But players who have messed around with other formats, or have seen another deck with her, or simply have a pretty vast knowledge of the game might see her as a builds-herself deck full of obvious cards to enable her, making her a one-hit kill for each opponent. She is definitely strange. We have to jump through some hoops to use her as a commander, and those hoops are limited -- there are no functional duplicates. So the best way to look at her is probably as a combo deck: get together the right group of cards, cast the correct spells, win the game. Of course, with combo in Commander, we can't run four of each piece, and that means there are a ton of slots left over. We can do whatever we want with them.

I think a hyper-aggressive or even tokens build of Phage would be really neat. I'd love to see that deck. We could either sacrifice all the tokens for fun and profit or simply aggressively attack life totals every way possible (and in Black, that's a lot of ways) and keep the Phage combo as an accidental hit every now and then. That would be cool. However, regulars of this column know I'm a fan of grindy, controlling Black builds, so if I'm going to build Phage, I'm going to build her to slow . . .  everything . . .  down.

Phage, the Untouchable -- Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Phage the Untouchable

• Creatures (13)
• 1 Bloodgift Demon
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Crypt Ghast
• 1 Erebos, God of the Dead
• 1 Harvester of Souls
• 1 Magus of the Coffers
• 1 Massacre Wurm
• 1 Nirkana Revenant
• 1 Platinum Angel
• 1 Reiver Demon
• 1 Rune-Scarred Demon
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Thief of Blood

• Instants (6)
• 1 Curtains' Call
• 1 Hero's Downfall
• 1 Silence the Believers
• 1 Succumb to Temptation
• 1 Sudden Spoiling
• 1 Tragic Slip

• Sorceries (19)
• 1 All Is Dust
• 1 Behold the Beyond
• 1 Beseech the Queen
• 1 Black Sun's Zenith
• 1 Crux of Fate
• 1 Dark Petition
• 1 Deadly Tempest
• 1 Diabolic Tutor
• 1 Grim Discovery
• 1 In Garruk's Wake
• 1 Killing Wave
• 1 Life's Finale
• 1 Mutilate
• 1 Never // Return
• 1 Read the Bones
• 1 Ruinous Path
• 1 Sign in Blood
• 1 Syphon Mind
• 1 Temporal Extortion

• Enchantments (4)
• 1 Black Market
• 1 Endless Whispers
• 1 Phyrexian Arena
• 1 Underworld Connections

• Artifacts (17)
• 1 Caged Sun
• 1 Charcoal Diamond
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Hedron Archive
• 1 Jet Medallion
• 1 Key to the City
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Nevinyrral's Disk
• 1 Oblivion Stone
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Sundial of the Infinite
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Thought Vessel
• 1 Torpor Orb
• 1 Trailblazer's Boots
• 1 Worn Powerstone

• Lands (40)
• 25 Swamp
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Cabal Coffers
• 1 Command Beacon
• 1 Deserted Temple
• 1 Homeward Path
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Strip Mine
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Thespian's Stage
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Vesuva
• 1 Volrath's Stronghold

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Let's start with that difficult Commander. We have four ways of getting Phage out. They are:

To cast Phage from our hand, we have to get her into our hand. Command Beacon sacrifices itself to do that. Normally this is useful to avoid the Commander Tax after multiple recasts, but in our case it allows us to avoid death. Torpor Orb means her Enters the Battlefield Effect (you die) doesn't trigger. (It also stops opposing Primordials and the like from doing anything other than showing up. Banisher Priest ain't banishing nothin'.) Sundial of the Infinite ends the turn immediately, but importantly for us, it clears the stack. When Phage is cast, the spell checks to see where she was cast from, and if it's anywhere other than our hand, her whole "I kill you now" thing goes on the stack. So, we can cast her from the Command Zone, put her "death to us" ability on the stack, then just . . .  end the turn, clearing the stack, including that ability. We don't die. We can't, y'know, do anything else that turn, but we don't die. Platinum Angel, of course, means we simply can't die, which is great when something tries really hard to kill us.

