Braids, Arisen NightmareBraids, Arisen Nightmare | Art by Dibujante Nocturno 

I've always loved building off-color decks. While it's fun to use the best cards available to flesh out a deck's 99, it can be even more enjoyably to scour Scryfall for obscure synergy pieces that make an off-kilter strategy function well.

In this case, I'll be tackling one of Commander's most popular deck theems: enchantments! Decks focused on enchantments are centered overwhelmingly around and , but has gotten a bit of love in this realm recently.

Semi-recent color pie changes allowed this color to be "tertiary" friendly to enchantments, meaning that can occasionally care about the card type.

In the five years since these philosophical changes, we've seen nearly two dozen black cards release that care about enchantments in some way, shape, or form.

That's super exciting! And, it gives me enough inspiration to put together what I think is a unique take on a powerful commander. Today, we'll be building an enchantment-centric version of Braids, Arisen NightmareBraids, Arisen Nightmare!

What Does Braids, Arisen Nightmare Do?

For , Braids is a 3/3 Nightmare. And, at the beginning of our end step, we can sacrifice a permanent (of almost any type).

If we do, each opponent is faced with a choice: they sacrifice a permanent that shares a card type with the one that we sacrificed, or they lose two life while we get to draw a card.

Braids decks usually focus on sacrificing creatures on their end step, with the goal of either whittling down opposing board states or creating a steady stream of card advantage.

Most Commander decks play creatures, after all, so Braids puts opposing players in a tough spot! Combined with Grave PactGrave Pact effects, Braids pilots can keep opponents from sticking many (if any) creatures on the field.

But, that sort of Braids deck still gives opponents a bit of agency. They can still make a choice, electing to sacrifice or not sacrifice a creature based on the current state of the game. If you've read my articles before, you'll know that I don't like giving opponents choices.

That's why I've built this deck around enchantments! Most Commander decks run less than a dozen enchantments, and are quite attached to those that they manage to get on board.

If we've got a steady stream of enchantments to sacrifice, Braids will let us draw three cards and force each opponent to lose two life on each of our end steps. That's a great value engine, and the basis for the rest of our deck!

Key Cards for Braids

First, let's talk about some of the best enchantment synergy pieces that we've got at our disposal. I'd like to shoutout an obscure rare from Theros block first: Aphemia, the CacophonyAphemia, the Cacophony.

Braids lets us sacrifice enchantments with ease, but is not good at bringing enchantments back from the bin.

So, with Aphemia, we can turn our used enchantments into 2/2 Zombies! This Harpy can hit the board before Braids does, and is also an enchantment herself. That means she'll trigger our other cards, like BlightcasterBlightcaster.

This four-drop lets us pick off small creatures every time we cast an enchantment, and even has the ability to remove a larger creature if we concentrate our efforts.

Having repeatable removal is a great way to control the board, and this Human Wizard rewards us for the game actions we'll already be taking.

Speaking of removal, we can use Doomwake GiantDoomwake Giant to wipe out our opponents' board states entirely.

This five-drop is a super powerful way to sweep away everything our opponents have worked so hard to build up, and allows us to remove opposing creatures turn after turn!

There's lots of powerful enchantments available to us. Even if we're sacrificing them often, we can extract a significant amount of value from these cards while they're on the field.

We can remove creatures by using Cacophony UnleashedCacophony Unleashed, Nowhere to RunNowhere to Run, and Momentum BreakerMomentum Breaker.

Once these enchantments' ETB effects have gone off, we're free to sacrifice them with Braids! They may provide a bit of value by sticking on the field, but we can cash them in for a few extra cards whenever we'd like.

Same goes for Hopeless NightmareHopeless Nightmare and Tinybones Joins UpTinybones Joins Up: after these cards' initial ability triggers, they're mostly sacrifice fodder.

We're actually incentivized to sacrifice some of the permanents in our 99. We can access Alien SymbiosisAlien Symbiosis and Demonic EmbraceDemonic Embrace from our 'yard, meaning that sacrificing them isn't of much consequence.

Similarly, Ghoulish ImpetusGhoulish Impetus and Eye of NidhoggEye of Nidhogg tend to stick on the field once we cast them. There's also a "deal with the devil" enchantment here in Treacherous BlessingTreacherous Blessing that we actively want to get rid of!

There's also some more generically powerful enchantments here too, like Bloodchief AscensionBloodchief Ascension, No MercyNo Mercy, and Virtue of PersistenceVirtue of Persistence.

While we've not built around these cards specifically, they'll all make life much more difficult for our opponents.

We've got a few persistent creatures, too, in case we want to incentivize opponents to get rid of their creatures through Braids triggers. BloodghastBloodghast is nearly impossible to kill, for example.

We'll be drawing enough cards to hit our land drops every turn, so this Vampire Spirit won't have a problem coming back to life every turn.

We can also create a steady stream of creature tokens with Elegy AcolyteElegy Acolyte and Ghoulish ProcessionGhoulish Procession, or steal a powerful creature from the graveyard with Abyssal HarvesterAbyssal Harvester!

How Does This Braids Commander Deck Win?

We'll often try to chip away at opposing life totals over time using our commander, Balemurk LeechBalemurk Leech, and Grim GuardianGrim Guardian. These effects may be slow, but if we pair a few of them together the life loss does stack up over time.

With all the cards we'll be drawing from Braids' trigger, we'll also be draining life totals with Gixian PuppeteerGixian Puppeteer and Raven EagleRaven Eagle (while pumping up our own life total with Sheoldred, the ApocalypseSheoldred, the Apocalypse). We can even augment all of these cards' effectiveness by casting a Bloodletter of AclazotzBloodletter of Aclazotz.

But there's a few other ways to win the game in our 99. If we manage to have it stick on the board for three uninterrupted turns, we can run over our opponents with Phoenix Fleet AirshipPhoenix Fleet Airship.

This Vehicle provides a bit of inevitability to our game plan, creating tons of evasive creatures for us to attack with. This is a pretty conspicuous win condition, though, and our opponents are likely to interfere with it before we get to untap with 8 flying 4/4s.

We can also build up a massive Super ShredderSuper Shredder! This Mutant Ninja Human gets a +1/+1 counter when any permanent leaves the field, transforming him a potent, game-ending threat over time.

Finally, if we want to screw over one player in particular, we can make use of Summon: Primal OdinSummon: Primal Odin. This Saga creature's second chapter can take out a player.

It'll be somewhat difficult for us to hit a player with this creature, but we've got enough removal in the deck to clear the way for this Knight once in a while!

Plus, we can sacrifice this creature with Braids on the end step after its second ability triggers, letting us gain even more value from Primal Odin on its way out.

Braids, Arisen Nightmare Commander Deck List

Conclusion

Is this the strongest Braids deck ever created? No, certainly not. But it's an interesting take on the commander that's a bit off the beaten path.

Mono- Aristocrats decks are a dime a dozen these days, so taking this commander in a different direction was a lot of fun.

I could also see this commander being built effectively around artifacts. There's a lot more synergy pieces available for this sort of deck, including several Agent of the Iron ThroneAgent of the Iron Throne style effects that nibble away at opponents' life totals when we sacrifice artifacts.

But I'm quite pleased with how this deck turned out, and how it makes use of our commander in a new way.

If you enjoyed this off-kilter deck tech, please do let me know in the comments! I'll see you all next week, possibly with another unique take on a well-known commander.