The Top Dimir Commanders to Build Around

Dimir , is a color combination in Magic that is defined by its cunningness and disruption. Dimir Commanders deal in many strategies, including ways to mill your opponents and steal their cards, all the way to graveyard-centric typal strategies like zombies. Blue and Black inherently give you multiple ways to remove oppressive threats and counter your opponents' spells. You also have lots of forms of card draw and selection, and ways to bring back cards from graveyards to your advantage.

While there are multiple unique MTG Dimir Commanders to build around, today we'll be looking at some of the top strategies to consider, as well as some honorable mentions.

Best Dimir Commanders For Your Next Deck.

1. Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow
2. Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver
3. Alela, Cunning Conqueror
4. Tasha, the Witch Queen

Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow

First and foremost is Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow, arguably one of the most notable Dimir Commanders in all of Magic. Yuriko is incredibly powerful for multiple reasons. Ninjutsu is probably what makes this Commander so broken. Ninjutsu allows you to put a Creature with Ninjutsu into play from your hand, tapped and attacking, by returning one of your unblocked attacking Creatures to hand as part of the cost.

In Yuriko's case, however, you can Ninjutsu her directly from the Command zone. While your opponents will sometimes remove her, the fact that you don't have to pay two extra mana each time to play Yuriko, means you can keep cheating her in for two mana over and over again.

This is useful in that you can attack recklessly with Yuriko, even the turns after you Ninjutsu her into play. What really makes Yuriko shine is her second ability, that every time you deal combat damage with a Ninja you get to flip over the top card of your library and add it to your hand. On top of that, when you do this not just one, but each opponent will lose life equal to the revealed card's mana value.

When building a Yuriko deck, it's important to have a mix of these two types of cards important to her identity: Ninjas and high-cost spells. For ninjas, you get access to cards like Higure, the Still Wind, Satoru, the Infiltrator, and Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion. To get these ninjas in play, however, you'll need ways to have your Creatures become unblocked.

You can utilize cards like Gingerbrute, Spectral Sailor, and even dorky old commons like Triton Shorestalker to accomplish this. You even get great utility Lands to help further your strategy, like Shizo, Death's Storehouse and Rogue's Passage, to guarantee getting your Yuriko triggers in.

In terms of expensive cards to flip over, you can play cards that sort of have alternate casting costs but high mana values. Cards like Treasure Cruise, Temporal Trespass, and Shadow of Mortality are all great ways of just dealing your opponents huge amounts of damage in a turn with Yuriko's ability.

Overall, Yuriko is an interesting strategy you can build around, customizing your deck with various Ninjutsu cards, Ninjas, high-cost spells, and ways to make your Creatures unblockable. Yuriko herself is just a very resilient U/B Commander, which is why she is my first top choice to build around.

Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver

Next up is arguably the best zombie U/B Commander in Magic, Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver. Up until Wilhelt's printing in the Innistrad Midnight Hunt Commander Precons in 2021, The Scarab God was arguably the best Dimir Zombie Commander. While The Scarab God is powerful, one great aspect about Commander is that since they're a zombie, you can slot them into your Wilhelt deck easily!

A Wihelt, the Rotcleaver Commander deck revolves around Zombies, but more importantly how you can get your max value out of them. With Wilhelt's static ability, any time a zombie of yours would die, whether it's a Creature token or not, if it didn't have Decayed, you get to make a 2/2 Zombie Creature token with decayed. This can be very potent with a multitude of Zombie lords in your deck, allowing you to go wide with a Zombie token army. Since decayed tokens only get one combat to attack, you have to be wise about how you utilize them.

Speaking of utilizing them, Wilhelt has an additional end of turn trigger, that allows you to sacrifice a zombie of your choosing to draw a card. This is a nice little added value engine to Wilhelt, letting you either sacrifice a random decayed 2/2 Zombie token, or a card that can come back into play easily, like Gravecrawler. It's worth noting with a card like Gravecrawler in play you can just sacrifice that, get a 2/2 decayed token on your end step, and just keep doing that turn after turn.

