(Tezzeret's Gambit | Art by Jason Felix)

Di-mind your own business. I did not Ashiok you a question. Do you wanna get Tezzer-wrecked, son?

The question of planeswalkers as commanders has been brought up in Magic discourse an infinite number of times. People say it would kill EDH as a format, and others say it will do nothing but give more options to an endless pool of commanders. I believe the truth is somewhere in the middle. My name is Nick, and the eighth installment of Myth Realized will cover Dimir (blue, black) cards and how they would each ruin (or not ruin) your favorite 100-card singleton format.

If you have stuck around with me until this article, you know what cards to look out for in this color combination. If not, check out the individual articles I did in blue and black to see the cards I've shouted out in these colors.

• Ashiok, Dream Render - 1UU/1BB/1UB

One of the best Planeswalkers from War of the Spark and a sideboard staple in various 60-card formats when "deck thinning" is meta. The best part about this card is that all the abilities are beneficial to you and detrimental to your opponents (as cards should be). Graveyard decks want Ashiok, mill decks want Ashiok, control decks want Ashiok, and you should want Ashiok...at the head of your Commander deck.

• Ashiok, Nightmare Muse - 3UB

A few more mana with this interaction of Ashiok and a few more abilities to go along with it. Ashiok looks better now than it did during Theros Beyond Death with the influx of exile-matters cards in this color pair, but during its release Ashiok needed to be answered fast if it hit the board across from you. It's much better in a 1v1 setting, but it would be an exciting commander for a Dimir exile deck as it's less punishing than other options. Five loyalty and the ability to make a 2/3 token allows Ashiok to stay on the board for a time, but your opponents will not let you get the ultimate off.

• Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver - 1UB

If I made this claim before, there's a big chance I lied. This is almost certainly my favorite planeswalker of all time. The official title might be the Nightmare Weaver, but I will always know them as Splashiok. A card revered as being so good in 1v1 formats that you would "splash" a color (usually black) to play this in your deck. Sadly, this card is laughably bad in multiplayer. If you're a die-hard sicko like me, you'd be the only other person to head up a deck of counterspells, permission, card draw, and removal. For better or worse, I'll always pick this in a cube. Even if I'm mono-green and there's a Gaea's Cradle staring me in the face I'll still pause and pick this Nightmare.

• Ashiok, Sculptor of Fears - 4UB

As we see, Ashiok has many talents, from weaving to sculpting to dreams and nightmares. We also see a rare case when the planeswalker deck version of the card might be better when talking about Commander than the standard set release version. Ashiok, Sculptor of Fears costs one more mana compared to Ashiok, Nightmare Muse, but it also comes with one more loyalty and potentially better abilities. While making tokens is nice, I would almost always want to draw cards, and with this card I can. Any graveyard reanimation effect is nothing to sneeze at, and the ability to steal a player's creatures forever could be a game winning strategy assuming you can keep Ashiok alive that long.

• Kaito, Dancing Shadow - 2UB

One of the newer additions to the pantheon of planeswalkers, Kaito, is clear cut when reading their abilities. I often talk about how planeswalkers have abilities that do not synergize with one another, and we have a bit of that going on here. Still, Kaito's abilities work more like pieces of a larger puzzle rather than individual powerful options. Evasion is the name of the game with everything Kaito can do. The passive, the +1, and in a strange way, the -2 all provide or benefit from having creatures that cannot be blocked or that your opponent(s) don't want to block. This card screams "can lead a Ninja deck", but there's something more interesting just below the surface of this card waiting for someone with a much bigger brain than myself to dredge it up.

• Kaito Shizuki - 1UB

This is the only planeswalker that's guaranteed to make it around the table if it resolves. Once again, Kaito works like a magic eye puzzle. You have to squint your eyes and tilt your head to figure out what's happening with this planeswalker. Three-mana walkers are always worth a second look over. Still, compared to their later form (canonically and previously in this article), this would be better inside of a Kaito, Dancing Shadow deck rather than leading one. Though it cannot die the first time out thanks to phasing, it does slow down getting to the ultimate of this card. In a deck like Ninjas or a Dimir deck in the style of Edric, Spymaster of Trest are the two places I see this card fitting, this card's ultimate doesn't excite me. The other abilities of this card are decent but a bit weak to really get the juices flowing.

• Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas - 2UB

Nicol Bolas, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Elesh Norn. What do these masterful, mythic, mac daddies of evil have in common? THEY WILL SOON PALE IN COMPARISON TO THE MIGHT OF TEZZERET. Excuse me, I'm not sure what came over me there. While it might be a personal hope of mine for Tezzeret to have his day in the sun as an actual evil befitting of Magic lore, at least he got a good card when he was serving Bolas. Card filtering, protection/aggression, and a solid ultimate, Tezzeret looks to be the real deal. The fact that with one point of proliferation this card can ultimate when it comes down is ridiculous, and "twice the number of artifacts you control" makes it much easier to defeat opponents with a very high life total.

• Tezzeret, Master of Metal - 4UB

What happens if we take everything the first Tezzeret was doing and make it a bit worse? We get one of the most rock 'n' roll planeswalker names in Magic. More mana and loyalty go hand in hand regarding planeswalker deck retrains in Dimir colors. One thing Master of Metal guarantees you is an artifact with its +1. Now the odds you would whiff with Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, isn't high, but there's no guarantee when you're only seeing five cards. The minus is not as efficient since it's only equal to your artifacts and not double. Finish up with an ultimate reliance on others playing artifacts (who am I kidding, it's Commander; everyone has artifacts. Sol Ring, anyone?), and you get something of a personal choice between which Tezzeret leads your deck.

• Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge - 4UB

This is a planeswalker to build a deck around. Everything about this card screams "Make me your commander!" A fantastic passive ability that allows you to go in multiple directions, an ability seen on two other versions of Tezz; but this time, on a plus rather than a minus. A solid -3 and to cap it off, a quick-to-achieve ultimate that can win the game at best and at worst give you a massive field advantage. Of all these cards, this would be my pick for the card I would build around if a rule change were to occur. Sorry, Ashiok.

• Tezzeret the Schemer - 2UB

This Tezzeret looks the most "pirate captain" in comparison to the rest. Other than that, he doesn't do much. He's only four mana, unlike many other planeswalkers in this series, so he's not the worst. But making a single mana artifact and not-guaranteed-removal paired with a relatively bad ultimate makes this schemer lackluster compared to other versions of Tezzeret and other Dimir walkers.

Wrap Up

Dimir is...disappointing. To be fair to one of the most unfair color pairs, it cannot scale well to multiplayer. There isn't much in terms of raw card advantage, be it draw or filtering, it's surprisingly light on removal. I mentioned the greatness that more than a few of these once had in 1v1 formats; even that greatness is a thing of the past. Dimir has always been a color pair feared by those who come against it, but I think that fear is often met with overwhelming force by others at the table. I believe Ashiok, Dream Render would be the strongest of the lot, but not because of its ability to mill and exile a graveyard. Rather its built-in Mindlock Orb effect from the command zone only affects your opponents. Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge, can grant affinity to your artifact creatures, and this can get out of control, but to maximize this and the six mana it will cost you to cast is a big deck building decision.

When all said and done, Dimir is lackluster when comparing the potential of its planeswalkers to the power of the creatures it already has. When your two-color pair has the number four (Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow) and number five (Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver), commanders of the past two years, according to EDHREC, you don't have to look too far for success. If you liked this, check out my other monocolor and Azorius articles. Be on the lookout for when we visit the Carnarium and look at Rakdos.

Nicholas Lucchesi

Player and lover of all Magic the Gathering formats. Forged in the fires of Oath of the Gatewatch expeditions. Always down to jam games with anyone and everyone. When not playing Magic I am doing something else equally, if not more nerdy.