They act as an easy set up for your very obvious Phyrexian Altar tutor, so if you already have Gravecrawler on the field, then you can start to pop off immediately. The all stars are Sidisi, Undead Vizier and Diabolic Intent. The deck is full of tutors to facilitate acquiring the pieces to win, it is a part-Black deck after all. While it’s less of a sac outlet and more of a draw engine, you also have Skullclamp, which if you have Sifter of Skulls or Pawn of Ulamog out, you can draw 2 cards every time you kill Gravecrawler. Plenty of cards for redundancies to Phyrexian Altar in Viscera Seer, Vampiric Rites, and Goblin Bombardment to deal damage while you sac. I built in redundancies for the triggers with cards like Judith, the Scourge Diva and Mayhem Devil. Are you surprised yet? How about Purphoros, God of the Forge, and Impact Tremors and Blood Artist and…and…Oh you’re not surprised? I guess those are pretty standard ways to win when you can abuse a Phyrexian Altar. However, because Gravecrawler is such a cool and funky boy, I can ALSO win with ETB triggers! Now that’s pretty cool! So how do we do this? Can we go infinite? The answer may surprise you. Clearly I’m trying to win with death triggers. Now that we’ve discussed the main conceit of the deck, have a Gravecrawler enabler in the command zone who is also a sac outlet, let’s move on to the win conditions. He’s so cheap and easy to use too! Just use your mana to make him die and then use your mana again to make him come back! That might seem useless, but it’s not useless if you have a Sifter of Skulls or Pawn of Ulamog giving you a free Eldrazi Scion token every time Gravecrawler kicks the bucket. Tymaret is a sac outlet in your command zone AND makes Gravecrawler live from your command zone. Remember earlier when I made an emphasis on Tymaret being a Zombie? Yeah Gravecrawler is why. Look at go! Crawlin’ around like a little weirdo. This brings me to the next star of the deck. ![]() ![]() Do you get it yet? I’m not gonna say it again. So you may be asking, “Why not just use Judith, the Scourge Diva? She does all the damage on death triggers in your command zone!” We went over this already, TYMARET IS A SAC OUTLET IN GRAVE. It isn’t exactly a “top-tier” strategy, but this deck can certainly give your friend’s decks a run for their money. There is no rug to pull out from under you. Now you might be thinking “Rocco, I think I know where this might be going.”, and I say to you, dear reader: yeah you probably do. It’s the death trigger that he causes that you care about. You don’t care about the 2 damage he deals. Granted it’s not free to sacrifice, but the utility is still there. You have a sac outlet on demand ALL THE TIME. Not only that, but he can COMPLETELY DODGE COMMANDER TAX. My man is a sac outlet on the field AND in grave. “1B, Sacrifice a creature: Return Tymaret from your graveyard to your hand.” “1R, Sacrifice a creature: Tymaret, the Murder King deals 2 damage to target player.” A 2/2 for 2 is pretty decent value though, so he’s got that going for him. Unremarkable and not at all important for the rest of the article. We’ll discuss why this is EXTREMELY important later in the article. His type line: Legendary Creature – Zombie Warrior. If he dies you don’t have to hurt too bad to cast him again, but you probably won’t be casting him again. To make one of the most expensive decks that I could out of, arguably, one of the worst commanders in the game. Ever since I discovered him I made it my mission to break him. Look at him! He’s having a great time and he’s the king of murder! There simply isn’t a card with a better vibe in the entire Magic library. He should be your favorite commander too. ![]() He is my favorite commander and nothing can change my mind. This is not one of those cards and DEFINITELY not one of those commanders. Apart from that I don’t usually enjoy the go-wide or mill playstyles that Mono-Black, Dimir, or Esper zombies tend to go for, but this is different. I think they are boring as far as fantasy creatures go. Cards such as Gravecrawler, Rooftop Storm, and commanders that synergize with zombies like Varina, Lich Queen, and Ghoulcaller Gisa. Wizards has printed a lot of great zombies over the years and a lot of great synergistic Commanders to go with them. Shambling, undead corpses brought to life by a Necromancer to be smelly and gross and ruin your whole village for fun (fun for the Necromancer, the zombies feel nothing).
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