Introduction
Lazav, Dimir Mastermind is a commander that's a lot of fun to play with and has a lot of unexpected combos. As the leader of House Dimir, he is the embodiment of stealth, illusion, and trickery. Being able to shapeshift into whatever he wants and having evasion in the form of hexproof is a nasty combination. The deck is very flavorful and fun to play; most of the time you'll be reanimating your opponents creatures or cloning them with Lazav and other shapeshifters. The tools at your disposal to achieve this come in the form of kill cards, discard, and mill. It should be noted that the goal of the deck isn't necessarily to mill your opponent to death (although it is an option) but to simply use mill as a tool to activate Lazav and play off of other cards in our deck that rely on having cards in the graveyard; mainly creatures.
Playing the Deck
Obviously, like any other deck, the goal is to get some early ramp: Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Dimir Signet, Thaumatic Compass
, Dowsing Dagger
, and Myriad Landscape all acheive this. The deck has plenty of card draw so it shouldn't be too difficult (Knock on wood).
Unlike other Lazav decks, or even most Blue/Black decks in general, our main route to victory is commander damage. Now our color combination doesn't lend us much in the form of a heavy aggro playstyle and we lose out on nifty abilities like Vigilance, so attacking and leaving ourselves open isn't a great idea. That doesn't mean you shouldn't attack at all but it does mean that we have to take extra precautions to protect ourself. Propaganda and Crawlspace help thin our really aggressive opponents, and Spires of Orazca
can remove potent threats from damaging us. A particularly noteworthy mention is Aetherspouts; this card send whole armies back on top of our opponent's deck. You know what that means right? Our targeted mill cards can then do their job and Lazav can copy whoever you want. It should be noted that I opted Cyclonic Rift out for this card. While Cyclonic Rift is definitely the more powerful card (and most assuredly the better option) I liked the interaction between Aethersouts and our mill+Lazav strategy; it's just offers better flavor. Plus Aetherspouts is cheaper so do with it what you will.
Mid to late game we wanna try and mill our opponents to fill their graveyards with cards so that creatures like Consuming Aberration, Mortivore, and Wight of Precinct Six are nice and healthy. Reanimate/copy enemy creatures and spells with Body Double, Sepulchral Primordial, Diluvian Primordial, Animate Dead, Reanimate, Memory Plunder, or use Rise of the Dark Realms and swing with everything to win.
Between the targeted removal and targeted discard we should have enough ways to get rid of problematic permanents/creatures and send them to the graveyard to trigger Lazav's effect. However, it should be noted that this deck is in it's early stages so it is unclear which one is better than the other. In the future if targeted removal seems to be the better option then removing the discard cards for more spot removal will be the way to go; and vice versa. Still debating whether or not to include more board wipes but we'll see how playtesting goes. Any advice and/or feedback on the matter is welcome in the comments.
Summary
When I finish playing the deck and fine-tuning it I'll add a "Card Synergies" and "Win Conditions" section. The reason why I'm not including it now is because some cards on this list could change. Tell me what you think would be good and what it could replace. Open to any and all suggestions. I would, however, like to stick to "Clones/Copy" theme, that is a position I am not budging on. Hope you like the deck.
