Commander Corner – Xiahou Dun, The One Eyed

Magic the Gathering – Black is my favorite color in magic. I've been slowly tweaking and revisiting my mono black commander deck to fit the playstyle I want. It started as focused on Maga as the general with a ton of ramp to take out or cripple a player each time I choose to bring her into play. While that was fun for a little while eventually it got old. Until I got my hands on Judge Foil of Xiahou Dun.

With Xiahou Dun I was going go the Voltron route with a bunch of artifacts to make him leathal with one swing. This seemed like a great idea for an essentially unblockable general, however his second ability is where I see more potential.

For the most part I kept my mana doublers to ramp up and be able to pay for the genral tax each time I replay and recur a card from my graveyard. And of course no mono black deck would be complete without Exsanguinate, sure it can be a cheesey way to end the game and recurring it over and over will get old, however with a limited amount of tutoring I don't see it often which softens the blow when it comes up.

Really that is one of the things I like about the commander format is the randomness and odd interactions, packing a deck with every tutor you can to get the same game ending combo everytime isn't fun for anyone. My play group does a pretty good job of sticking to this unspoken rule and as such we ignore most of the Banned List. For most of the legendary creatures on the list we restrict them to being one of the 99, this keeps them from showing up to often and if they become a problem the player will remove the offending card for a while or retire their deck for a few weeks. Most of us have 2-8 decks each so it rarely becomes an issue.

This deck is my favorite and I tend to play it at least once every other session, I even picked up some special card sleeves and a nifty demon skull box. The box is really cool and I can put some spin down life counters in the mouth.

Anyway here's the decklist:

Commander – Xiahou Dun

Planeswalkers – Sorin Markov, Liliana of the Dark Realms, Liliana Vess

Creatures – Nantuko Shade, Vault Skirge, Skithiryx, Ink-Eyes Servant of Oni, Necrotic Ooze, Solemn Simulacrum, Maralen of the Mornsong, Phyrexian Obliterator, Helldozer, Scythe Specter, Maga, Traitor to Mortals, Leaden Myr, Nether Traitor, Artisan of Kozilek, Avatar of Woe, Magus of the Coffers, Visara the Dreadful, Chainer, Dementia Master, Balthor the Defiled, Crypt Ghast, Skeletal Vampire, Vampire Hexmage, Nirkana Revenant