Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Vishgraz, the Doomhive!

Vishgraz is a five mana 3/3 with menace, toxic 1, and when they enter you create three 1/1 colorless Phyrexian Mite artifact creature tokens with toxic 1 and can’t block and Vishgraz gets +1/+1 for each poison counter your opponents have.

The game plan when playing a poison Commander is very clear, and there really isn’t any hiding it when poison is such a prominent aspect of Vishgraz. Poison is very much a game mechanic that a lot of players don’t like, but there are also a subsection of people who do like the mechanic, and I happen to be one of those people.

We are going to build a straight up poison turbo deck, meaning that we are going to be going for as many ways to get poison onto our opponents as fast as possible, take advantage of every poison payoff we can, and make sure our opponents need to deal with our things as fast as possible at the risk of losing to our poison generation.

We may become the archenemy, so we also need to make sure we can deal with any problems headed our way.

The first thing we need are ways to give our opponents poison counters, ideally as early as possible.

Plague Stinger is a way for us to get some poison early since it is a two mana evasive creature with infect, which also acts as a form of removal since it gives -1/-1 counters to any creatures it gets into combat with. Similarly we can also use something like Bilious Skulldweller, which has toxic 1 and deathtouch and is one mana.

Blightbelly Rat is something we can definitely take advantage in the early game since it has toxic 1 and when it dies we proliferate, which helps get poison counters on faster and incentivizes our opponents to use exile based removal on it.

There are also ways for us to have some utility in our poison generation with a creature like Viridian Corrupter which is an infect creature that also happens to destroy an artifact when it enters. Infectious Bite is a bite spell that we can use with our creatures with infect to give -1/-1 counters instead of damage because of how infect works while also giving each of our opponents poison counters.

While it doesn’t directly give poison counters, Drown in Ichor is a removal spell that gives a creature -4/-4 until end of turn and proliferates, so once we start sticking some poison counters on our opponents then we can use it to speed up to poison counter generation.

As far as one of the best ways for us to consistently have a creature that can deal poison damage in play, there is Skrelv’s Hive, which makes a 1/1 Phyrexian Mite with toxic 1 at the beginning of our upkeep for the price of 1 life. If we stick this early on then we can start getting some decent poison generation. It also Corrupted, which as long as an opponent has three or more poison counters, creatures we control with toxic also have lifelink to counterbalance the life loss.

Since our goal is to give our opponents poison counters, this will likely draw removal towards us, which means we need to protect ourselves in any way we can.

Norn’s Decree is a way for us to have our opponents think twice when they attack us since if one or more creatures deal combat damage to us, they get a poison counter. Also, if a player attacks and one or more players being attacked are poisoned, then the attacking player draws a card, which definitely help damage be spread around more.

If we want to give our creatures some form of protection, then we can always use Venerated Rotpriest, which has toxic 1, but more importantly if our creatures become the target of a spell, even ones we cast, target opponent gets a poison counter. This means any removal will be heading towards the Rotpriest, but that also means at least one poison counter is heading towards an opponent.

Bloodroot Apothecary is an interesting way for us to punish our opponents since not only does it have toxic 2 and when it enters you and an opponent create a Treasure token, but whenever an opponent sacrifices a noncreature token, that player gets two poison counters. This means and Treasures, Clues, Food, Blood, Shards also become poison, and a severe amount as well.

Once we get Vishgraz onto the field, we can also take advantage of some blink spells like Cloudshift to protect them, which is especially useful since when it enters we make even more Phyrexian Mites that will generate poison counters for us.

Now that we are heading towards the end game, we need ways to speed up our poison damage delivery.

Phyrexian Swarmlord is an excellent creature to have towards the end because ideally our opponents have a lot of poison counters and we can make a lot of Insects with infect at the beginning of our upkeep, which we can immediately attack with if we have something like Concordant Crossroads or even a cheeky Crashing Drawbridge to give all our creatures haste.

Once at least one poison counter is on each of our opponents, then we can also make use of Evolution Sage having a Landfall ability to proliferate as a way to get poison counters onto our opponents faster, and if any of their creatures happen to have any -1/-1 counters on them then it will kill them faster.

In a similar vein we can use Metastatic Evangel as a way to get value from our nontoken creatures entering the battlefield to proliferate, Norn’s Choirmaster to proliferate whenever Vishgraz enters or attacks, or Caress of Phyrexia to have an opponent draw three cards, lose three life, and get three poison counters.

Phyresis Outbreak is a way for each opponent to gain a poison counter and for each poison counter they have, each creature they control gets -1/-1 until end of turn, which will help clear the board if we happen to fall behind. We can also make use of board wipes like Damn cast with Overload to get rid of everything and use Eerie Ultimatum to bring back all permanents in our graveyard back, which could be enough poison to win us the game.

Vishgraz is a Commander that requires a dedicated poison strategy to become effective, which often means you will be in the cross hairs of all of your opponents. If you don’t mind that, then you can definitely win games with this deck if you happen to get poison onto your opponents as fast as possible.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual