Hello folks! I hope that you are having a great day today! And that you are staying safe in our modern COVID World.

Today I want to look at the Golgari-est Dimir leader I've ever seen, Kels, Fight Fixer.

As an Azra, Kels is obviously from a certain world we've seen in a certain expansion already. (It was in Battlebond...) Kels loves to fix those fights! I named Kels the seventh-best new card in my Top Ten New Cards from Jumpstart article, which you can check out here.

What makes Kels so interesting to me is that she is in the wrong color for her ability. Let's unpack her.

Menace may not be flying, but any ship in the storm, right? She's cheap and easy to cast in case you don't control any Blue mana. As you sacrifice dorks, you can spend a Blue or Black mana to turn those dying dorks into cards. That's powerful long-term card advantage.

You also have a sacrifice on a stick as you can sacrifice your other dorks to give Kels indestructible to save her from removal both mass and targeted. Note that her ability will only trigger for your sacrifices, but you can both sacrifice and get the card from her alone.

How does she ping my Golgari senses? Turning death into life? Let me show you...

Meren of Clan Nel Toth is the most popular Golgari leader according to EDHREC.com. She turns dying dorks of your own into experience counters which she'll use to recur stuff for free, thus card advantage. Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest turns sacrifices of anything by anybody into free counters for your team. It doesn't end there! The Gitrog Monster turns your dying lands into cards. Slimefoot, the Stowaway turns your dying Saprolings into a life drain trigger of damage to them and life gain for you.

This sacrifice into something valuable is the Golgari way. Thus, Kels pings my Golgari-dar. But as you can see, she's no Golgari! She's in the wrong colors. That means she'll have access to blue cards like Mulldrifter!

What does that mean for this deck?

The bad side of this trading Golgari for Dimir:

• No mass land searching like Cultivate
• No destruction of artifacts, flyers, and enchantments like Krosan Grip
• No Regrowth's like Regrowth

No mass token makers for the engine like Grizzly Fate

The good side of this trade:

• Counters like Counterspell
• Stealing like Agent of Treachery
• Bounce like Cyclonic Rift
• Mass card draw like Mulldrifter

That is a useful swap to me. Don't forget that Black can still recur dorks and kill any creature or planeswalker. It can answer lands if you care to (I don't need Sinkholes and Rain of Tears and such, but they are there if you wanted to dip into that space). We have enough colorless mana rocks and dorks like Solemn Simulacrum that we'll be fine.

What cards leap out at me?

Three archetypes of cards I'll be looking for in this deck.

1. Sacrifice Engines - Consider Attrition. It's a fun card. It'll swap a creature with a newly slain opposing one, and you can turn the sacrificed body into a card for a mana. Sounds fun! I want to have enough sacrifice engines to matter.
2. Token Makers - Green's token making loss is sad, but we have enough Sengir Autocrat that make tokens in Black that I want to emphasize them where possible. After all, tokens dying are going to trigger Kels.
3. Triggers for Death - Not just Kels should have a death or sacrifice trigger. Cards like Syr Konrad, the Grim are useful as ways to push my death dealing ways into people's faces.

And then after that I want to run support like counters and card draw, creatures and planeswalkers that push the theme. Let's look at some cool cards I added and then the deck!

I heard that you want sacrifices! I got you covered with the normal sacrifice engines as well as something cool like Barter in Blood. Barter in Blood both advances your board play as you kill other dorks hanging around and let's you net some gas for your Kels or other triggers you may want to trigger. From Blood Artist to Kels herself this is a great fit for my brew!

I am also running all of the creatures that do this like Fleshbag Marauder. I can just sacrifice them to themselves if I want and trigger the triggers of Ye Olde Decke.

Kels, Fight Fixer is not the only recent card getting added to this brew. Check out Ikoria's Bastion of Remembrance. It's great here! Another great new card? Core Set 2021's Malefic Scythe! It arrives with a +1/+1 giving soul counter. Then spend a mana and toss it on some fuel about to die. Sacrifice it for the cause, and this gets bigger. Both its cast and equip costs are mega cheap and you'll grab yourself a cool new toy to play in Kels' Crib of Lost Souls.

For a great throwback card, check out Westvale Abbey and Ormendahl, Profane Prince that it can become! It makes dorks for the engines and sacrifices them as an engine as well! Its creatures are Back and White but its color identity is just Black with Ormendahl rocking around with Black. This deck is Dimir, so a card like this is great here. Ormendahl is a killer of many players with its powerful slate of abilities and size! Note that it untaps so you can swing with your hasted Prince immediately.

