How They Brew It - Satoru, the Infiltrator and The Magnificent Seven
Satoru, the Infiltrator by Denis Medri
Gimme a Drink, Bartender
Howdy, partner. I'm Turbo-Sheriff Michael Celani. I got your letters. Hell of an adventure you had, fording rivers, shooting bandits, and milking iguanas to survive the harsh desert. The trail ain't easy, but you finally made it: your promised land. Welcome to Dry Rusty Gold Vulture's Anvil Fort, Gulch Springs, and Pointy Gun Creek. Yes, you can buy weed here. It's a cryin' shame you got here at a bad time, though. We got ourselves a... sitiation. Follow me to the piazza. Yes, it's a piazza, not a town square, I don't care how wild west this setting is, it's my introduc--
Send 'Em In
These past two weeks and also three years, our fair town of Dry Rusty et al.'s been under siege from the Dead Bandits, the meanest gang of ruffians, hooligans, and ne'er-do-the'r-taxes villains this valley's ever seen. We hauled a few of 'em in today, but they're slippery. It's impossible to pin down which one of them is the ringleader, because it turns out any of these criminals could head up this week's list. That might sound crazy considering how different they all play from one another, but if you're looking for seven Commander decks in one, then you've come to the right place. That's right, this deck is behind seven alternative leaders. Let's take a look at all of them:
The Robber: A Balanced Take
If you're looking for a balanced game, Satoru, the Infiltrator's as close to a default commander as this deck gets. As a powerful draw engine that you'll be triggering constantly, and priced at only two mana, you're never gonna sputter out and die with nothing to show for it if you let Satoru helm the list. The open-ended nature of the commander also means you'll be able to leverage the deck's various sub-themes together instead of being forced to focus on only one.
However, that strength is also Satoru's weakness: your plans are much more nebulous than the other commanders, and you're going to have to come up with a method to finish your opponents off on the fly instead of following a strategy from the start. This renders Satoru one of the more complex but deeply rewarding choices, so it's good to understand the whole deck if you're playing with him. In the ninety-nine, Satoru, the Infiltrator is a strong draw-engine that any of the other commanders are happy to play.
The Ruffians: Going Wide
Tormod, the Desecrator and Sakashima of a Thousand Faces leverage a go-wide strategy that shotguns Zombie tokens onto the board absurdly quickly. If you choose to put these two in the command zone, you're all but guaranteed to threaten the table with an apocalyptic army at some point during the game, and at the very least finding blockers or fodder to sacrifice is trivial for you.
The downside is that casting both of them requires the biggest investment of all the commanders in this list at a total of eight mana, and neither of them provide any card advantage, so you'll need to draw engine pieces to keep the train rolling. Outside of the command zone, Tormod, the Desecrator is an excellent role-player in a variety of the deck's strategies as he's an unlimited source of free Zombie tokens, while Sakashima of a Thousand Faces can either double up your chosen commander or act as a combo piece in specific scenarios.
The Stitchers: Recursion
You might have gathered that this list gets value off creatures dying and subsequently leaving your graveyard, so Gisa and Geralf has a niche in the command zone as the most straightforward way to do that. Yes, there's a Zombie sub-theme to this deck, and if you lead with Gisa and Geralf, your value engines are going to stay standing no matter how many trains your opponents send at you. They're also the commander that handles the deck's exploit creatures the best, so if you find hits like Fell Stinger or Repository Skaab, you're in great shape. There's not much self-mill in this list, though, so you're going to need to find a sacrifice outlet to get good use out of them over multiple turns. Other commanders use Gisa and Geralf to bring back the engine cards they need to function.
The Muscle: Going Tall
Speaking of a sac outlet, Grimgrin, Corpse-Born is one, and with how much recursion this deck is running, he's gonna get big, fast. Play him, sacrifice a few other creatures to beef his power up, and then make him unblockable to knock down your opponents while removing key threats from the board. He can leverage the deck's protection the best since your opponents are likely to target him, giving you a lot of opportunity for politicking if you're willing to reveal some cards from your hand.
Like the go-wide pair before him, Grimgrin has no guaranteed card advantage, but he makes up for that by being an absolute tank and a genuinely great control piece. His biggest strength outside of the command zone is his arbitrary free sacrifice ability to get death triggers.
