Commander Deck of the Week: Myrkul, Lord of Bones

Ever since Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate came out, I’ve been keeping my eye on Myrkul, Lord of Bones. It seemed like such an interesting spin on an enchantment deck – exiling any creature of yours that dies and making a non-creature enchantment copy of it. Abzan is typically quite good at bringing back creatures from the graveyard, but Myrkul exiles your creatures when they die for its effect. So, graveyard recursion would not really play well with the strategy. At the same time, Myrkul costs a whopping seven mana to cast, and you couldn’t assume that none of your creatures would die before Myrkul hits the battlefield. Designing a Commander deck around Myrkul was an interesting nut to crack. Over time, I set aside cards that I thought would go in the deck, and late this summer I finally got around to finalizing the list and sleeving it up!

The breakthrough for me was realizing that I should just play a bunch of good creatures with abilities that could be useful later as a non-creature enchantment but are still quite good even if that doesn’t happen. To be honest, creatures with sweet abilities have always been my jam in Magic, so this wasn’t a problem for me. I did keep an eye out for synergies that would specifically benefit from Myrkul’s ability, but generally speaking, this is just a big pile of sweet creature spells!

Let’s pop the hood and take a look at the decklist:

Creatures with Activated Abilities

I’m a major fan of Marshland Bloodcaster since it can help cast your expensive commanders ahead of curve, and the life loss can actually help enable Myrkul’s indestructible ability if you’re willing to go down that far in life. I also love that Wall of Roots can help get Myrkul onto the battlefield, and once it dies you get a Wall of Roots enchantment that can just provide you an extra green mana each turn for the remainder of the game.

Saryth, the Viper’s Fang provides some nice protection to Myrkul (and your other creatures) from targeted removal once it hits the battlefield, and the untap ability can be useful too – such as with Mother of Runes!

Destiny Spinner lets you push creature spells past countermagic, and later in the game after Myrkul is pushing out enchantments, Spinner’s activated ability can do some damage.

Creatures That Die for Profit

Ideally, you’d like your creatures to survive long enough for Myrkul to hit the battlefield, so I’m running the full boat of “protect your team” – Selfless Spirit, Boromir, Warden of the Tower, and even Dauntless Escort. Saffi Eriksdotter can even rebuy one of these to use again.

Seedguide Ash doesn’t sacrifice itself but has a pretty sweet ability that triggers when it dies – ramping for three Forests is big game, and since it doesn’t specify basic Forests you can go ahead and snag a couple Triomes or shock lands.

Creatures with Enter the Battlefield Abilities

Creatures with enter the battlefield abilities are the meat and potatoes of Commander, and with Myrkul you potentially get that sweet, sweet trigger again when it dies. I particularly like the initiative creatures since they have abilities that can be used even if they’re a noncreature Myrkul enchantment. Undermountain Adventurer tapping for two or six mana?  Yes please!  Plus, you know I love the dungeon mechanic, and Undercity is the best one!

Sacrifice Outlets

Sometimes you’ll want to make sure a creature dies while Myrkul is on the battlefield, so I’m running some sacrifice outlets to facilitate that (such as Seedguide Ash mentioned above). How fun that, even if Yahenni somehow dies and is copied as a non-creature enchantment, it can still sacrifice a creature to make itself indestructible.

Constellation

Even though I’m not a full-blown enchantment deck, I do have a fair number of enchantments and of course once Myrkul starts making non-creature enchantments these constellation triggers will add up.  I especially like Archon of Sun’s Grace, since it creates those Pegasus tokens with lifelink, and that lifegain can be quite helpful in lasting long enough for Mykrul’s advantages to build up.

Enchantments Matter

Weaver of Harmony is going to do wild things here that it’ll never do in any other enchantment deck – let’s copy a Mother of Runes or a Setessan Champion ability!  I’m also looking forward to copying non-creature Myrkul enchantments with Yenna – how about another Disciple of Bolas for more cards?

Spice

Even though Myrkul is sure to durdle with the best of them, I did want to have some ways to put things over the top, so I’ve included the Vizier of Remedies and Devoted Druid combo for unbounded green mana. Conveniently, if either one of them dies while Myrkul is on the battlefield, they become non-creature enchantments and can still do their thing. Barrenton Medic can prevent all damage dealt to you or a player if there is a Vizier on the battlefield, or if it becomes a Myrkul enchantment, or you can even enchant it with a Swift Reconfiguration – which is an Aura that Yenna can appreciate.

Jaheira, Friend of the Forest gives all your tokens the ability to tap for a green mana, and Myrkul enchantments are tokens – this will help you recast your expensive commander if you need to. Tendershoot Dryad churns out Saproling tokens each upkeep whether it’s a creature or a non-creature enchantment.

Storm of Souls is my one “mass reanimation” spell to get back creatures that died prior to casting Myrkul. Even though they’re 1/1 creatures, you still get all that value from them, and once they die again you’ll copy them as non-creature enchantments.

Card Draw

In addition to the card draw I mentioned above, I wanted to run additional sources to keep the cards flowing and the land drops going. Since I want creatures to be dying, Skullclamp is perfect here. I also really like Shadowheart, Dark Justiciar since it’s also a sacrifice outlet. And of course, Stinging Study is a must have in any Commander deck with a high-cost commander!

Removal

I leaned towards creature cards for much of my removal suite to keep up synergies with my game plan, but sometimes you’ll want faster interaction (like Swords to Plowshares) or bigger effects (like the awesome Exterminatus). With so many artifact tokens being made these days, I’ve been slotting Manglehorn into more and more decks – slowing down a Treasure deck from going off in a single turn can mean the difference between losing on the spot and living for another turn.

Interaction

I like that Blind Obedience also slows down Treasure decks and does a respectable job of shutting down haste creatures, which can be crucial to surviving long enough to cast your seven-mana commander. Dragonlord Dromoka’s static ability is fantastic for a deck that’s playing a lot of creatures, and it very often gets targeted by removal spells but hey, works just as well as a noncreature Myrkul enchantment!

Mana Ramp

Wall of Roots, Undermountain Adventurer and Devoted Druid can provide extra mana, but I wanted some other ramp sources too, particularly Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach since they let you search up two basic lands and ensure all three colors are fixed. I also tossed in Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma since it shaves a whopping two mana from my commander, and any other high-power creatures I want to cast. Myrkul could use trample too, so sometimes I’d like them both to attack in tandem.

Okay, here’s the full deck list!

Here are the deck stats from our friends at Archidekt:

So, what must-have cards might I have missed including here?  What is your enchantments matter commander?

Talk to Me

Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter!  I run polls and get conversations started 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.