Commander Deck Of The Week: Baba Lysaga, Night Witch

When thinking about all the releases for 2022, Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate stands tall as an amazing set for Commander fans.  There were many cool and interesting new commanders to build around, and quite a few of them inspired me to build the decks in paper.  One of them was Baba Lysaga, Night Witch!

I’ve long been a fan of the Golgari color combination, and especially liked the relatively recent Witherbloom style of “lifegain/life drain matters” cards, and I think Baba Lysaga plays quite nicely in this realm, while also being firmly in the old-school camp of Golgari self-sacrifice for profit.

Building Around Baba

The card makes for a really fun build-around. You want a bunch of permanents that count for at least two card types so that you can sacrifice fewer than three permanents to fulfil Baba Lysaga’s condition to make each opponent lose three life, you gain three life, and you draw three cards.

This is quite a potent effect, considering it doesn’t cost any mana to activate. You just tap your commander to do it, which means you could set things up to activate multiple times in a turn if you really wanted to push things to a higher power level.  However, I’ve found for most Commander pods, activating Baba Lysaga just once a turn is plenty to keep the cards flowing, as well as the game progressing due to the life loss. It’s also nice that there’s no timing restriction, so you can sacrifice some chump blockers that might otherwise be dying in combat.

Okay, let’s dig into the deck!

Enchantment Creatures

Looking for cards with multiple types, Golgari offers a fair number of quality enchantment creatures we can make use of. I particularly love Arasta of the Endless Web, since it churns out token creatures that can potentially be sacrificed each time an opponent casts an instant or sorcery spell (though sadly the tokens themselves aren’t enchantment creatures). Pharika, God of Affliction actually does make enchantment creature tokens, and with Baba Lysaga there should be no shortage of creatures in our graveyard to feed it. 

One of my all-time favorite cards of Standard at the time is Courser of Kruphix, but I haven’t played it much in Commander due to the liability of revealing the top card of your library to three opponents. However, I think getting to squeeze land drop value from it a few turns and then cash it in with Baba Lysaga makes it worth running.

Artifact Creatures

Of course, artifact creatures have been a part of Magic since Alpha, so we can double-dip on the card type there as well. Cards that make artifact creature tokens are particularly valuable, like Retrofitter Foundry, Hangarback Walker and Canoptek Scarab Swarm.  Cathodion is a fun inclusion, since when it dies you get three colorless mana, which might help cast another spell or two you just drew from Baba Lysaga.

Psychosis Crawler is one artifact creature we’ll want to keep around if possible, since it compounds the life loss for each Baba Lysaga activation. But it’s also going to be quite the lightning rod for removal, in which case it might as well get tossed into the Night Witch’s cauldron of pain!

Multi-Type Lands

Lands that become creatures are another way to squeeze two card types onto one card, and if that creature is an artifact creature, you’ve got three card types in one!  So Inkmoth Nexus, Blinkmoth Nexus, Mishra’s Foundry, and Mishra’s Factory become slam-dunk inclusions. Artifact lands like Darksteel Citadel are another way to get two card types in one card.

Other Multi-Type Cards

Liquimetal Coating and Liquimetal Torque are impressive tools for painting a third card type on a card you want to sacrifice to Baba Lysaga, with your enchantment creatures being perfect targets for this.  They also let your artifact removal spells take down non-artifacts once you apply that nice Liquimetal paint.  Biotransference is a weird card from Warhammer 40,000 Commander that makes all your creature cards into artifact creatures, and whenever you cast an artifact spell, you get to create a 2/2 artifact creature token that’s ripe for Baba Lysaga’s sacrifice.

Gala Greeters and Tireless Provisioner will churn out some extra artifacts we can sacrifice, and Awaken the Woods will create a bunch of land creatures for sacrifice as well.  Lignify is a nifty enchantment that also has the tribal card type stapled on, so it’s another two-for.

