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Things Betor Left Undead [Primer]

Commander / EDH* BGW (Abzan, Junk) Bracket 3 Flying Jank Lifegain Lifelink Midrange Primer Reanimator Sacrifice Soul Sisters

Tsukimi

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Creature (42)

Land (36)

Commander (1)

Commander: Betor, Ancestor's Voice

Instant (6)

Enchantment (5)

Artifact (5)

Sorcery (5)

Abzan has long been a favorite color combo of mine, with the perfect suite for life gain/life loss strategies, and now we have a perfect commander for this in Betor, Ancestor's Voice! Betor really does it all: Gains life, rewards gaining life, and utilizes life loss for targeted recursion. This deck is a lot of fun to pilot, especially if you enjoy grinding out value, life gain/punishment effects, or playing in your graveyard!

Abzan gives us the best spread of cards that have opponents losing life whenever you gain life. The life gain sources we work with are many smaller, recurring life gain triggers to ensure that each time we gain life from things like Soul Warden we can ping the table for one. Pieces like Enduring Tenacity also work well with our suite of lifelink creatures which continue to grow in power with Betor's first ability. These effects are the heart of the deck, and since they are creatures Betor can bring them back again and again.

While Exquisite Blood and friends will easily go infinite, we don't do infinite combos in my group so I decided to avoid them.

Many of these cards ensure multiple life gain triggers each turn, not just on your turn. There are also quite a few creatures with lifelink as well as have cards like card:Odric Lunar Marshal and Metamorphosis Fanatic to give lifelink to creatures who don't have it already.

As mentioned above, we have many sources of life gain that can easily trigger several times a round and sometimes several times a turn. These effects work really well with cards like Archangel of Thune, Exemplar of Light, etc.

AKA Losing Life to Recur Creatures

This is one aspect of Betor that you can play around with a lot, as there are so many fun pieces in these colors, and many work very well in a life gain shell like Dross Harvester. I decided to focus on effects that can trigger life loss consistently and repeatedly if need be on my turn so that as long as you have Betor out you will always be able to return a creature from your graveyard at end of turn. Shock lands, fetch lands, pain lands, and MDFC lands all now have an additional value in our deck, and often will reward us by helping to recur a creature with a higher mana value. Do not skimp on lands that will deal you damage, they are very strong in this deck.

I'm not going to list every life loss trigger (turns out there's quite a few!) but instead I'll highlight some fun interactions.

Bolas's Citadel and Black Market Connections and the like all ensure that you can return just about anything from the graveyard at end of turn with Betor, and give us some very noticeable upsides as well.

Sylvan Library, Darkstar Augur, Dark Confidant and friends give us a very strong suite of card draw.

Priest of Fell Rites and Reanimate each grab us two creatures in one turn with Betor.

Really losing life on my turn was easier than expected, and pain lands go a long way to help ensure our reanimate trigger. As of now, there are plenty of sources of life loss.

AKA Protection

While this deck can function without Betor, everything runs much more smoothly when your the voice of your ancestors in on the board.

Are all here mainly for protecting Betor, but Selfless Spirit in particular is essentially recurring protection in this deck.

In addition to this you have a fair deal of recursion, so it's not unheard of to let Betor to to your graveyard to avoid commander tax.

Aka Removal.

We also have Toxic Deluge, Promise of Loyalty, for board wipes. Cataclysmic Gearhulk fills a similar role, but re-curable.

AKA filling our graveyard faster.

Betor has something in common with all of my other favorite commanders and that is that there are many ways to build them! If you are looking for a more powerful list for Betor, you can easily include Exquisite Blood and the like for easy combo wins, as well as a much bigger suite of tutors. For those of you wondering, "What about X?!" I've listed some directions you can take the deck in below if my build is not your jam.

  • Token Taxes/ Aristocrats: Betor is built perfectly for an aristocrat or token tax deck with the life gain and reanimate built right in. A VERY strong build would involve plenty of life gain triggers, creatures that make tokens when you gain life, and then any sac outlet and blood artist type effects. Betor is perfect for these strategies, but I have played them both extensively before so I wanted to do something new with this deck

  • Self Mill/Dredge: The dredge cuts to the deck were some of the hardest. The mechanic works so well with Betor, as does self mill. But when you're building Betor you have to decide very early on what your goal is, because there are so many directions you can take the deck in. I realized if I include too much self mill/graveyard interaction than than life gain shell starts to suffer. If you want to take a straight value approach you cannot go wrong with self mill, dredge, reanimation type themes, and you'll find many cards on this list that support both of these play styles.

My goal is to have a conclusive and helpful Betor Primer so if I have missed anything please don't hesitate to leave a comment. Thanks for reading!

With so many fun synergies, some cards didn't make the cut and live in the maybe board for now, but let me know if I missed any fun interactions! Also, let me know if you have any thoughts on the custom categories and whether or not they are helpful.

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96% Casual

Competitive

Revision 19 See all

(1 month ago)

+1 Dragonlord Dromoka main
+1 Enduring Innocence main
+1 Enlightened Confidant main
+1 Fell Mire  Flip main
+1 Grave Researcher main
+1 Lathiel, the Bounteous Dawn main
+1 Moseo, Vein's New Dean main
+1 Ranger-Captain of Eos main
+1 Sanguine Bond main
+1 Scheming Silvertongue main
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+1 Spore Frog main
+1 Starfield Shepherd main
+1 Swords to Plowshares main
+1 Talisman of Hierarchy main
+1 Talisman of Resiliencefoil main
+1 Talisman of Unity main
+1 Tanglespan Bridgeworks  Flip main
+1 Twilight Diviner main
+1 Vicious Rivalry main
and 21 other change(s)