There are a lot of ways to build Wilhelt, but there's a core group of cards that one should always include when building around him. Aside from Gravecrawler you can utilize a variety of Lords (Creatures that grant +1/+1 to a certain Creature Type) or Zombies that care about Creatures dying, notably Diregraf Captain, Death Baron, and Undead Augur. Death Baron is notable due to the fact that it gives your Wilhelt decayed tokens Deathtouch, making it harder for your opponents to block. This is also why Lord of the Accursed is another valuable Zombie Lord as well.

You get access to a variety of powerful Dimir Zombie spells as well, like Necroduality and Rooftop Storm, to help snowball an advantage. One specific reason Wilhelt is powerful as a Zombie Commander, is the fact that by playing a boardwipes don't really effect this type of deck; they sometimes even help it.

Cards like Patriarch's Bidding, Living Death, and Necrotic Hex are all very useful against other Creature-centric strategies because in Zombie decks your cards are just so easily replaceable. Cards like Zombie Apocalypse can reanimate all the Zombies you lose to a wrath effect. You don't get much insurance against a card that exiles your Creatures, like Farewell for example, but you can do some pretty busted sequences where you destroy all of your opponents' Creatures, only to return all of yours the next turn with a card like Patriarch's Bidding.

Alela, Cunning Conqueror

Alela, Cunning Conqueror is another Creature-centric Dimir Commander that also rewards you for casting spells on your opponents' turns. Alela allows you to create a 1/1 Flying Faerie Creature token every time you cast the first spell on one of your opponents' turns. Additionally, when you deal combat damage to a player with one or more faeries you also get to goad one of their Creatures, forcing it to attack another player on their next combat step.

This means that Alela cares about two card types - Faerie Creatures, and cards that are either Instants or have Flash (bonus if they're a Faerie that also has Flash!). This makes cards like Snap, Gush, and Frantic Search much more powerful in an Alela deck compared to other Dimir Commander, because since they're essentially "free" on mana, they're easy ways to trigger Alela to grant you a 1/1 Faerie token.

Malleable Imposter, High Fae Trickster, and Faerie Mastermind are all very powerful faeries that are worthy of inclusion in an Alela deck, With Faerie Mastermind being my favorite of the bunch since it puts pressure on your opponents to not draw multiple cards in a turn.

For other Instants, you get to just play your pick of counter magic, removal, and card draw. Cheap ways of doing this are in Faerie Fencing, Brainstorm, Unwind, and Swan Song. Because you churn out so many Faerie tokens with Alela, you honestly are pretty safe from Creatures, but it doesn't hurt to play hard removal spells like Infernal Grasp or Power Word Kill.

For card advantage you can play Creatures like Archmage Emeritus and Curiosity Crafter, as well as Enchantments like Reconnaissance Mission and Kindred Discovery.

Alela is a fantastic U/B EDH deck because of how you get to operate most of your games. Being able to hold up mana on every turn can make your opponents play more conservatively, out of fear of a counterspell or removal.

Since you want to be attacking with your Faerie cards every combat, the bonus ability of goading your opponents' Creatures means that you can be relatively safe from being attacked down. If you can repeatedly make Faerie tokens with cards like Bitterbloom Bearer or just straight up Bitterblossom, you can also just have chump blockers available if you end up getting attacked.

Tasha, the Witch Queen

Last but not least is Tasha, the Witch Queen. While Tasha might not be the most popular or powerful U/B Commander you can build around, she's one of the most unique. Tasha, the Witch Queen cares about casting spells owned by your opponents. You can do this either by casting other cards that let you play your opponents' cards, or by just using her +1 ability to exile Instant and Sorcery cards from your opponents' graveyards.

This makes Tasha a bit slower of a Commander, since to really get max value out of her you have to use her +1 ability, ensure you exile an Instant or Sorcery card, then wait a full turn cycle until you can use her -3 ability. This means you have to be a bit more careful in executing your turns, making sure you can both protect Tasha and keep her around long enough to snowball enough advantage by casting multiple of your opponents' spells.

