(Mikaeus, the Unhallowed | Art by Chris Rahn)

Technically Playable - Mikaeus, the Unhallowed

Welcome to Technically Playable, where our mission statement is "Every commander is Technically playable" (the best kind of playable). The way this works is every article will have a commander generated using EDHREC's random button, I'll talk through the card and then write about how we can build around it!

This week's random commander is Mikaeus, the Unhallowed.

Mikaeus is a Zombie Cleric that has two small abilities and one massive one. The small ones are Intimidate, a keyword that makes him almost unblockable, only being able to be blocked by black and Artifact creatures. The second small ability is effectively No Mercy stapled onto a creature. The last, and best, of his abilities means that any non-Humans you control get +1/+1 and undying, a free reanimate when it dies that puts a +1/+1 counter onto it as long as it doesn't have one already (to prevent it going infinite by itself). This ability is amazing at both enabling a resilient aggressive deck and creating a monstrous combo deck that wins fairly consistently on turn six.

Mikaeus has been a powerhouse card in Commander for as long as I can remember. One of my friends is infamous for his love of combo decks and Mikaeus was one of the first I was a victim of. I see Mikaeus as having two really good routes to go down that each benefit from his best ability.

The "Good" Deck

Now obviously "good" is subjective, and based on playgroup and all of that good stuff. But when I say "good" here, what I really mean is fast. And hoo boy is Mikaeus one fast, shamblin' zombie. As I mentioned above, this deck can and does win consistently on turn six. If that's not your kind of thing I totally understand, but I've played against (and borrowed) this deck a few times and it can be surprisingly fun if you're looking to shape things up in your pod. Honestly, it's also one of the cheaper combo decks out there! The way the combos work with all of the cards I'm going to talk about is that can either remove counters from itself like Spincrusher or can't have counters put onto it like Tatterkite. You then need a way to kill that creature once it has no counters, in this category you can use a few options like Phyrexian Altar for infinite mana. Triskelion is the best card here because it can not only remove counters from itself to deal damage but it can also use its last counter to deal one damage to itself to die and return all of the counters again. Mikaeus has plenty more combos to choose from over on Commander Spellbook.

Let's break down the deck with some more specifics to show off some of the weird and wonderful cards this combo deck can have.

The Enablers

The section looks at all of the cards that help Mikaeus "go off" and allow the combo to work. I've already talked about Triskelion, so I won't talk about the "Trike" part of the "Mike and Trike" combo that Mikaeus and Triskelion have affectionately become known as. It's kind of like their celebrity couple's name. I'll also get one card out of the way straight away, Walking Ballista. While you'd think that this is just another Triskelion, our playgroup did when it was first spoiled, it falls foul of a couple of things. Unfortunately, Mikaeus gives +1/+1 to non-Humans which means that when you remove the last counter from Walking Ballista it stays alive unless it targets itself. This does mean you can combo with a second card in play, something like Blood Artist but unlike Triskelion it's not just a two-card win with Mikaeus. The other thing that makes it fall short is it's biggest difference to Triskelion. Because Triskelion is six mana it comes in with some counters already. This means that it can deal damage to opponents as well as to itself. This is what makes it into a two-card combo with Mikaeus.

As well as Walking Ballista and Triskelion Mikaeus does have some rather weird enablers that you never really see in other decks. Because of the way that counters work, if you put a -1/-1 and a +1/+1 counter onto a creature they cancel each other out and are removed, this works perfectly with Mikaeus as you can use cards like Chainbreaker to work as a second Tatterkite or anything with Persist (a keyword that acts as the reverse of Undying by giving a -1/-1 counter instead of a +1/+1) like Puppeteer Clique to steal a bunch of stuff from graveyards, or if you want something a bit more mana efficient you can go with my personal favorite pauper win condition Putrid Goblin. And if you can find a payoff that needs activated ability mana, like Walking Ballista, or if you want to go to the bottom of the barrel Lesser Masticore, you can even play Cryptic Trilobite which can remove its own counters to give you infinite mana for activated abilities.

And of course, if you want to go down a bit more of a classic Commander combo route (if Mikaeus & Triskelion wasn't classic enough for you) Mikaeus is a Zombie so you can enable Gravecrawler combos with things like Phyrexian Altar and Pitiless Plunderer or even exploring some Aetherflux Reservoir lines to win.

The Payoffs

Now we've seen the cards you can loop fairly easily. Now let's look at some of the things you can do with that.

For starters, there is infinite mana. If you use Phyrexian Altar or Ashnod's Altar as your method of sacrificing counterless creatures, these can effectively loop forever giving you either any amount of colored mana of your choice or any amount of colorless. These are great because they enable you to play anything you need to win the game. The only downside is that they aren't enough to win the game on the spot, you need some kind of mana sink. There are a few options here; Staff of Domination is particularly good as it allows you to draw your entire deck or gain an infinite amount of life. Both of which are probably enough to get your opponents to concede, or are enough to find a way to win. In terms of actually winning the game, Exsanguinate used to be a particularly popular option, but Torment of Hailfire has kind of usurped its place since if you can't go infinite you can also use this to take apart your opponent's hands and/or boards. There is another alternative though, both of these require you to try to win on the spot or you lose your mana and have to go through the loop again. Pitiless Plunderer gives you treasures rather than mana, this allows you to generate all of the resources you need while your opponents don't have any way to interact with you and hold it up for the future in case you don't have the win in hand and let you play a combo game that goes a little longer than usual.

