One of my favourite elements of Commander is sitting down at a table for a game with new players and having the opportunity to learn from them, and having them learn from you. One of the coolest though, in my opinion, is when you can subvert their expectations, by bringing a more different or less straightforward strategy than your Commander might suggest.
I build a lot of Commander decks. A LOT. I've played many, many different strategies and I spend a lot of my spare time researching and trying to perfect them. Recently, I've scrounged together a Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest deck utilising Eldrazi Spawn and Grave Pact-style effects to overpower and outlast my opponents. "Wait, that's not subverting expectations! That's just what Mazirek does, right?", I'm sure you're thinking. And you're right! Mazirek is fairly narrow in his design space, requiring a fair few important (and rarely interchangeable) pieces to stay online, and they almost always need to involve sacrifice outlets and +1/+1 counter synergies. This means that the deck can very easily end up being "just another Mazirek deck", with the same interactions and bombs you would expect from any Golgari Reanimator shell.
I played my original list for only about 4 months and yes, it fell into exactly that philosophy. Originally, I had tossed up the idea of simply switching the deck to Tymna the Weaver and Reyhan, Last of the Abzan, and using cards like Adarkar Valkyrie, Reveillark and Martyr's Bond to even further abuse the 'Aristocrats' design of the deck, with Cathar's Crusade, Abzan Battle Priest and maybe even Archangel of Thune to round out more +1/+1 counter synergies and make the White addition feel more relevant. (or just throw in Smothering Tithe, am I right?) When push came to shove, I just stuck with The Mantis Minister, but I was the first to admit he deserved to be on the throne of a far more interesting and unique deck. I instantly shredded what i had, and started again. This time, though, with the question, "What can Mazirek actually do?"
"Whenever a player sacrifices another permanent, put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control."
When deciding what to do with The Bug Bishop, it's important to find out where he's powerful. A player being in the text means that Grave Pact-style effects are going to be staple in any Mazirek deck (4 is better than 1, quick maths!), so we immediately include those. A permanent can be basically anything that could be sacrificed, too, so there's more room to dig there. Do we go Landfall, abusing cards like Evolving Wilds and other, stronger Fetch lands, Harrow, Crucible of Worlds etc? No, that makes perfect sense. Each. What about a going-wide, worded mechanic? Golgari Revolt seems pretty unjustifiable, and I'm just going to avoid Persist for reasons, but maybe there's something there?
That's when it hit me. If we go full '2016 Riot Games' and just remove Azir from the equation entirely, we go from Mazirek to just Mek. And what more is a mech than simply a robot that needs a pilot? Who doesn't like robots? And with that (utter nonsense), Modular Mazirek was born.
Modular is an awesome keyword that only existed on a small sample of Artifact Creatures from the original Darksteel block (and 1 printed very recently in Modern Horizons) that share the "Arcbound" archetype. They start with some amount of +1/+1 counters on them, and when they die, all +1/+1 counters they had on them when they died move to a new artifact creature. So basically, in 1 keyword, we've covered 2 of the 3 elements of The Cicada Cardinal (I'm really reaching here), that is the +1/+1 counters and death triggers, which can both interact with sacrificing permanents.
The best part about Modular is that not only does it open a lot of doors, it firmly constitutes itself to an entire engine that Mazirek could always play. Not only are we putting counters onto Hangarback Walker for a huge Thopter army with Mazirek, we're throwing on upwards of 20+ more counters if we sacrificed a few modular creatures to get there. An army of thopters is impressive, but with Walking Ballista, this can just kill a player, straight up. Crystalline Crawler is an amazing card to just lump a tonne of counters onto, as it can extend your entire play with more and more mana as you sacrifice more and more permanents, which is crazy!
The more cards I unpack with this experiment, the more I can easily see more and more and more interactions and inclusions. Scrap Trawler makes a huge impact in basically any artifact-focused deck, let alone a deck centered almost entirely around "an artifact you control is put into a graveyard from the battlefield" so it's no surprise it's a contender. Kuldotha Forgemaster looks hard and fast for some of your most important pieces, and Steel Overseer is going to keep on pumping your board-state each and every turn for a measly 2 mana.
Most Mazirek decks will include a package of token-generating effects in order to make sure that each element of his text gets some recognition. Sacrificing all of your creatures is great, but what's the point if you have nothing to put those counters on? There are plenty of examples of amazing token generators in both Black and Green, far too many to show and list here. Notable inclusions are Avenger of Zendikar, Mycoloth and Abhorrent Overlord, but I'm more excited about the kinds of tokens we can really make use of, besides the obvious punch-them-until-they're-dead strategy.
Treasures! Token artifacts that sacrifice themselves at no cost! FOR MANA?! This is almost exactly what we're looking for! Now if only there was a way for our creatures dying to inter-
It's almost like this deck was destined to exist. With cards like Pitiless Plunderer and even Revel in Riches we can make a large surplus of treasure, deciding either to spend them early in the game for some incremental advantage throughout the match, or we can stockpile a huge amount for an explosive combat step with Mazirek pumping all our creatures for every treasure we sacrifice! There are so many powerful artifact-centric options for Black and Green, even without the Blue!
Even Throne of Eldraine, a set which I have been fairly critical of, has it's own share of interactions with what we're building. Food aren't creatures, which means they won't be getting pumped by Mazirek and Modular isn't going to interact. BUT these little tokens come stitched with a self-sacrifice ability, allowing you to at the very least to set yourself up a few before Mazirek hits the board and then go wide very quickly. 3 life per Food sacrificed isn't much, but it really adds up. The point of Food here is quantity over quality. Gluttonous Troll (usually), Taste of Death and Giant Opportunity each grant us 3 Food tokens each, and with cards like Kuldotha Forgemaster these cards can get pretty dirty.
Unfortunately, I'm hard at work on this list and it's still in its infancy. If you consider any of the choices sub-optimal, like I said there are a huge amount of options for you out there, new and old. You can always take your own angle with this surprisingly flexible commander. This deck is fast and strong, and you won't be disappointed. You can find my list here. I'll leave you with this; Sometimes you have to read between the lines in order to find the intricacies- Birthing Pod. It's Birthing Pod. Thank you.
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