That's probably the order of best to worst, too. Command Beacon is nice because it doesn't cost us any extra mana, doesn't screw with the rest of our turn, doesn't mess up anything else we're doing, and can be done at instant speed, which could matter at some point. Torpor Orb is nice, too, but it tends to draw a lot of hate because people like to run creatures which do stuff in EDH and they get cranky when you stop them. Sundial tends not to draw any hate (though in this deck it probably should), but it costs us an extra mana and it means we're done for the turn. There will be a whole turn cycle before we can do anything else, which is a lot of time and a lot of cards drawn to figure out how to deal with the now rather alarming threat. Platinum Angel is our least good option, because a Krosan Grip, or Murderous Cut, or any of the other myriad cards played in this format all the time which can destroy a creature or an artifact at instant speed mean they kill it with Phage's ability on the stack and we're done. (Though Lightning Greaves can help with that, I suppose.)

We've got some tutors in here, because, let's face it, we're playing Phage. We're not trying to make friends. We can search up any card with most of them, but Expedition Map can get us Command Beacon or one of the mana pieces. While it will be tempting to grab that Torpor Orb, really we want to start with plenty of mana. Get the lands first, then draw into one of the solutions or search for it after the mana is humming. We've got lots of draw as well, from Sign in Blood and its ilk to Phyrexian Arena and friends, so we're already likely to draw another tutor or one of the combo pieces, but it will help to have access to the 7 mana we need to cast Phage before we actually set up to cast her.

Black's biggest weakness is its inability to destroy artifacts and enchantments. Some colorless spells can help, so we're running Nevinyrral's Disk, Oblivion Stone, and All is Dust. Perilous Vault would be a good one to add in an artifact- or enchantment-heavy meta. What we can do, though, is destroy the crap out of creatures, so we've got roughly a million ways to do just that. Mostly we're running mass removal, with some fun versions like Killing Wave (which is great when we can also make a million mana), but we've got a few point removal spells as well for the occasional problem child. We're running just enough tutors we'll most often be able to go find the thing we need to solve the problem, as long as it isn't killing us right now.

We've also got a couple of cute cards with Phage. Endless Whispers makes it a real problem to kill her, because most likely we'll just have it come back to the person who killed her and kill, well, them. Temporal Extortion is a really fun card in Black which sees very little play, but most often your victim is going to pay that life, because otherwise we're going to get a second hit with Phage. Rogue's Passage and Key to the City make our girl Unblockable, and Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves protect her and, if we can, let us attack the turn she enters. Grim Discovery can buy back our Command Beacon if things get really dire.

So we've got this nifty combo deck which is going to make all our friends pretty annoyed every time we want to play it. The thing is, we put a bunch of cash and resources into a pretty awesome pile, and we want to get to play it! So what if we change a few things and make it so Phage is there for color identity only, and we promise not to mess with her?

• Liliana, Heretical Healer
• Ob Nixilis, Unshackled
• Liliana of the Dark Realms
• Liliana Vess
• Liliana, Death Wielder
• Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath
• Ob Nixilis Reignited
• Sorin Markov
• Vraska, Scheming Gorgon
• Liliana, the Last Hope

We're going to go for Mono-Black superfriends. We're rather limited, because there aren't a ton of 'walkers in the color, but we can do pretty well and it gives us enough cards to remove all our kitchy Phage stuff. We pull the three enablers (extra style points if you bring a basic Swamp to swap in for Command Beacon) plus Endless Whispers, Temporal Extortion, and five other cards, then swap in nine 'walker pals and a creature from before his spark reignited (though Karn Liberated or Ugin, the Spirit Dragon would fit in nicely and could serve as a reasonable win condition). We're going to play a much less focused game with this deck. The tutors are there now purely to go get an answer we might need, while the planeswalkers make our opponents nervous and we ultimately attempt to beat down with a Rune-Scarred Demon or something. More often than not, playing this version of the deck is going to feel more like an endless level of a video game: eventually you'll lose, but how long can you hold off the rest of the players before they can break through your wall of board wipes?

How would you build Phage? Is it worth it to run Withering Boon plus graveyard-to-hand stuff for more ways to get her out? Did I miss another way to get her out? Are more tutors called for? Or should we just do away with them and let the deck either work or not on its own? What else should we know? Tell us in the comments!

Decks like this are a neat way to challenge yourself and a table, though I do recommend caution because most people won't like it more than once in a while, and watching another player count to 47 mana can be annoying. But if you like to sweat the choices and make sure no one is doing anything unless you let them, this deck might be for you.

Thanks for reading.