Creature Recursion

Since we’re playing black, we have access to a lot of ways to bring creatures back from the graveyard. I love the old standbys like Bloodsoaked Champion, Nether Traitor and Reassembling Skeleton, along with the new cool Cryptek. Cauldron of Souls is a lovely way to bring back creatures when they die, but it has the political ramifications of helping an opponent in the face of a battlefield sweeper. Notably, Baba Lysaga has three toughness, so you can bring it back with the Cauldron.

Enchantment Recursion

The perfect way to add a card type to an artifact creature is to enchant it with an Aura enchantment that will come back to our hand when we sacrifice it and the creature it enchants with Baba Lysaga, which is why I’m running Rancor, Aspect of Mongoose, and Glistening Oil.  Demonic Embrace doesn’t come back to our hand, but we can discard a card to cast it from the graveyard. In a pinch, you could just load up a creature with Rancor, Demonic Embrace, and Glistening Oil to kill someone with poison damage!

Land Recursion

I’m loath to sacrifice lands in Commander, since I typically want to hit all land drops early and often, so I wanted to include ways to bring lands back from the graveyard.  I really like Erinis, Gloom Stalker for this, since you can get a land back simply by attacking, while Ramunap Excavator and Perennial Behemoth just let you play lands from your graveyard.  Later in the game, Drownyard Temple can be sacrificed and brought back from the graveyard by its own ability.

Dies Triggers

Golgari is normally all about dies triggers, so I wanted to include at least a few of them in my deck.  Journey to Eternity is great here, since you can enchant a creature and then sacrifice it to Baba Lysaga to immediately get its dies trigger, getting the sacrificed creature back as well as Atzal, Cave of Eternity – which is yet another way to bring creatures back from the graveyard.

Yedora, Grave Gardener turns any sacrificed creature into a Forest land card that you could potentially sacrifice later, or just enjoy the ramp.  And then of course there is the classic Kokusho, the Evening Star, ready to die for Baba Lysaga to drain everyone for an extra five life and giving that life to you.

Lifegain Matters

The Witherbloom side of the deck makes itself known!  Accomplished Alchemist will tap for three mana after a Baba Lysaga activation, letting you take advantage of the extra cards you’ve drawn.  Similarly, Ezzaroot Channeler will let you discount your creature spells by three or more, depending on how much life you’ve gained; the two of them active and together can make it so that you’re not at all missing those lands that you’re sacrificing. Blossoming Bogbeast can easily pump even just a few creatures to threatening levels with a Baba Lysaga activation.

Silversmote Ghoul from Commander 2021 seems custom-made for Baba Lysaga sacrificing, since you’ll be getting that three life you need to return it to the battlefield tapped.

Removal

I’ve got a few high-quality removal spells available in Golgari. Glissa Sunseeker is doubly good with two ways to turn permanents my opponents have into artifacts. And all three modes of Golgari Charm can be surprisingly useful in various game states.

More Mana

I’ve decided to utilize Exploration and Wayward Swordtooth, cards that let you make extra land drops and take advantage of the raw card draw power of Baba Lysaga so that you can still make progress with your mana even if you’re sacrificing lands.

Belbe, Corrupted Observer is a powerhouse card here. If you activate Baba Lysaga prior to your postcombat main phase, you’ll get three colorless mana for each opponent that lost life to cast all sorts of spells.

Other Goodies

Thousand-Year Elixir is a slam-dunk inclusion whenever your commander has a tap ability, giving that ability haste and the potential of activating twice in a turn.  I just recently added Cultivator Colossus, and while I haven’t drawn it yet, the idea is that I’ll often have multiple lands in hand from Baba Lysaga activations that I can chain into a bunch of extra land drops and card draws. Seven mana is a lot, but I’m hoping that between Belbe, Ezzaroot Channeler, and Accomplished Alchemist I can get there.  What do you think?

The List

Okay, here is the full decklist:

Here are the deck stats from our friends at Archidekt:

What must-have cards might I have missed including in this deck?  Would you push to make it more combo-oriented or do you prefer the grind?

Talk to Me

Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter!  I run polls and start conversations about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun!  You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.

I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can.  If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel.  You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews. 

And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.