Despite being a highly competitive format, Duel Commander still offers plenty of brewing opportunities. Just last weekend, a Knight Typal deck of all things won a small tournament, utilizing a busted mechanic to its advantage. With the help of a potent Reanimator package, this deck can take over games in short order.
Abusing the Eminence Mechanic
This deck piloted by Matouš Pavlovský-fiala has a rather unorthodox game plan, but fortunately, Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir ties everything together. Just by sitting in the Command Zone, this legend turns all of your Knights into looting machines. Given how valuable this is, you’re heavily incentivized to get on board early and enable continuous attacks.
With this in mind, this deck features a bunch of one-mana, hard-to-block Knights like Cecil, Dark Knight, and Changeling Outcast. Other inclusions like Forsworn Paladin and Basri, Tomorrow’s Champion that may eventually lose their luster as attackers come with solid activated abilities to keep them relevant.
Not only will your looting smooth out your draws, but you also get to discard huge haymakers like Hoarding Broodlord and Archon of Cruelty
Archon of CrueltyFlying
Whenever this creature enters or attacks, target opponent sacrifices a creature or planeswalker of their choice, discards a card, and loses 3 life. You draw a card and gain 3 life.. Then, using reanimation effects like Animate Dead and Recurring Nightmare, you can get these monsters into play very quickly and ride them to victory. Notably, some of your reanimation targets, like Summon: Knights of Round and Summon: Primal Odin, also double as Knights, allowing Sidar Jabari to reanimate them directly.
Attacking From Multiple Angles
Ultimately, this dual-threat archetype derives much of its appeal from its versatility. With access to cheap Knights that sneak under counterspells and a Commander that resurrects any that get killed, you’re fully capable of winning fair games versus control.
Yet, against other creature-centric decks like Brigid, Clachan’s Heart where your small Knights quickly get outclassed, your big reanimation targets can still lead you to victory. An early reanimated bomb is particularly helpful for racing combo decks, especially when backed by Thoughtseize
ThoughtseizeTarget player reveals their hand. You choose a nonland card from it. That player discards that card. You lose 2 life. and other discard spells.
Where things unfortunately can go awry, though, is in the face of hate cards, with graveyard hate like Containment Priest being an absolute nightmare. Otherwise, card draw punishers like Orcish Bowmasters
Orcish BowmastersFlash
When this creature enters and whenever an opponent draws a card except the first one they draw in each of their draw steps, this creature deals 1 damage to any target. Then amass Orcs 1. and Narset, Parter of Veils are brutal to face down because Sidar’s Eminence trigger is mandatory.
With these downsides in mind, it’s easy to see why Sidar hasn’t emerged as a top-tier Duel Commander option. Nonetheless, the Commander still has what it takes to compete, as its ability to attack from multiple angles is quite strong if the opponent isn’t prepared.
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