While infinite mana is great it does have some drawbacks, for example, it doesn't always win you the game without the right combo. What we need is some cards that win us the game on the spot. Starting with some Commander all-stars; Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat are both excellent options as they are incredibly mana efficient and allow you to play them easily before your combo without needing too many resources to do so. An alternative to these is Bastion of Remembrance. Since this is not a creature, it's harder for opponents to interact with and allows you to set it up a few turns before your combo to make sure you have all of the mana needed to win the game. It also provides a one-off blocker that can pad your life total out a little and help keep you healthy enough to get to the turns where you can win. And if you're not able to win through life loss, you can always use Altar of Dementia to mill out your opponents or it can even double up as "card draw" allowing you to mill yourself to a win condition that you can Reanimate.

I asked my friend (who is a long-time Mikaeus expert) for some words of wisdom, for any of you who want to explore the combo version of Mikaeus. He gave me these tips:

1. "Literally never cast this guy until you're going to win"

2. "If someone kills him you might as well pick your lands up because he's too hard to cast again"

After picking your poison in terms of combos you then just want to finish the deck off with tutors, to ensure you get to your combo consistently and some generic "good stuff" like Crypt Ghast, Bitterblossom and Skullclamp. Then you want some ways to prevent your opponents from interacting with you. The meanest way is to play Contamination which locks your opponents out of playing any non-black cards and when paired with Bitterblossom gives you plenty of time to put your combo together.

Mikaeus is definitely not the best or even the most efficient combo deck in the format, he probably wouldn't do well in a CEDH or even a high-powered, very tuned casual pod, but he can do some work in games and is a good pick up for those looking to explore more combos as he is very linear and easy to just shuffle up and play with.

The Zombie Deck

Now the combo-heavy version of this deck is probably the more common version, but if you're looking for something a little more low-powered, or maybe even if you're a big Zombie fan and want something a little different to the typical Gisa and Geralf or Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver decks, Mikaeus does offer up an aggressive alternative that can be very resilient against boardwipes and provide you with some added value from undying.

This deck obviously wants to run your typical Zombie stuff, the lords like Death Baron and Lord of the Accursed offer up some pseudo evasion in the form of deathtouch and menace giving your opponents a reason to stop and think about blocking your 2/2s. Undead Warchief also provides double benefits in that it makes your general Zombies easier to cast but also makes Mikaeus a little less hard dropping it from six mana to five and even dropping it to seven instead of eight if he is removed. This is a lot of mana but I'll come onto that in a bit.

Zombies also have a great package of card draw advantages that a lot of other creature types simply don't have. Undead Augur and Midnight Reaper give a ton of value when your Zombies die (spoiler alert, Zombies die a bunch) and the small amount of life you have to pay is mostly negligible in Commander but you could always slam Whip of Erebos into your deck if you're worried about it. The Whip also allows you to have a one-off reanimation of a creature, this can be particularly good if you've had to put Mikaeus into the graveyard and want to have one big swing against an opponent.

The undying that Mikaeus provides is great for just the small recursion factor of stuff randomly dying. It can also create a monstrous engine that will get you so far ahead that your opponents probably won't be able to come back. Fleshbag Marauder and Merciless Executioner are amazing removal options as they get around hexproof and indestructible. With Mikaeus, they allow you to sacrifice them twice allowing you to effectively sacrifice one creature in exchange for two from each opponent. In terms of winning the game, the menace and +1/+1 from Mikaeus is one route to go. There's also another Zombie that can help with this, good old Gary. For those of you that don't know "Gary" is the term the community has coined for Gray Merchant of Asphodel. Even if you just have Mikaeus and Gray Merchant in play, that is five life losses for each opponent and 15 life for you in a four-player game, scaling upwards the more players in the game. This obviously becomes extremely powerful with undying and if you want to get even more value out of this you can always run Retribution of the Ancients as a removal spell and a way to double up on undying triggers.

In terms of removal we're going pretty typical for Zombies. Noxious Ghoul is the best removal spell we have, very easily killing any non-Zombie creature and even getting around hexproof and indestructible (these keywords pretty much mean nothing to Zombies). Zombie Apocalypse is pretty narrow but can sometimes completely cripple an opponent allowing you to run them over, it can also pair nicely with the likes of Noxious Ghoul to act as a massive Toxic Deluge or The Meathook Massacre to clear the board. Probably my favorite "board wipe" for Zombies is definitely Living Death. It's really easy to set yourself up in a way that allows you to have a much better graveyard than everyone else to get the most benefit, you can get a ton of value out of sacrificing all of your creatures because of the cards like Undead Augur and additionally you can even get your sacrificed creatures back if Mikaeus is in play as he sees them all die at the same time as him and you still get the undying benefit. And of course, Living Death is amazing with Noxious Ghoul.

There are so many different Zombie cards for value, for removal, or for winning the game that it would take four or five articles to cover them all. I think these are probably the core that you should look at including with Mikaeus. From there, personalize it with your favorite cards - that's the best bit about deck-building in Commander!

As with all Technically Playable articles, this was a very quick look at Mikaeus, the Unhallowed as a commander and a few of the cards that can really make a deck with this commander tick. I hope you found this article enjoyable or useful, whether you like to combo out your opponents or if you just want to overwhelm them with an army of undead.

Let me know in the comments below if you play Mikaeus, if you want to build a Mikaeus deck, or even if you just enjoyed this article!

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Paul Palmer

Hey there, I'm Paul. I've been writing about magic for a really long time. I love to write about obscure commanders (one of my really early articles back in 2015 was about Skeleton Ship) and how you can make decks around them work, no matter how unplayable they are. I love Gruul, I love Mountains and I love casting Lightning Bolt.