Over the years, as media consumers, we've been bombarded with the lives of the elite. We're constantly Keeping Up with the Kardashians and romping with The Real Housewives. In a rather antiquated term, we'd call these individuals the Aristocracy. Aristocrats are typically considered the highest class in society, the bourgeoisie if you will. Now this isn't a lesson on amassing wealth or fame and I can't tell you how to climb the social ladder, but I can teach you how to be an Aristocrat in Magic: The Gathering.

Aristocrats is a deck archetype in Magic designed around generating incremental damage by sacrificing your small creatures. The deck derives its name from two cards, Falkenrath Aristocrat and Cartel Aristocrat, the two best sacrifice outlets at the time of the deck's conception. When we coupled them with creatures like Blood Artist and a mess of small creatures our opponents would be drained of life in no time. If sacrificing the proletariat for value doesn't sound like aristocracy, I don't know what does.

There are some dynamite commanders in Magic's newest set, Aetherdrift. The one that jumped out to me the fastest was Zahur, Glory's Past. He's a Orzhov: legendary with 3 abilities. First is Start your engines!, a mechanic that allows us to gather a resource called speed. We can generate speed on our turns by having an opponent lose at least one life before our end step and we max out at 4. Zahur's next ability is a sacrifice outlet that lets us surveil for 1, but just once a turn. With just the sacrifice ability, he'd be a dynamite commander to have in the command zone. That third ability is what edges Zahur over the top though. When we have Max Speed and anytime a nontoken creature dies, we generate a tapped 2/2 zombie. Here's a deck I brewed that will help us understand the Aristocrats archetype and take advantage of Zahur's abilities.

Zahur's Puttin' on the Ritz | Commander | Mike Cummings

• Commander (1)
• 1 Zahur, Glory's Past

• Creatures (28)
• 1 Bartolome del Presidio
• 1 Blood Artist
• 1 Bloodghast
• 1 Butcher Ghoul
• 1 Carrion Feeder
• 1 Corpse Knight
• 1 Cruel Celebrant
• 1 Geralf's Messenger
• 1 Gravecrawler
• 1 Grim Haruspex
• 1 Marionette Apprentice
• 1 Midnight Reaper
• 1 Mirkwood Bats
• 1 Morbid Opportunist
• 1 Ophiomancer
• 1 Pawn of Ulamog
• 1 Pitiless Plunderer
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Syr Konrad, the Grim
• 1 Teysa Karlov
• 1 Vengeful Bloodwitch
• 1 Viscera Seer
• 1 Warren Soultrader
• 1 Wayward Servant
• 1 Woe Strider
• 1 Yahenni, Undying Partisan
• 1 Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
• 1 Zulaport Cutthroat

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Liliana, Dreadhorde General

• Instants (3)
• 1 Generous Gift
• 1 Mortify
• 1 Path to Exile

• Sorceries (7)
• 1 Damn
• 1 Lich-Knights' Conquest
• 1 Living Death
• 1 Merciless Eviction
• 1 Raise the Past
• 1 Toxic Deluge
• 1 Wrath of God

• Enchantments (8)
• 1 Agent of the Iron Throne
• 1 Bastion of Remembrance
• 1 Bitterblossom
• 1 Blight Mound
• 1 Funeral Room // Awakening Hall
• 1 Liliana's Mastery
• 1 Phyrexian Arena
• 1 Smothering Tithe

• Artifacts (15)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Ashnod's Altar
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Crowded Crypt
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Orzhov Signet
• 1 Phyrexian Altar
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Talisman of Hierarchy
• 1 Thought Vessel
• 1 Wand of the Worldsoul
• 1 Wayfarer's Bauble

• Lands (36)
• 12 Plains
• 12 Swamp
• 1 Arid Mesa
• 1 Bloodstained Mire
• 1 Brightclimb Pathway // Grimclimb Pathway
• 1 Caves of Koilos
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Fetid Heath
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Isolated Chapel
• 1 Marsh Flats
• 1 Shineshadow Snarl
• 1 Temple of Silence
• 1 Vault of Champions

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Let's break down the deck by what we want to accomplish as an aristocrat. We have sacrifice outlets, token generators, resilient creatures and drain/damage sources. Including Zahur we have 9 sacrifice outlets. Viscera Seer and Woe Strider both have the ability to scry 1 when we sacrifice a creature. We want to scry for great card selection and to set up future draws. Ashnod's Altar and Phyrexian Altar will help us generate mana when we sacrifice our creatures and Phyrexian Altar, Gravecrawler and our Zahur at max speed gives us a neat repeatable combo that lets us make a whole board full of zombies!

Next are token generators. Again, including Zahur we have 9 token generators and 3 treasure generators. Generating treasure with cards like Smothering Tithe and Pitiless Plunderer will give us a bank vault's worth of treasure so we can maintain our high society status. Making creature tokens will give us fodder to sacrifice and serve up that tasty incremental damage we're looking for. Cards like Bitterblossom and Ophiomancer will generate small creatures that we can snack on for damage, or equip with Skullclamp to draw tons of cards. Pawn of Ulamog and Blight Mound give us tokens every time a nontoken creature dies. Couple those two with our resilient creatures to continually generate value.

There are tons of resilient creatures in Orzhov. There's a laundry list of creatures with abilities like afterlife and persist. We're going to take advantage of a few creatures with the ability undying in this deck. When Geralf's Messenger and Butcher Ghoul both die they will return with a +1/+1 counter. At minimum, this gives us 2 sacrifices per creature, but if we partner them with Yogmawth, Thran Physician we can cancel out those +1/+1 counters with -1/-1 counters and repeat the process an arbitrary amount of times. Like the previously mentioned Gravecrawler, Bloodghast will come back from the graveyard every time a land enters the battlefield under our control. So, we've got resilient creatures, tokens and sac outlets, how do we win?

The primary win condition of this deck will be draining our opponents with cards like Zulaport Cutthroat or Blood Artist. This is so critical that we've dedicated 12 slots in the deck. Enchantments like Agent of the Iron Throne and Bastion of Remembrance will be more difficult for our opponents to remove so if we can stick them early, they are likely to stay around until the end game. Mirkwood Bats and Wayward Servant care about our tokens and zombies respectively, so they will shine brightest when we're generating tokens with Zahur.

As far as additional win conditions, we have a classic go wide strategy by making a million tokens and playing something like Liliana's Mastery to buff all of our creatures. We can even go tall by making a large Yahenni, Undying Partisan and smash for as much damage as possible. These paths to victory plus a little help from a robust draw package will help us close out games in an efficient manner. To round everything out, the mana base is very fluid for a two color deck so it can be adjusted to fit any playstyle. This deck uses 36 lands and 13 pieces of ramp, plus all of our treasure generators.

Aristocrats is easily my favorite play style in Magic: The Gathering. I love its combo game play and reliance on cheap, efficient creatures. Taking a simple core from this deck will allow you to adjust and tinker to your heart's content. Thanks for taking a walk with me through the elegant parlors of the Aristocrats lifestyle.