Derevi, Empyrial Tactician

Legendary Creature — Bird Wizard

Flying

Whenever Derevi, Empyrial Tactician enters the battlefield or a creature you control deals combat damage to a player, you may tap or untap target permanent.

: Put Derevi onto the battlefield from the command zone.

Discussion (50)

Inuyashaninja on Warriors come out to play!

2 days ago

Seems like a fun deck. Though I feel the draw wincons are not that necessary. Probably best to primarily go for combat victories. Cards I suggest for this are Cathars' Crusade through making your warriors large quickly. Beastmaster Ascension is also a pretty good card to run. When going for infinite combat combo wins, use Derevi, Empyrial Tactician. The combat phase is split into parts and the last part is called the end of combat phase, where you still have priority to do stuff before your creatures are removed from combat. Basically you just use Derevi's ability to untap your lands after your warriors hit and then pay Najeela's ability and keep repeating till you win. I also think you need to be very careful when using Kindred Discovery. It can very easily make you lose if you try going infinite with it up, or otherwise make you hesitant to go infinite and prevent you from winning because of it. You instead use the other combat based draw spells like Reconnaissance Mission, Coastal Piracy, Bident of Thassa and Raiders' Spoils, which also is a combat booster. You shouldn't be running all of them as you have other means of drawing, but at least one or two is good Edric, Spymaster of Trest is also a good choice, though its prone to removal. I also recommend Blood-Chin Rager, Brutal Hordechief and Mindblade Render as they all are very useful for their abilities (menace to all your warriors, making your opponents lose life even quicker, and draw power, albeit a bit limited compared to others). Also, Rubblebelt Raiders is a really good growing warrior.

gavriel1136 on Tapdown Tokens

1 week ago

I would argue that Derevi, Empyrial Tactician is even better, since her abilities synergize very well with tap/untap shenanigans.

Sultai_Sir on New deck ideas

2 weeks ago

Big Mana, but in an actual interesting way. No more of that namby-pamby, Omnath, Locus of Mana/Regal Behemoth/Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma nonsense. Might as well hit me with a wet noodle. No, I'm talking Derevi, Empyrial Tactician Elfball Flash Enablers Big Boi Destruction Time™ . Let's break it down. You've got your Elfball base, with the rote one-mana nerds, and some more spicy meatballs, like Priest of Titania or Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy. Then, the standard non-stax Derevi package. I'm talking Unblockable Slimy Bois for the untaps, Willbreaker for all the creatures, and the best untap triggers money can buy. Skyshroud Poacher is broken, and can tutor up whatever you want, Azor's Gateway  ^Flip for all the mana, etc. And then, the super-spicy meatballs. Yes, this means the flash enablers. With Derevi's broken untap ability, if you have a flash enabler, you can untap something like Faeburrow Elder 4 times, have twelve mana, and be able to cast twelve mana worth of stuff, because you can use your mana during your combat step, that means if you get 6 untap triggers, with a Wirewood Channeler tapping for 8 mana, you can cast 48 mana worth of stuff. No longer are Elesh Norns and Avacyns of the world are no longer confined to the oblivion of Turns 7 and 8, you can cast them on turn Three! Trust me, no one will see this coming. DESTRUCTION

0rc on

4 weeks ago

Add Derevi, Empyrial Tactician for added value to untap bigger dorks/lands (should you include them) during combat. A 3cmc evasive attacker 2/3 with her ability is incredible value for your build. It’s essentially free with Bloom Tender!!!

StopShot on Rate the power level of …

3 months ago

@LeaPlath, I was thinking something along the lines of a Phoenix Lord, but I felt it would have been boring if it just "pumped" phoenixes.

Phoenixes tend to make pretty good recursion creatures, but how each phoenix is recurred to the battlefield varies wildly which makes it hard for a commander to devote to that tribe, so I half-devoted to phoenix tribal with this so you can run it in a non-tribal deck if you want too.

How it devotes to phoenixes are; it has a pretty standard phoenix recursion effect, it is a "phoenix" in its creature-typing and you get card draw and wider field presence off of sacrificing phoenixes. Now of course I could have specified that only phoenixes could be sacrificed and I could have made the creature tokens phoenixes themselves, but as I said devoting to phoenixes is already complex enough as it is which would mean how the deck would be built would be incredibly tight and would have a lack of room for variance which I didn't like. Hence why I didn't over-commit and why I made it black and white so that other reanimation strategies could work if you weren't devoting entirely to phoenixes.

Given its a phoenix it only makes sense that it would have flying and haste. Those aspects would have been mandatory along with the reanimation effect. The reanimation effect didn't have to be land discard, but I didn't want something you could just pop off whenever you want as that's kind of Derevi, Empyrial Tactician's thing. Well, since the recursion practically neutralizes the command tax why not have the recursion eat up land cards, you know? Eating up lands sure is a red thing to do.

As for double strike and wither, those are just to better align the general in white and black. Double strike I think is very over-used in smashing face as hard a possible and its not used very often in the sense of "doubling combat triggers" you might get from effects like Mask of Memory. Plus the commander has a recursion effect so slapping double strike would make for an obnoxious voltron commander unless I really powered down the power. Let's also keep in mind, first strike damage + wither is a really nice combat synergy as it can be used to avoid lethal damage to your commander.

I mean, I know all that sounds all over the place but I feel there's a lot of different ways these could be expanded upon and as the player you could choose to devote to any one of them or you could try them all at once if you preferred. I like flexibility and even if this doesn't have a clear direction I think it definitely asks the player to make of it as they will. I would not slap this on a beginner-level commander product, but maybe a surprise card you'd expect to find in Modern Horizons for the more experienced player who really wants to put all kinds of mileage on a card.

I might be leaving some stuff out, but that's more or less my thought process regarding it. Oh, and I added life-gain because the sac ability was feeling a little too black in nature for dual white-black hybrid and heck it just provides another meaningless outlet you can choose to either build off of or to have as some extra insurance to last in the game. My real concern isn't if the design is too concise but if the design is too strong/broken.

rjife on Let’s Reread That Again (Chulane EDH)

3 months ago

Derevi, Empyrial Tactician. For one, it can untap your permanents so you can continue to cast creatures, and plus it's a bird wizard.

AzureOctive on She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

4 months ago

hope I'm not being annoying, have you thought of Marisi, Breaker of the Coil for Catra? Plays a little more to Catra's tactical vantage throughout the show. Also found Purraj of Urborg to consider

Glimmer would be great if she could flicker or bounce more ... maybe Derevi, Empyrial Tactician? Also found this Linessa, Zephyr Mage it would be better if she did something other than 'granduer' for the commander format

Perfuma's great on flavor but her function might be better found in Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy

Mermista might be cool as Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper or Prime Speaker Zegana something about the way she is in the show makes me think that she can get suuuuper big p/t wise. Maybe even Gravelgill Duo because of her cynicism?

anyhow, it's got me thinking ^_^ here's an alter for She-Ra Sisay, Weatherlight Captain

king-saproling on Kynaios and Tiro, The Lovebirds.

4 months ago

This is an interesting build. You might like these: Flurry of Wings, Beck / Call, Docent of Perfection  ^Flip, Murmuring Mystic, Keep Watch, Mindmoil, Arjun, the Shifting Flame, The Locust God, Chasm Skulker, Jeskai Ascendancy, Ogre Battledriver, Shared Animosity, Ohran Frostfang, Druids' Repository, Reconnaissance Mission, Derevi, Empyrial Tactician