Grand Arbiter Casual

Commander / EDH Control Multiplayer WU (Azorius)

Alex_P

Land (36)

• 1x Arcane Lighthouse
• 1x Castle Vantress
• 1x Celestial Colonnade
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Ghost Quarter
• 1x Glacial Fortress
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Irrigated Farmland
• 8x Island
• 1x Maze of Ith
• 1x Minamo, School at Water's Edge
• 1x Mistveil Plains
• 1x Mystic Gate
• 8x Plains
• 1x Port Town
• 1x Prairie Stream
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Sea of Clouds
• 1x Strip Mine
• 1x Tectonic Edge
• 1x Temple of Enlightenment
• 1x Tolaria West

Mana Ramp (5)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Thaumatic Compass  ^Flip
• 1x Thought Vessel
• 1x Weathered Wayfarer

Defense (2)

• 1x Silent Arbiter
• 1x Sphere of Safety

Graveyard Hate (2)

• 1x Rest in Peace
• 1x Tormod's Crypt

Taxation (2)

• 1x Aura of Silence
• 1x Rhystic Study

Draw and Filter (10)

• 1x Anticipate
• 1x Blue Sun's Zenith
• 1x Consecrated Sphinx
• 1x Dragonlord Ojutai
• 1x Impulse
• 1x Kefnet the Mindful
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Sea Gate Restoration  ^Flip
• 1x Sphinx's Revelation

Countermagic (8)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Decree of Silence
• 1x Dissipate
• 1x Force of Negation
• 1x Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1x Negate
• 1x Overwhelming Denial
• 1x Summary Dismissal

Denial (6)

• 1x Aegis of the Gods
• 1x Aven Mindcensor
• 1x Azorius Guildmage
• 1x Drannith Magistrate
• 1x Solemnity
• 1x Spellskite

Sweepers (5)

• 1x Austere Command
• 1x Nevinyrral's Disk
• 1x Ondu Inversion  ^Flip
• 1x Supreme Verdict
• 1x Terminus

Recursion (2)

• 1x Hanna, Ship's Navigator
• 1x Sun Titan

Protection (1)

• 1x Lightning Greaves

Commander (1)

Removal (8)

• 1x Curse of the Swine
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Detention Sphere
• 1x Fractured Identity
• 1x Heliod's Intervention
• 1x Imprisoned in the Moon
• 1x Return to Dust
• 1x Swords to Plowshares

Planeswalkers (6)

• 1x Elspeth, Sun's Champion
• 1x Jace, Unraveler of Secrets
• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils
• 1x Narset Transcendent
• 1x Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
• 1x Teferi, Time Raveler

Tutors (4)

• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Muddle the Mixture
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Planar Bridge

Finishers (2)

• 1x Avacyn, Angel of Hope
• 1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite

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A semi-serious Grand Arbiter control deck for multiplayer. Pretty satisfying in 1v1, too.

Approach

The Grand Arbiter is one of the more interesting control generals. The combination of tax and cost-reduction in one card means you can do traditional control-deck things while keeping up with common ramp and combo decks. There's lots of room to play a solid and interactive mid-game.

Since we're not playing Grand Arbiter as a cEDH stax deck, we don't need to dilute the deck with tons of other acceleration and tax cards — instead, consistent access to the general means more of the deck can be devoted to playing individually impactful cards, supported by some tutors and cheap card-filtering. The curve is still fairly low, to ensure that the whole deck doesn't shudder apart the moment someone drops removal on your 2/3 Human Advisor.

Like with the stax deck, the endgame is, typically, lockdown — it's one of the few ways to really achieve inevitability in multiplayer EDH. But we can play a nice, interactive, slightly political mid-game to get there.

As a nod to theme, we aim to play a "fair" game with no extra turns, no mana doubling, no infinite-loop shenanigans. Just a mix of card advantage, permission, and light prison-deck elements — everything you need to dispense justice without ego or remorse.

The Deck

Lockdown

You don't need it to win every game, but your surest way of overpowering multiple opponents is to achieve ironclad control of the stack:

• Decree of Silence + Solemnity will counter all of your opponents' spells.
• Glen Elendra Archmage + Solemnity allows you to repeatedly counter non-creature spells for .
• Tamiyo , Jace , and Narset all have emblems that can be used to set up massive stack denial as well.

You can also pursue a board lock, which will allow you to do everything else more easily since you can save your counters for the few spells that your removal won't answer:

• Avacyn, Angel of Hope + Nevinyrral's Disk is a powerful repeated board wipe.
• A Tamiyo emblem will allow you to infinitely recycle removal spells.

