Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Zahur, Glory’s Past!

Zahur is a two mana 3/2 with Start your engines! and you can sacrifice a creature to surveil 1 once a turn and when you hit max speed then whenever a nontoken creature you control dies you make a tapped 2/2 black Zombie creature token.

Now at the face of it this is a pretty simple and straightforward aristocrat strategy where you sacrifice your creatures to make Zombies when you hit max speed, and that is the overall game plan. However, I was hit with a sudden burst of inspiration when I was looking at this card and realized how interacted with a newly released card from Tarkir: Dragonstorm.

The plan is to get to max speed and make some Zombies, but more so we are going to be looking to make a lot more than just one Zombie. We are going to be summoning a veritable Zombie horde, if the game plan goes well.

In order to go in depth with the plan, we need to first discuss the most important piece of the plan.

The Sibsig Ceremony was a card that people were excited to try and break when it was revealed, since making Zombies for potenitially free is exciting, but it has since shown that it is harder to get working in Standard or other 60 card formats. However in a weird Commander deck, this card is the engine to get a massive swarm of Zombies in play.

We need to find as many ways to get it into our hand as possible, so this is one of the few decks where I highlight different tutors. If you don’t mind revealing information to your opponents, then Moon-Blessed Cleric and Idyllic Tutor get you exactly what you want at an affordable price.

Another sneaky tutor is Dimir Machinations, which normally exiles any number of the top three cards of player’s library but more importantly has the rarely seen ability Transmute, which allows you to tutor a card from your library to your hand if it has the same mana value as the card.

If you don’t mind waiting a couple of turns, you can also use Profane Tutor, which is a card that let’s you tutor for any card for two mana, but at the cost of being Suspended for two turns.

If you have access to the more expensive tutors like Demonic Tutor or Enlightened Tutor then you are free to use them, but there are more affordable alternatives to tutor up The Sibsig Ceremony.

The goal of the deck is to make two Zombies for each creature spell we cast that dies from The Sibsig Ceremony, so the next thing we need for the deck are cheap creatures that have death triggers, as well as ways to have opponents start losing life to get to max speed.

Serrated Scorpion is excellent in this regard because it is a one mana creature that deals 2 damage to each opponent and gains us 2 life when it dies, which we can cast early on in order to start chipping in damage when we cast Zahur on our second turn and to deal damage later in the game when we sacrifice it.

We can also make use of creatures that make creature tokens when they die, so things like Doomed Traveler, Hunted Witness, and Crawling Chorus to get some other bodies in play when they die to The Sibsig Ceremony trigger. There is also Nesting Bot which makes a Servo token when it dies, but is also a one mana way to Start your engines! early so we can get to max speed sooner.

There are also creatures like Gravecrawler that we can cast from the graveyard for really cheap or something like Tenacious Underdog, which we can cast from the graveyard for its blitz cost, so when it dies we can draw a card as well. They have to be cast triggers for The Sibsig Ceremony to work, and nontoken creatures to die for Zahur to work.

Once we have The Sibsig Ceremony in play, we can make use of cheap colorless creatures that have a death trigger to save us some mana. Cards like Myr Moonvessel are pretty good because that nets us one mana when it dies, and cards like Friendly Teddy and Runed Servitor can draw everyone cards.

The best cheap colorless creature I found that works excellently that just recurs naturally is Epochrasite, a creature that when it dies it exiles itself with Suspend with three time counters. Since Suspend counts as a cast when it comes back, The Sibsig Ceremony destroys it to make a Zombie Druid token, and with Zahur in play at max speed we get another Zombie.

Now that we have the plan, the win con is to make use of a combination of standard aristocrat effects and overwhelming Zombie hordes.

Cruel Celebrant is great in this regard because whenever a creature or Planeswalker we control dies each opponent loses 1 life and we gain 1 life. In a similar vein, Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim gains us 1 life whenever a creature we control enters and each opponent lose 1 life whenever a creature we control dies.

There is also Wayward Servant, an interesting sort of Zombie synergy that has an opponent lose 1 life and us gain 1 life whenever a Zombie we control enters, which means we can drain our opponents for 2 whenever one of our cheap creatures die to make two Zombies.

To have a bit more for Zombie synergies then there is also On Wings of Gold, which is a +1/+1 anthem effect for Zombies that also gives them flying and whenever one or more cards leave our graveyard, we make a 1/1 white Zombie.

If we just want an overwhelming number of Zombies to enter the battlefield, then we can use Renewed Solidarity and pick Zombies give our Zombies +1/+0 and for each Zombie token we made that turn to make a token copy of them for a massive horde to swing out next turn.

Zahur is a simple Commander that can be played as a traditional aristocrat Commander, but when combined with The Sibsig Ceremony can produce a plethora of Zombie tokens. Is it a fragile combo that is highly prone to removal? Yes, absolutely, but it is a fun win condition to achieve even if it is difficult to stay once your opponents realize what you’re doing.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow for the next Daily Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual