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Do All Harm

Commander / EDH Aristocrats Combo Control Mono-Black Multiplayer Reanimator Sacrifice Tokens Undying Value Engine

Archon_Bel

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Creature (26)

Planeswalker (3)

Land (37)

Instant (8)

Sorcery (8)

Commander (1)

Commander: Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Enchantment (10)

Artifact (7)

This deck was the first Commander deck I built in paper, and boy have I had a good time playing it. It's proven to be as efficient and resilient as I hoped it would be, and I consider it to be my strongest deck so far. I used to have a bit here about trying to power it down and introduce a theft subtheme into the deck, but that... didn't really work out. It mostly made the deck slightly more inconsistent, but even then it was not a "friendly" deck to play at a table. So, I decided to just say screw it and go back to focusing hard on sacrifice and control.

The deck's gameplay is obviously "aristocratic": sacrifice creatures to Yawgmoth for value, preferably with a Blood Artist style effect on board to prevent life loss and whittle down opponents' lives. In doing this, you not only accrue an impressive amount of card advantage over the course of a game, but you also become an incredible source of board presence control. Those -1/-1 counters rack up fast, and the amount of repeatable sacrifice fodder and reanimation in the deck is plentiful enough that you can usually comfortably protect yourself and even dictate how your opponent plans to attack and what they get to keep on their field, making it surprisingly great at politics. Yawgmoth's ability to sacrifice creatures at instant speed also makes the deck quite hard to interact with, as anything your opponent targets for removal or theft can easily be sacrificed, replaced with a draw, and brought back at a later time with cards like Mimic Vat or Animate Dead.

As for how the deck wins, this is primarily done by creating an infinite combo consisting of one of the following formulas:

  1. Two creatures with Undying such as Butcher Ghoul and Geralf's Messenger and preferably Zulaport Cutthroat or Funeral Room / Awakening Hall. Blood Artist can be used as well, but this will likely only end up killing two opponents at most since he only targets one person... unless you have Drivnod, Carnage Dominus out with it, in which case you'll get double the death triggers.

  2. One creature with Undying, one source of token generation triggered by death such as Pawn of Ulamog or Blight Mound, and Zulaport Cutthroat.

The combo works by sacrificing one Undying creature first. After it has returned to the field with its +1/+1 counter, you must sacrifice the other Undying creature or death-generated token to give a -1/-1 counter to the previous Undying creature, thereby canceling those counters out and allowing it to return again. Rinse and repeat. With an "artist" on the field, you will drain an opponent's life up to the number of cards left in your deck (which is typically enough to kill them off).

  1. Drivnod, Carnage Dominus, Pitiless Plunderer, and Reassembling Skeleton with your artist effect. Drivnod will double the tokens you get off the plunderer, letting you constantly resummon and sacrifice it.

If someone happens to have waaayyy more life than you have cards, though... idk, tell them your dog's on fire and quit or something, or maybe hope Feral Ghoul has enough power to mill them out lol.

That should be all there is to it! I feel good about where the deck is now, but I would still welcome any suggestions and advice! Thanks for reading!

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