Curve Toppers

Every large, expensive creatures in the deck also build towards the overall lockdown gameplan:

• Avacyn, Angel of Hope is your strongest single finisher. She turns your sweepers into one-sided board wipes and makes all your defensive permanents and lock pieces far more resilient. Protect her with Lightning Greaves or counterspells if at all possible.
• Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite severely hampers hatebears-style decks and turns your own small creatures into a reasonable army.
• Consecrated Sphinx is a must-answer threat that will very quickly set up your next power play or just bury your opponents in card advantage.
• Dragonlord Ojutai digs through your deck very efficiently, all for the low-low cost of if you have your commander in play. You can use Minamo, School at Water's Edge to keep him untapped.

If you can protect it, Planar Bridge is effectively a one-card combo because it can assemble all sorts of crushingly powerful board states very quickly.

Disruption

The Grand Arbiter provides solid acceleration while bottlenecking your opponents' mana. A couple of additional tax effects compound the pressure very nicely. The strongest of these is Aura of Silence , which massively inhibits many of the greediest deck; and it turns into convenient removal once it has outlived its usefulness as a mana speedbump.

Also, sometimes people think they can "race" Rhystic Study and just feed you cards for days. It's great.

In addition to all the flexible one-to-one counterspells and removal, various small cards in the deck are devoted to answering specific strategies in a cost-efficient, one-to-many fashion:

• Aven Mindcensor punishes the tutors and greedy manabases that tend to be the hallmark of many higher-end EDH decks. (He screw over opponents attempting to use Bribery , too!)
• Azorius Guildmage is a supremely undervalued card, essentially a repeatable Stifle that can paralyze all sorts of engines and turn cards with powerful activated abilities into vanilla trash. It’s hard to even explain how good this card is; she has tons of interactions against almost every deck.
• Drannith Magistrate and Imprisoned in the Moon both shut down commander-centric decks.
• In addition to its role as a combo piece, Solemnity seriously bottlenecks experience-based commanders, various linear creature-pump strategies, and dirty one-shot poison decks.
• Tormod's Crypt and Rest in Peace are your dedicated graveyard hate. Don't deploy Rest in Peace unless you truly need to, since it shuts down a few of your own cards — but it's usually worth it to disable a dedicated graveyard deck.
• Arcane Lighthouse exposes Voltron commanders to whatever spot-removal nastiness the whole table has been waiting to inflict upon them.
• Narset, Parter of Veils helps keep a variety of card-advantage mechanisms in check.

Staying Alive

The main "pillow fort" cards are Silent Arbiter and Sphere of Safety . I'm not running the cheaper favorites like Crawlspace and Propaganda because they leave planeswalkers twisting in the wind. The two Maze of Ith effects do a ton of work to discourage attacks as well.

Another noteworthy inclusion is Aegis of the Gods , a miniature Leyline of Sanctity . You can get him out early and he'll keep you safe from all sorts of nonsense like Oona, Queen of the Fae , Sadistic Hypnotist , Bribery , and Sen Triplets . Very easy to set up and he chump-blocks if needed.

Political Play

My general philosophy in free-for-all multiplayer is not to bother trying to manipulate people. Instead, I aim to create situations where the right play for most players is to support me or leave me alone. If you manage everyone’s place on the security curve, you can keep most of the table’s resources pointed away from you most of the time.

You can avoid a lot of early pressure if you sit tight and focus your removal and permission on whatever most upsets the table.

The main cards with noteworthy "political" impact are Fractured Identity , Heliod's Intervention , and Curse of the Swine , which give you a lot of ways to shift the balance of power just so.

Side Notes

Rules Reminders

Some small things folks forget or misunderstand when they play Magic:

• Additional costs apply even when a spell is cast "without paying its mana cost." Cascade, Rebound, Suspend, Isochron Scepter , As Foretold , &c.
• Aven Mindcensor 's ability applies to opponents searching any library, including using Bribery -type effects on another player.
• Split second doesn't affect triggered abilities. That Krosan Grip your opponent is packing for last-word removal is powerless against Decree of Silence .
• Transmute only works at Sorcery speed. I know it says right on the cards and all, but I keep forgetting this. Read your reminder text, kids.

Date added	6 years
Last updated	3 years
Exclude colors	BRG
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	14 - 0 Mythic Rares 42 - 0 Rares 19 - 0 Uncommons 9 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.41
Tokens	Boar 2/2 G, Copy Clone, Emblem Elspeth, Sun's Champion, Emblem Jace, Unraveler of Secrets, Emblem Narset Transcendent, Emblem Tamiyo, the Moon Sage, Soldier 1/1 W