and Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis become a lot better with Jarad at the helm. The graveyard recursion also ensures that Jarad stays cheap to re-cast.
Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis - Hogaak is interesting. He can definitely cause some shenanigans by only ever costing 2 mana. Hogaak with Altar of Dementia lets us pretty much dump our entire library into our graveyard.
Savra, Queen of the Golgari - Savra requires more of a set up than the other commanders. Once we get a sacrifice outlet on the field, Savra becomes quite good.
Final Thoughts
This deck is super fun to play. Sometimes it is hard to keep track of the creatures in our graveyard. I recommend putting a spin down on top of the graveyard just to keep track of undergrowth at all times. We also need to know how many lands are in our graveyard occasionally so we will have to keep track of that. The best card in the deck is definitely Life from the Loam. This is a one card combo that guarantees our land drops while still milling ourselves.