The Bookkeeper: Aristocrats
Of these two, Agent of the Iron Throne is the star here, as it turns Volo, Itinerant Scholar into the important part of Zulaport Cutthroat. Every death you take snipes your opponents for one, and that adds up fast over the course of the game. Since your main method of damage will be through Agent of the Iron Throne's ability, you also won't need to engage with combat as much, so you can leave creatures back for blockers.
Despite the deck's Zombie focus, Volo, Itinerant Scholar is still able to reach respectable totals on Volo's Journal through their subclasses, like Warrior or Wizard, so you'll still have access to decent repeatable card advantage over the course of the game. If you prefer a more passive or defensive playstyle, this duo will be your go-to. The biggest drawback is that you're pretty wholly reliant on Agent of the Iron Throne; there aren't many more aristocrats-enablers in the list, so you won't end up with as splashy a finale as some of the other options.
If you're not running him as a commander, Volo, Itinerant Scholar is a decent supplement to any other general in the card draw department, especially since he can draw multiple cards for one low activation cost. Agent of the Iron Throne adds some much-needed reach to close out the game for other commanders and is especially potent if you're running the go-wide duo since it's twice as effective there.
The Brains: Spellslinger
The deck's spellslinger, too. I mean, why not? Lord of the Nazgûl takes advantage of the fact that the list runs a ton of instants and sorceries alongside some ways to recur them. Those Wraith tokens are beefy, and if you get nine of them, the game's over. Unfortunately, Lord of the Nazgûl is definitely the weakest of the seven, but in a way, that can be a strength, too: if you find yourself playing with a pod that's at a lower power level, you won't have to switch decks. Other commanders appreciate Lord of the Nazgûl for being a decent flying attacker and letting you make blockers and sacrifice fodder that comes in untapped at instant speed.
The Man on the Inside: Combo
Finally, The Master, Formed Anew is this deck's combo commander. All you need to do is get takeover counters on a few different creatures and you can easily create infinite loops that give you insurmountable advantage. His downside is obvious: he doesn't do anything on his own, so you better mulligan well to get the cards you need to pull the job off. He's got some niche applications in the ninety-nine, as he can copy some enter-the-battlefield effects, like exploit, so if he's not your commander, you can still treat him like a bad blink spell.
This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Seven of Us
The Dead Bandits are a menace, I'll tell you what. Yesterday, they robbed a train... like, the whole thing. Took the tracks, too, which, incidentally, saved the lives of the ten damsels in distress they tied to them. Now, you might have some questions. Questions like "How is it possible for seven completely different commanders to share a single deck?" Well, if you've been playing the game a while, you might already have some ideas for what nasty schemes are bein' cooked up in the ninety-nine. If not, keep reading and I will list out the nasty schemes in an easily digestible format. In fact, keep reading if you have been playing the game for a while, too.
The Value of Persistence
When a creature with either undying or persist bites the dust, they come back from the grave with either a +1/+1 or a -1/-1 counter on them, respectively, so long as they don't already have that kind of counter on them. This is the key that ties all seven commanders together: casting creatures with persist and undying, as these abilities make them extremely useful for all sorts of recursion-related shenanigans.
The applications for Satoru, Tormod, Grimgrin, and Agent are all obvious: persist and undying all directly interact with the commander to enable or enhance their gameplan, either by hitting those recursion triggers or by letting you squeeze twice the lives out of them. The other three commanders require a little bit more explanation.
Gisa and Geralf benefit from the fact that a lot of creatures with undying also happen to be Zombies; this makes them ever-present threats throughout the entire game while allows you to go all-in on kindred synergies without needing to invest into protection. Lord of the Nazgûl likes these creatures because a significant chunk of the deck's instants actually require you to sacrifice a creature as an additional cost, meaning that not only do you get your card draw at a discount, you also don't have to touch your Wraiths to cast them.
Lastly, The Master, Formed Anew's whole combo plan is enabled by the fact that these two keywords form a dyad. If you manage to exile both a persist creature and an undying creature with a takeover counter, The Master can continuously enter the battlefield as a copy of whichever creature that has the keyword opposite to the type of counter on him, which allows him to be sacrificed infinitely. (Both Sakashima of a Thousand Faces and Glasspool Mimic have this capability, too, but they require that they all be on the field at the same time.)
Eleven cards in the deck have either of the two keywords, and Prized Amalgam and Skeleton Crew are essentially numbers twelve and thirteen if you're creative enough. Most aren't important besides the fact they have persundying (unsist?), but there're a few standouts.
- Geralf's Messenger hurts an opponent when it enters the battlefield, giving it a little extra reach compared to other creatures. It's by far the best undying creature to exile when you're running The Master's combo, as its trigger will turn any sacrifice outlet into an instant kill.