Tasha is a top U/B Commander due to how customizable she is. At her core, Tasha, is a Dimir Commander deck that's a control strategy; aiming to slowly take over a game with various ways of shutting down your opponents' strategies. It's important when building around her to include a mix of cards that fit this Control archetype while also making sure to play various ways to steal your opponents' spells.

Siphon Insight, Cunning Rhetoric, Gonti, Lord of Luxury, and Black Cat, Cunning Thief are your key enablers here, providing easy ways to steal your opponents spells. Thieving Varmint is a great inclusion that can actually help you ramp when you get to a point in the game where you're stealing multiple cards in a turn.

Other cards that ensure Instants and Sorceries go into your opponents' graveyards include Grima, Saruman's Footman and Chaos Wand. Tinybones, Bauble Burglar and Rev, Tithe Extractor are also nice repeatable engines that can help you steal your opponents' cards.

With Tasha caring so much about graveyards, you can also just play a handful of Mill cards and other spells that care about utilizing graveyards. You can play cards like Fractured Sanity, Cut Your Losses, and even Ruin Crab to Mill your opponents for large amounts. Rise of the Dark Realms and Breach the Multiverse can make for some big turns to steal multiple creatures at once. However, you'll want to protect yourself with cards like Damnation, Blasphemous Edict, and Heartless Conscription, to keep your opponents in check.

Overall, Tasha's relevance will depend on if you play against more Creature or spell-focused decks. However, you can customize her to be more aggressive or controlling based on the Creatures that can help you steal cards and generally good Dimir control spells, like boardwipes and removal effects.

Honorable Mentions

While there are a multitude of other Dimir Commanders not mentioned in this article, there are a few others to mention.

Golbez, Crystal Collector

If you want a relatively cheap Commander that cares about Artifacts, then Golbez, Crystal Collector is a good choice. Golbez decks are mainly more Blue and Colorless-focused, due to the amount of Artifact synergies you want to play. However, you get access to various removal spells, like Noxious Gearhulk, in Black.

Black also gives you ways to fill your graveyards and control the board. Since you'll want to return Creature cards like Ancient Stone Idol and Death's Shadow with Golbez's ability in order to drain your opponents for large amounts of life, Buried Alive can help you accomplish this. Their Name is Death is also just a great one-sided wrath you can play to stop your opponents' Creatures in their tracks.

Mirko, Obsessive Theorist

Mirko, Obsessive Theorist is another pretty unique Commander to build around. Mirko cares all about Surveil, as surveiling will not only increase her power and toughness, but will also let you reanimate Creatures from your graveyard. Mirko works because having so many ways to Surveil in your deck will let you have a pretty wide selection of threats to reanimate.

Cards like Unshakable Tail and Doom Whisperer can help you Surveil multiple times a turn. Creatures like Shriekmaw and Ravenous Chupacabra are nice to reanimate to kill off threatening Creatures. Ultimately cards like Rise of the Dark Realms and Living Death shine the most in this type of strategy, as you'll be filling your graveyard faster than most of your opponents.

There are a variety of Dimir Commanders to choose from, picking one will just depend on your individual play style.

Conclusion

Dimir has many powerful and artful Commanders you can enlist to your advantage. Whether you want to focus on a specific Creature type that utilizes graveyard synergies, like Zombies, or sneak Creatures into play at a discounted cost, there are various U/B Commanders that will fit the specific strategy you seek.

Regardless of what specific U/B Commander you choose to play, Dimir inherently is such a great color combination due to the various ways you get to remove Creatures and disrupt your opponents' strategies. Whether it's casting a Cyclonic Rift or a Damnation, Dimir is the perfect color combination to choose if you don't want your opponents to get away with their strategies unopposed.

Hopefully this article helps you find the right Dimir Commander, and that you too will find joy in messing with your opponents' plans.