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Planeswalker. Queen of the Golgari. Pirate captain. Compleated Phyrexian. In the long history ofMagic: The Gathering, few have done quite as much in as short a time as Vraska, the Ravnican Gorgon. But even with everything she’s accomplished, one thing she’s never done is helmed a commander deck. But since she lost her Planeswalker spark following the Phyrexian invasion, Vraska is now a legendary creature ready to prove herself at your table.
Vraska, the Silencer is a bold choice as a commander, because her abilities don’t translate easily into a win. Instead, they take some of the effects of her green and black color identity and amplify them, enabling you to get a lot of extra value out of format staples and flex to meet your opponents' challenges.
The Commander
Vraska has been a popular planeswalker since her first appearance in 2012’s Return to Ravnica, but following compleation and later losing her planeswalker spark, Outlaws of Thunder Junction sees her return as a creature for the first time, meaning that, in addition to being a Golgari (green/black) queen and a pirate captain, she can finally be your commander.
Vraska, the Silencer is a 3/3 Gorgon Assassin with deathtouch that costs one generic, one green, and one black mana.
Gorgons like Vraska have been represented in Magic several times, but Vraska, the Silencer is the first one that really feels like she has a petrifying stare, mechanically:whenever an opponent’s nontoken creature dies, you can pay one generic mana to put it back into play under your control, tapped, as a Treasure artifactrather than a creature.
Vraska herself doesn’t have any abilities that make her a particularly outstanding commander, except that her triggered ability to reanimate your opponent’s creatures as Treasure artifacts encourages you tobuild a deck heavily revolving around interaction.
After all, the power of a deck built reanimate your opponent’s creatures like this lies primarily in what you’re able to steal from them, so you’ll want to destroy their best creatures to add to your statuary garden.
Building The Deck
You’ll find early on that Vraska’s effectiveness is entirely dependent on two factors: What creatures your opponents put into play, and how reliably you can kill them.
The biggest problem you’ll run into is that the creatures you steal will come in to play under your control as Treasure artifacts, not as creatures. So whilethey’ll retain all of their abilities, they won’t be able to attack or block.
For a traditional deck that wins by combat damage, this isn’t a great scenario. For a combo deck it’s even worse, because you’re likely to steal a couple of combo pieces and miss out on others, leaving you unable to secure the win.
On the other hand,you’ll be consistently stopping creatures from going into opponents' graveyards, which means that you’ll have a lot of reanimation decks locked down.
In order to eliminate some of the guesswork, you’ll want toinclude a couple of novel ways to secure a win. This would be much easier if blue were available (which makes it a real pity that Vraska doesn’t have partner with Jace), but black still provides us with several ways to win.
That being said,if your group leans toward spellslinger decks, this might be one to avoid bringingto the table.
Ramp
As a Golgari commander,Vraska has access to the standard green ramp package, and you should take full advantage of it, since you’ll want to interact a lot and pay the one mana to Vraska for most of your opponents' dying creatures.
Nature’s Lore and Three Visits are great two-drop spells that search your library for a forest and put it into play untapped.They don’t look for basic lands, so if you’ve got an Overgrown Tomb or other Forest Swamp lands you may search for them to get access to black mana.
Lands that say they come into play tapped, like Haunted Mire, will still come into play tapped if you search for them with Nature’s Lore or Three Wishes.
Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach can only find basic lands, but they put one into play tapped and another in your hand,giving you a boost when you cast them and guaranteeing that you won’t miss a land drop on your next turn. Even if you have a lot of nonbasic lands available, these two staples are so good that you should pack a handful of basic lands in order to enable them.
Generally mana rocks like Sol Ring and Arcane Signet are preferred to creatures, which suffer from summoning sickness and tend to be easier to remove, but make sure you include your Bird of Paradise. As a 0/1 it won’t be in combat very often, butit taps for any color mana at a cost of just one green.