- Hancock, Ghoulish Mayor has additional synergy with the deck's Zombie sub-theme, as his counter radiates outward to any other Zombies you might control. If you can get additional counters on him, he becomes an extremely powerful anthem.
- Glen Elendra Archmage is a Negate on a stick and a key piece in locking down your opponents from casting board wipes or powerful noncreature spells.
- Puppeteer Clique can trigger Satoru multiple times, as not only will you draw a card from persist, but also from the creature you reanimate.
- Finally, River Kelpie is effectively a second Satoru, and since this deck is a persist deck, your card draw will be crazy if it isn't exiled.
Kill 'Em All
Of course, we actually need to kill the recursive creatures to get the value out of them, sort of like juicing an apple, orange, or lobster. If your commander is Grimgrin, you're good to go, but for everyone else we're gonna need some sac outlets.
- Ayara, First of Locthwain is excellent here: she not only acts as an aristocrats payoff for black creatures, draining your opponents every time one enters the battlefield, she can also sacrifice them to let you draw a card.
- Tarrian's Journal is similar, as it also lets you sacrifice a creature to draw a card once per turn. You may be tempted to write off transforming it entirely, since finality counters would completely shut down every version of the deck, but don't be too hasty: we'll come back to that idea later.
- Pyre of Heroes is especially effective when recycling low-cost recursive Zombies, since you'll usually get a three- or four-drop from your deck for free with absolutely no penalty to yourself.
- Stronghold Assassin is itself a Zombie, and it lets you sacrifice other creatures to snipe enemy threats. If you want to lose all your friends, replace it with Attrition. Just don't come crying to me when they've keyed your car.
- Ashnod's Altar.
- And finally for permanents, we've got Westvale Abbey, which works hilariously well as a one-time outlet to flip it into a massive, flying, indestructible beater.
The deck also contains a substantial number of instant-speed sacrifice draw spells. Village Rites and its ilk are always a welcome sight if you've got a recursive creature, and each time you cast one of them, you trigger Lord of the Nazgûl. This may seem a little bit strange: why not just cut Lord of the Nazgûl as a potential commander and focus instead on permanent sac outlets? Well, that's where the next section comes in.
Not Actually Dead
The problem with persist and undying creatures is that they can only be sacrificed twice: once when it doesn't have a counter, and once when it does. To that end, we're running a bunch of spells like Not Dead After All that give our creatures a different kind of recursion. The play pattern works like this:
- Sacrifice a recursive creature. It comes back with a counter.
- Cast a spell like Malakir Rebirth targeting that recursive creature.
- Sacrifice it again. It comes back with no counter thanks to the instant spell.
- Sacrifice it again. It comes back with a counter.
- Sacrifice it one last time.
Syr Konrad, the Grim especially likes this pattern: if he's on the field, going through all five steps deals seven damage to the table. The combo of spells like Not Dead After All, recursive creatures, and sacrifice-to-draw spells all contribute to the deck's high instant total. Just be careful: two of the cheaper options, Feign Death and Undying Malice, do actually return the creature with a +1/+1 counter, so try not to cast them on your undying creatures.
Counter? I 'Ardly Know 'Er
The other method of getting more persist and undying out of persist and undying creatures is to simply eat the counter they came back from the dead with. There's a surprising amount of ways to do this in Dimir, actually. This may just be the perfect deck for Soul Diviner, as it can refresh both types of recursive creatures while drawing you cards, while Fain, the Broker swaps out drawing cards for making Treasure tokens.
Power Conduit removes an arbitrary counter from a permanent as a cost for its ability, while Nesting Grounds can move an arbitrary counter from one permanent to another. Clockspinning can also remove arbitrary counters, and hey! It's also got buyback for Lord of the Nazgûl. By the way, this counter manipulation is the reason why you actually can transform Tarrian's Journal if you really need to, though you'll almost always prefer it for card draw.
Removing the counters is amateur hour, though, because it's time to take advantage of another strange quirk about counters: annihilation. If a permanent ever has both a +1/+1 counter and a -1/-1 counter on it at the same time, they're both removed as a state-based action. In effect, this means that if you put a +1/+1 counter on a persist creature or a -1/-1 counter on an undying creature, they're reset to their factory default. This is the true power of Fain, Power Conduit, and Nesting Grounds, as well as a sacrifice outlet I didn't mention earlier for dramatic effect: Yawgmoth, Thran Physician.