Want a planeswalker that supports this build tightly? Fans of Liliana, I got you covered! Liliana, Dreadhorde General is awesome here! Draw even more cards! Her +1 makes creatures for the sacrificing, and force sacrifices with her Barter in Blood -4 ability. We also have the Death's Majesty version of Liliana here for making those Zombies. She'll also prove useful in recurring a dead dork to the battlefield. Given its high sacrifice rate, this deck may have a few of those!

For those reasons, Ashiok, Nightmare Muse is also running around. That +1 is better than Liliana, Death's Majesty's +1 as the dork is bigger and has a cool ability attached. Sacrifice fodder awaits! The bounce -3 is pretty saucy as well as it can bounce anything that is not a land that slipped past your counter shield such as a key planeswalker. It's ideal here, and if your foe has no cards in hand it will exile the bounced card instead, very flexible and powerful in the mid and late game as folks are top decking.

Speaking about having a lot of dead dorks, having Blue in this build lets me add in Commander powerhouse Havengul Lich. For one mana I can recast dead creatures from my graveyard. Havengul Lich is a powerhouse in this build! I don't have a lot of activated abilities to copy, but that won't matter much here, am I right?

Let's do it to it!

You Got Your Golgari in my Dimir

Kels, Fight Fixer | Commander | Abe Sargent

• Commander (1)
• 1 Kels, Fight Fixer

• Creatures (35)
• 1 Agent of Treachery
• 1 Baleful Strix
• 1 Blood Artist
• 1 Bloodghast
• 1 Chittering Witch
• 1 Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder
• 1 Erebos, Bleak-Hearted
• 1 Fleshbag Marauder
• 1 Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1 Grave Titan
• 1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 1 Grim Haruspex
• 1 Havengul Lich
• 1 Merciless Executioner
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Nadir Kraken
• 1 Ophiomancer
• 1 Pawn of Ulamog
• 1 Phyrexian Rager
• 1 Plaguecrafter
• 1 Ravenous Chupacabra
• 1 Reassembling Skeleton
• 1 Sengir Autocrat
• 1 Shriekmaw
• 1 Sifter of Skulls
• 1 Viscera Seer
• 1 Woe Strider
• 1 Zulaport Cutthroat
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Pilgrim's Eye
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Sidisi, Undead Vizier
• 1 Syr Konrad, the Grim
• 1 Venser, Shaper Savant
• 1 Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

• Planeswalkers (4)
• 1 Ashiok, Nightmare Muse
• 1 Cloudkin
• 1 Liliana, Death's Majesty
• 1 Liliana, Dreadhorde General

• Instants (6)
• 1 Capsize
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Disallow
• 1 Dismiss
• 1 Fact or Fiction

• Sorceries (5)
• 1 Barter in Blood
• 1 Blood for Bones
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Grim Tutor
• 1 Living Death

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Attrition
• 1 Bastion of Remembrance
• 1 Bitterblossom
• 1 Dictate of Erebos
• 1 Grave Pact
• 1 Phyrexian Arena

• Artifacts (9)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Armillary Sphere
• 1 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Malefic Scythe
• 1 Nim Deathmantle
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots

• Lands (34)
• 4 Island
• 4 Swamp
• 1 Choked Estuary
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Darkslick Shores
• 1 Dimir Aqueduct
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Dust Bowl
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Fabled Passage
• 1 Fetid Pools
• 1 High Market
• 1 Jwar Isle Refuge
• 1 Maze of Ith
• 1 Morphic Pool
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Sunken Hollow
• 1 Sunken Ruins
• 1 Tainted Isle
• 1 Temple of Deceit
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Thriving Moor
• 1 Underground River
• 1 Wasteland
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Westvale Abbey
• 1 Phyrexian Tower
• 1 Volrath's Stronghold

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100 cards!

In my initial cut I had 75 cards, so I pulled out Undermine, Innocent Blood, Propaganda, Darksteel Ingot, Reef Worm, Mana Crypt, Liliana's Standard Bearer, Ob Nixilis Reignited, and Draining Whelk. That left me with 66 and I finished the deck around 34 lands. Those nine are where I'd start to add new stuff to the brew as many of them are cheap and some are pretty new and would be the first place I'd run it.

I saw this as having a bit of a mid-range feel with my card choices until I had to pull some classic mid-range cards like Propaganda and Ob Nixilis, Unshackled. Still I have cards like Shriekmaw and Mulldrifter and Cloudkin and Agent of Treachery that feel a bit midrange-y to me.

I hope that you enjoyed my look at Dimir for this one! What did you think? Anything in here that I missed or that you are excited to build around? Just let me know! Have a great day!!!