(Grimgrin, Corpse-Born | Art by Peter Mohrbacher)

The Zombie Who Dreamed He was Royalty

Welcome back to Rally the Ancestors! For round four, it's time to help a certain Zombie break its typal chains and lean more into its inherent strengths. We're talking Grimgrin, Corpse-Born, a commander with an ability more unique than its creature type.

At the time of writing, Grimgrin is the 26th rank Dimir commander on EDHREC, and 661st overall. More importantly, Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver has usurped it as the Zombie commander of choice. Let's let Wilhelt have that particular crown for now. So, what else can Grimgrin do? Let's look at the card.

Zombies, especially Dimir Zombies, have been done to death (pun intended). In Grimgrin's case, the Zombie creature type is not the most interesting thing about him. Not by a longshot. There's a lot more we can do with him as a commander, so let's break it down.

As a 5/5 for five mana, Grimgrin is efficient enough, and its ability lets it dodge burn-based removal as long as you have other creatures on the board. It also doesn't untap without some work, which is why we'll need lots of sacrificial fodder. On the plus side, it can grow very big very quickly, and destroys an opponent's best creature each time it attacks; a pretty solid offensive. Last but not least, it can untap itself for zero mana, which got my mind racing with combo possibilities. All in all, Grimgrin is very unique and has a lot to offer outside of just being a Zombie.

If we're not rolling with a Zombie plan, I think an Aristocrats deck is the best way to go. For the uninitiated, Aristocrats is a style of deck that likes to sacrifice its own creatures to accrue value and ultimately win the game. In the meantime, this deck style excels at gumming up the board, making attacking into it difficult. Unfortunately for your opponents, the less they pressure you, the more time it gives you to assemble your value engines and beat them. See how nicely that works? Aristocrats can be strong against board wipes as well, due to having an assortment of beneficial "when X dies" triggered abilities, graveyard recursion, and low mana value creatures. While the style is less consistent in Commander than in 60-card Magic (it was initially named because of a Standard deck based around Cartel Aristocrat), it can still work here.

Grimgrin's abilities got me thinking about combos and synergy. I'll take any opportunity to play Necrotic Ooze, and having Grimgrin in our graveyard provides a way to conveniently untap the Ooze for free. Seems like a good starting place! With something that taps to make a creature token in the graveyard as well, we've assembled an infinitely big Ooze as well as infinite death triggers, which will work perfectly with one of our deck's many other payoffs. Thankfully, we have such a card in Bloodline Keeper.

Blood Artist is but one of many sacrifice payoff options our deck will have.

This combo is quite specific and won't be the sole focus of our deck, but it'll be fun to pull it off a few times. Necrotic Ooze is just a good card on top of being a combo machine, and we'll have enough other creatures with activated abilities to make running it worthwhile.

Deck Goals

Let's talk about our game plan:

1. Always have ways to consistently untap Grimgrin. Without a steady stream of sacrifice fodder, Grimgrin is pretty useless. So, we'll have to run a lot of creatures that make more creatures or bring themselves back to the board.
2. Use "dies" triggers to generate value and kill our opponents. While Grimgrin likes attacking and I certainly anticipate attacking a fair bit, we can be measured with our attacks because we'll have plenty of Blood Artist-style effects to slowly wear our opponents down or finish them off.
3. As mentioned above, be smart with attacks. Our deck should be able to generate a fair bit of pressure by existing and sacrificing our stuff, so there's generally not much reason to overextend. Sure, Grimgrin can remove problems by attacking, but, recasting it can get costly. Which also means...
4. Be able to win without Grimgrin. We're not in colors that ramp easily, so we'll need other sacrifice outlets to keep our engines firing if Grimgrin becomes too costly to recast. This shouldn't be a problem in black.

Tips for Building and Playing Grimgrin, Corpse-Born

First off, and this isn't really a game plan as it is a deck construction goal, play good Commander cards. Since Aristocrats has roots in 60-card Magic, some of the cards I've ran in that realm like Butcher Ghoul don't quite do enough here. Since Commander is a touch slower, we can get away with slightly more mana-intensive creatures and rely on cards like Bloodghast that give us more than one or two opportunities to sacrifice them on the lower end of our mana curve.

Tip #1: Focus on being proactive. I'm not running a ton of removal in this, as our deck should be able to fend off attacks and use effects like Grave Pact with our army of creatures to manage the board. Oh, and Grimgrin kills things. Can't forget that!

Tip #2: Don't forget basic Commander principles like drawing plenty of cards and being able to ramp. Our deck's curve will be pretty low and Dimir doesn't have a ton of ramp options, so we can get away with less than usual, but be prepared to mulligan if the mana sources aren't there.

Tip #3: Don't worry about answering everything. Since we want to run a pretty creature-heavy build and be proactive, we won't have a ton of slots to devote to the color pair's already mediocre noncreature removal. Ideally, we'll be able to push our opponents to have to play more reactively to our strategy instead.

The Deck

Key components of our deck include:

The Expendables (creatures to sacrifice)

Still strong: Gravecrawler, Bloodghast, Kokusho, the Evening Star
New hotness: Razorlash Transmogrant, Endless Evil

Razorlash Transmogrant is the newest creature in the lineage of self-recurring, small, black-aligned creatures. It's every bit as good as Gravecrawler and Bloodghast. It will cost you mana to bring back (ideally two; we're playing Commander, after all) but getting four power on a self-recurring creature makes it a formidable attacker. Endless Evil is an interesting card. It's not something I'd typically play as you certainly risk getting two-for-one'd, but I think the payoff is high enough to give it a shot.