Later in the game you can buff it to attack, or use it as a chump blocker for your opponents' flying creatures.
Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse won’t accelerate your mana, but they will fix it. You can play them early to search for a basic Forest or Swamp, ensuring that you have access to the mana you need when you need it.
Draw
Black and green work well together because they cover each other’s shortcomings: green has lots of ramp but limited card draw, and black has lots of card draw but very little long-term mana acceleration. Since most of green’s limited draw options won’t work well with Vraska, rely on green for acceleration and black to refill your hand.
Night’s Whisper and Sign in Blood let you draw two cards for two mana and two life.Night’s Whisper is a little easier to play, since one mana in the cost is colorless,but Sign in Blood can target other players, very rarely allowing you to get a KO on an opponent who is below three life or two cards remaining in their deck. Both are recommended.
There are a lot of cards that allow you to sacrifice creatures in order to draw cards, but there are also a few that allow you to sacrifice artifacts, like all the creatures you’ll be stealing as noncreature artifacts. Deadly Dispute trades one artifact for a treasure and two cards, allowing you toturn stolen creatures that don’t benefit you into card advantage.
Dockside Chef works similarly, only drawing one card but being reusable as long as he’s in play, and able to act at instant speed when someone tries to destroy your artifacts.
Petrifying creatures without effects or with effects you can’t use unless they’re creatures isn’t efficient, but they feed Dockside Chef and other cards that let you sacrifice artifacts. They also serve as mana banks, costing one generic mana to grab and gaining the ability to be sacrificed for colored mana.
Cards in your hand are more valuable than excess life, especially in commander where you have forty life to play with.Phyrexian Arena is a great addition, granting you an extra card each turn at the cost of a single life. This will generate significant card advantage as the game goes on without feeling so oppressive to your opponents that they target it over other enchantments.
Necropotence is perhapsthe most powerful draw spell available in commander. It forces you to skip your draw step, but allows you to pay life to draw as many cards as you need later in your turn. Playing conservatively, this will let you refill your hand at the end of every turn.
This is particularly powerful if you’re playing with a lot of instants or instant-speed effects and have access to one of the green effects to untap on other players' turns.
Interaction
While Deathtouch is a good ability on any creature, you probably don’t want Vraska out in the thick of combat. After all, she’s an Assassin, not a Berserker. You’ll want to keep her safe while you destroy your opponents' creatures selectively,removing their threats while collecting treasures for yourself.
Black has a huge variety of creature removal spells to choose from.Use Murder as your benchmark: it’s an instant that destroys any creature for three mana, so anything that costs more, affects a limited selection of creatures, or moves at sorcery speed without a significant upside probably isn’t worthwhile unless you’re short on spot removal.
Curtain’s Call is a good choice: it costs six mana to destroy two creatures at instant speed, which puts it on par with murder, but that cost is reduced for each opponent, making it much more efficient in most games.
Green doesn’t have nearly as much creature destruction, unless your opponents tend to play a lot of flying creatures, butBeast Within and Assassin’s Trophy are both standouts.
Both of them are within the three-mana casting benchmark, and both are able to destroy any permanent, making them much more flexible than other creature removal spells. Just be aware that your opponent gets a consolation prize for each of them.
In addition to spot removal,include a few board wipes, particularly asymmetric ones like In Garruk’s Wake and Plague Wind. These two cards willwipe out all of your opponents' creatures, netting you a large Treasure troveall at once. Even symmetric board wipes like Blood Money will leave you at an advantage, leaving your Treasures intact while netting a pile of new ones.
Finally, remember to include a couple of creatures that can consistently destroy creatures. Royal Assassin is a classic, and is able todestroy creatures whenever they tap, potentially interfering with combos and keeping your opponents on guard with the knowledge that if they use their creatures' best activated abilities, you might claim them for yourself.