By carefully moving counters between persist and undying creatures, you can get tons of additional death triggers out of both of them. For example, if you have two undying creatures, sacrifice one of them to Yawgmoth and target the other one with his ability, ping-ponging the +1/+1 counter between the two of them for as many cards as you'd like. Or, move a +1/+1 counter from an undying creature to a persist creature with a -1/-1 counter via Nesting Grounds to cancel them both. This principle also makes Thran Vigil a great card in the deck, since it makes every persist creature go infinite: as soon as that creature returns from the graveyard to the battlefield, target it with Thran Vigil's trigger to annihilate the -1/-1 counter it would otherwise have.
Counter manipulation also has a secondary benefit in that you can use it to pump up either Hancock, Ghoulish Mayor in the go-wide strategy or Grimgrin in the go-tall strategy.
Getting Through to You
Speaking of Grimgrin, he does have one weakness we've yet to address: once he's reached astronomically high power levels, he is forever fated to be chumped by tiny 1/1 Soldiers. To that end, we've added a few evasive cards, mostly in the land slot. The Black Gate, Rogue's Passage, and Shizo, Death's Storehouse all provide some method of making Grimgrin harder or impossible to block. Distortion Strike, the deck's sole sorcery, also makes it impossible to block Grimgrin, but doubles as a super-spell for Lord of the Nazgûl, who will see both the initial cast and the rebound. Jason Bright, Glowing Prophet is a persist-resetter that can also give Grimgrin flying. You see, it's so dense, every single card has so many things going on--
I didn't mention Carrion Feeder as a sacrifice outlet earlier for dramatic effect, because here's where it comes into play. With this evasion, you can treat him as a tiny, adorable Grimgrin in the ninety-nine. If you're dealing 20 damage with a single strike, it doesn't really matter if it's commander damage or not in most cases.
The Living Dead
Let's also take advantage of the density of Zombies in the deck.
- Diregraf Captain is both a go-wide and aristocrats payoff, as it provides both an anthem and a death trigger to Zombies specifically.
- Zombie Master is yet another way to make Grimgrin evasive, but it also does that for all of your other rotting corpses, too.
- Necroduality doubles any nontoken Zombie that enters the battlefield. This is obviously incredible for almost every archetype here, since it lets you build an actual army out of the things you're sacrificing.
- Field of the Dead is yet another token-generator, and it'll almost certainly be active thanks to the twenty-six unique land names in the deck.
- Finally Unholy Grotto is a Volrath's Stronghold that's actually affordable. It can fish any Zombie that actually made it to your graveyard back to the top of your deck, which is especially useful in the non-Gisa and Geralf games.
Exploit
There's one last thing we need to talk about, and that's the three exploit creatures in the list. Profaner of the Dead is a repeatable one-sided board wipe, while Fell Stinger and Repository Skaab draw cards and recur nonpermanent spells, respectively. Since they're both Zombies, Gisa and Geralf can play them like sorceries every turn.
Let's focus in on Repository Skaab, since it combos well with the variety of Feign Death effects in the list. You can respond to Repository Skaab's exploit trigger by casting a Feign Death targeting it, and then let the exploit trigger resolve to sacrifice Repository Skaab itself. This gets you a death trigger and lets you return the Feign Death back to your hand. As long as you have the mana to cast your Feign Death, you're capable of getting almost every type of trigger your commanders care about. That's also the reason why the deck is running a copy of Kairi, the Swirling Sky, who can do the same thing if you've got a sac outlet. There's always something for you to sacrifice in this list, it's great!
Into the Sunset
Well, partner, it turns out that since we couldn't finger any of them as the ringleader, we had to let them all go. I'm sure they're -- wait, they committed actual crimes independent of leading a gang of ruffians and we could have kept them for those? ...I need to go make a call.
This is a deck for tinkering. If you really find you enjoy one of the specific playstyles one of these commanders brings you, don't hesitate to add more specific tech for that commander. If you're really into The Master, Formed Anew, perhaps you'll want to add more clones, like Activated Sleeper, or self-bounce effects. If Satoru is your jam, try to replace some of the instant spells with sac outlets and additional removal. Make it something truly your own, and let me know what you come up with... or just roll a die at the start of every game to see which one you're playing.
If you enjoy How They Brew It, please check out the Discord and my other projects at my website. Vote on what article you want to see next, and check out my other projects, too. Thanks for reading!
The Magnificent Seven
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