Other Sacrifice Outlets (besides Grimgrin)

Still strong: Sadistic Hypnotist, Viscera Seer, Hell's Caretaker
New hotness: Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Fain, the Broker

While I'm all about sacrifice outlets with no activation cost (Viscera Seer is cheap to play as well; it's still the gold standard), Yawgmoth, Thran Physician and Fain, the Broker offer enough value and versatility to give them a try. Sadistic Hypnotist is very mean; I almost feel bad playing it. Almost.

Sacrifice Payoffs

Still strong: Grave Pact, Midnight Reaper, Falkenrath Noble (among several others that drain life)
New hotness: Drivnod, Carnage Dominus, Sanguinary Priest, Mirkwood Bats

Getting value for our sacrifices is a high priority in this deck, so we'll run plenty of ways to do so. In some decks, the commander itself is the payoff. In ours, Grimgrin is less of a top payoff rather than a premier sacrifice outlet, meaning we'll need a few less of those. This also means we will have lots of room for further payoffs. Falkenrath Noble gets a little overlooked when compared with similar cards with cheaper mana value, but it's important to note it triggers on opponents' creatures as well. This means it provides us a good deterrent against board wipes too, or at least can leave us ahead after one.

Sanguinary Priest and Mirkwood Bats are new additions to this game plan, from the Warhammer 40k and The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth sets respectively. Both offer their own twist, with Sanguinary Priest being able to damage creatures and Mirkwood Bats caring about creating or sacrificing tokens. Both seem quite strong. Mirkwood Bats might end up being the most sought-after common of The Lord of the Rings set since their ability is relevant in so many archetypes (token aggro, Food/Clue/Treasure/Blood token decks, etc.). I'd pick a few up now in case they get hard to find!

All of the Above (two of three of the above, at least)

New-ish and strong: Liliana, Dreadhorde General, Chittering Witch, Kels, Fight Fixer

Why have just a sacrifice outlet, just a payoff, or just a token generator when you can have more than one in a single card!? These three have the potential to be all stars in this deck due to their versatility.

More Card Draw

Still strong: Windfall
New hotness: Corrupted Conviction, Deadly Dispute, Palantír of Orthanc

Sacrifice-and-draw effects like Corrupted Conviction just keep getting stronger, with it and Deadly Dispute being two of the stronger versions of this effect printed. I'm also very high on Palantír of Orthanc. Either we're scrying and drawing, or an opponent is taking no shortage of damage. It's a win-win! So many decks will want this card. It might not hit Sol Ring levels of ubiquity, but it'll be a common sight around Commander tables, I'm sure. Windfall doesn't have a home in every blue deck, but I think ours can make very good use of it. We have a low curve and don't mind if we have creatures in our graveyard. It'll be solid.

Graveyard Value

Still strong: Havengul Lich, Living Death, Victimize
New hotness: Vat of Rebirth

As I mentioned in the last section, having creatures in our graveyard isn't so bad when we have Living Death in our back pocket. This card remains one of the stronger win conditions in black Commander decks, and it should do wonders here. Havengul Lich is a great card for grinding out value from our graveyard as well. Vat of Rebirth was a late addition to the deck, but I love its potential. It's not a great topdeck in the late game, but I'm willing to give it a shot because repeatedly bringing creatures from our graveyard back to the battlefield is a wonderful tool to have.

More New Stuff

Barad-dûr, The Black Gate, Sheoldred, Black Market Connections

This deck gained a few more new toys in the last few sets. These black utility lands from The Lord of the Rings that should play very well here. Black Market Connections seems poised to replace Underworld Connections in the format. I like it here since it does several things we want. Lastly, Sheoldred is just a powerhouse. Every single version of her is strong, but this one might just be the best, and that's saying something.

And here's our list.

And here's the Moxfield list, tagged for your convenience.

One confession: I acknowledge that this deck could be both an Aristocrats and a Zombie deck. It doesn't have to be one or the other, and might be just as strong (if not more so) with both themes represented as Zombies have a lot of synergy. I could have just rolled with the strong Zombie theme, but I take it that you, dear reader, are here for new ideas. Commander is about creativity for me, so that was the goal here.

How I Used EDHREC to Build this Deck

To accomplish that goal, EDHREC's tools were quite valuable. I first took a look at Grimgrin's top cards as an Aristocrats commander. Seeing the aforementioned Zombie archetype still being entirely well represented, I knew I could pull some things from this section but I'd have to dig deeper, too. Thankfully, Aristocrats-themed decks are quite popular overall. Mono black Aristocrats decks are very well represented in the archetype, with Dimir being significantly less popular. I wanted to make sure blue was well-represented in the deck, so while I got some tried-and-true ideas from the mono black page, the Dimir page was quite valuable, despite being a smaller sample size. As mentioned in previous articles, I try to avoid EDHREC's saltiest cards as well.

There are so, so, many ways to build this theme, especially with black having no shortage of tools. So regardless of your budget or play preferences, I'm sure you can find a way to make this deck your own while retaining its spirit. I'd love to hear what you're thinking in the comments. Until next time!

Dallas Meidinger

Dallas is a communications professional, writer and nearly life-long Magic player from Canada. Commander is his format of choice. When not playing or writing about Magic, you can find him skiing or biking in the mountains he calls home.