Winning The Game
It’s all fine and good to petrify your opponents' creatures, but you still need a way to end the game. Redundancy is important, but Golgari decks don’t usually have much positive interaction with artifacts. To correct for this, lean into the artifacts that interact with other artifacts and ones that will empower your Treasure collection.
Metalwork Colossus is a 10/10 artifact creature that costs 11 generic mana, but that cost is reduced by the total mana value of noncreature artifacts that you control.
You remember those creatures you turned into Treasures? Well,those are now noncreature artifacts with the same mana value your opponent paid for them, so you’ll be able toplay Metalwork Colossus for freemost games. Don’t worry about chump blockers: green has all the trample enabling efffects you could want.
Karn, Silver Golemis a pacifist, so he won’t be dealing any damage, but he canturn your stolen artifacts back into creatures with power and toughness equal to their mana valuefor just one generic mana per turn. This will allow you to swing with an army of reanimated statues, and trigger the attack and damage effects of creatures you stole.
Xenic Poltergeist is a 1/1 black creature that taps to do the same thing Karn does. While tapping makes it less useful, it’s a virtually unknown card and much cheaper than the least expensive printing of Karn.
All of the creatures you steal will come back as Treasure, so they can all be tapped and sacrificed to gain mana when you no longer need them. But if you’ve already tapped them it’s nice to have a sacrifice outlet that will let you discard them on your own terms, instead of letting another player remove them or return them to their owners’s hands.
Arcbound Ravager is a great option, because you cansacrifice artifacts at instant speed for free to turn them into +1/+1 counters, and when Arcbound Ravager dies you can transfer those counters to another artifact creature. Use it to squeeze value out of your Treasures or pump Arcbound Ravager up for the kill if an opponent doesn’t block it.
Revel in Riches is about the most synergistic card you’ll find for Vraska, the Silencer. In addition to returning your opponents' creatures to play as your own Treasures, this enchantment will also give you an additional untapped Treasure token.
Two for one is a good deal, but it also adds an extra win condition:If you control ten treasures at the beginning of your upkeep, you win the game!That will only require you to kill five creatures. Fewer if you’re using other Treasure generators.
Deck Tech
Your Treasures are going to be plentiful, but not terribly useful: They can’t attack or defend, and can only generate mana if you sacrifice them (unless you destroy mana dorks, which is probably a great idea). So look for ways to get a little more value out of your artifacts.
Inspiring Statuary allows you to tap artifacts to pay for nonartifact spells, with each one you tap paying for one generic mana. That almost turns them into colorless mana dorks, and means that you’ll be able todestroy your opponent’s creatures in order to ramp your own mana base.
Alternatively, Clock of Omens allows you to tap two artifacts in order to untap a third. This won’t generate mana directly, but you’ll be able to tap Treasures to untap your Sol Ring or other mana rocks.
Sometimes you’ll go ahead and sacrifice your Treasures for mana, and that’s okay!If your opponent built to play around a certain effect while punishing everyone else with it, you probably don’t want it in play, so feel free to use it for mana.
Even better, do that in response to the owner’s graveyard being exiled, so the problematic creature goes with it, or after playing a Ravenous Squirrel or Magnetic Snuffler, both of which will gain +1/+1 counters for every artifact you sacrifice.
Finally, Vraska, the Silencer will work surprisingly well with reanimation builds. Living Death is already a powerful card if you’re expecting it but your opponents aren’t, andsince your Treasures aren’t creatures, they’ll survive when all creatures are sacrificed.
Thanks to Vraska’s ability,everything your opponents sacrifice will come into play under your control, and their graveyards should be empty of major threats because you’ve been systematically petrifying them.
Sacrifice all of your creatures except Vraska before playing Living Death, so that you get them back immediately. This is also a good reason to include a sacrifice engine in almost every deck.
Alternatively, you may use Lich-Knights' Conquest totrade your less useful Treasures for a bunch of your own important creatures. This is also a good opportunity to get the death effects from borrowed creatures like Solemn Simulacrum.
