Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Grandmother Sengir!

Grandmother Sengir is a five mana 3/3 that for two mana and tap target creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn.

A very simple ability, which indicative of early legendary creatures in the old days where the three flavors of legendary creatures were vanilla legendary creatures, legendary creatures with simple abilities, or legendary creatures with extremely complex abilities.

Grandmother Sengir is in the simple camp, and can be built around fairly easily, since there are plenty of cards that interact with -X/-X synergy, and even though we are in one color, its better for us to stay in one color to focus on our game plan.

We are going for a board control deck, we limit the number of creatures on the board and whenever one dies we get a benefit or our opponents get punished for it.

The first thing that we need to do is get additional ways to give -X/-X, and most of the time this will end up being on sweepers.

Massacre Girl, Known Killer is pretty solid here in that not only does she give creatures we control wither, which has our creatures deal -1/-1 counters instead of damage, but she also lets us draw a card if a creature our opponent controls dies when it’s toughness was less than 1.

There is also the original Massacre Girl, who when she enters each other creature gets -1/-1, and if a creature dies this turn then each other creature gets an additional -1/-1, which can cascade to being a board sweep with just Massacre Girl standing alone, especially if we are playing against a tokens deck.

Even just classic Massacre can be helpful for us to play because we have the potential to cast this for free if an opponent is playing a Plains while we have a Swamp, which in a mono black deck is not a hard thing to do, and it is a clean board sweep of giving all creatures -2/-2.

To help mitigate this a bit for our creatures, we can also play things like Ascendant Evincar, which gives black creatures +1/+1 and nonblack creatures -1/-1 or even Bad Moon, which gives all black creatures +1/+1. While this is only a bandage applied to staunch us potentially losing our things, we can find ways to keep our creatures around.

There is also plenty of targeted removal that uses -X/-X so we can only target singular creatures as necessary, or in the cases that our opponents don’t have a wide enough board to justify a board wipe. Tragic Slip comes to mind as a way to either give target creature -1/-1 until end of turn or -13/-13 until end of turn if a creature died this turn.

Ichor Slick gives a creature -3/-3 until end of turn, cycles for two mana and has Madness for three and a black, Erebos’s Intervention is modal in giving a creature -X/-X and we gain X life or exile up to twice X cards from graveyards, and Overkill if we just need something massive to die for sure by giving a creature -0/-9999.

Like I said before, we are a board control deck, and I think that we shouldn’t limit ourselves to just dealing with creatures.

Irini Sengir is a simple enough way to make white and green enchantments cost two more mana, and there are plenty of big enchantments that we can slow down if we manage to get Irini into play pretty early, which we can do with things like Bubbling Muck which is a High Tide for Swamps or Crypt Ghast which has your Swamps add an additional black mana.

We can use Underworld Dreams and Fate Unraveler to deal 1 damage to our opponents whenever they draw a card, Plague Drone to have our opponents lose life instead if they were to gain life, Hero’s Demise to have a cheap way to deal with a majority of Commanders, and Grievous Wound to prevent a player from gaining life and whenever that player is dealt damage they lose half of their life, rounded up.

Szat’s Will is a solid modal spell that either have each opponent sacrifice a creature they control with the greatest power or exile all opponents graveyards and make X 0/1 Thrulls equal to the greatest power among creatures exiled or both if we control Grandmother Sengir.

If an opponent happens to have a lot of creatures and artifacts in their graveyard, either from us killing a bunch of their creatures or from other means, we can also make use of their graveyard by using Spoils of Evil to add colorless mana and gain 1 life for each one in that graveyard.

If we want to be really specific with the amount of control aspects we have, we can use Aether Snap to remove all counters from all permanents and exile all tokens, Deathgrip to have a continuous way to pay two black mana to counter a green spell, or Winter Moon to have some nonbasic land hate.

Now that we have a decent stranglehold of the board, we need actual ways to win the game.

Before we start playing our board wipes we can play cards like Massacre Wurm as a way to give creatures our opponents control -2/-2 and for any creature our opponent controls that dies, that player loses 2 life, which is hellish for a token Commander, and can dramatically shift games to our favor.

Thankfully having dropped in price since it made it’s debut as a Pioneer menace is Vein Ripper, who has a Blood Artist effect, except it also has a ward of sacrificing a creature, and if a creature dies target opponent loses 2 life and we gain 2 life instead of one, all on a 6/5 that also has flying.

Speaking of Vampires, if we want a flavorful way to have a big creature that benefits from creatures dying we have Sengir, the Dark Baron, who gets two +1/+1 counters whenever another creatures dies and a neat bonus effect of if another player loses the game, we gain life equal to that player’s life total as the turn began.

We also happen to be heavy on the black pips on this deck, so if we absolutely need a way to finish off our opponents and provide a massive life swing we can also use Gray Merchant of Asphodel, which when they enter has our opponents lose life equal to our devotion to black and we gain life equal to the total amount of life lost this way.

Grandmother Sengir is serves more of a theme Commander, in which the theme in this case is -X/-X based removal and gaining benefits from that. While she isn’t the best Commander for that playstyle, she does serve a fun lower power or lower bracket Commander that can be used for casual games.

She won’t draw a lot of hate inherently like some Commanders, but once you start playing the deck the focus may shift, but by that point you should hopefully have developed a decent enough board presence to start playing your haymakers.

Grandmother needs her rest, so we let the rest of the deck do the talking.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual