Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Mirko, Obsessive Theorist!

Mirko is a three mana 1/3 with flying, vigilance, whenever you surveil you put a +1/+1 counter on Mirko and at the beginning of your end step you may return target creature with power less that Mirko’s from your graveyard to the battlefield with a finality counter on it.

Mirko is an interesting play on a reanimation Commander in that he needs to be bigger in order to bring something back from the graveyard. Granted he does this at the beginning of each one of your end steps, which means that we can get a whole bunch of creatures back, albeit with the caveat of them having finality counters.

The goal of the deck is to pack it with a ton of cards that can let us surveil so Mirko can get bigger, have some creatures with decent stats with great enters abilities in order to make the most of them coming into play with finality counters.

The first thing we need are reliable ways to surveil, the cheaper the cost the better.

Sinister Starfish is a two mana creature who can tap to surveil 1, meaning that we can play this and curve right into Mirko in order for Mirko to start reviving creatures with power less than 2, and then we can get bigger and bigger as time goes on.

Case of the Shifting Visage can surveil 1 at the beginning of our upkeep, and if we happen to have fifteen or more cards in our graveyard we can solve it in order to be able to copy any nonlegendary creature spells that we cast.

Doom Whisperer is a solid body with flying and trample while also letting us pay 2 life to surveil 2 cards, Pile On is a Convoke spell that can destroy a creature or Planeswalker while also letting us surveil 2, and Essence Anchor surveils 1 at the beginning of our upkeep and can tap to make a 2/2 Zombie Druid creature token during our turn and if a card left our graveyard this turn.

There are also some bounce spells like Ephara’s Dispersal which costs two mana cheaper if it targets an attacking creature that also happen to have some form of incidental surveil, in the case of Ephara’s Dispersal we surveil 2. There is also Sinister Sabotage which is a counter spell that also lets us surveil 1 and Don’t Make a Sound which counters target spell unless its controller pays two mana and if they do then we surveil 2.

Next we need to look at the creatures that we want to bring back, which should have some sort of solid utility for us to use.

Evil Twin is great because we can bring it back anytime since its power is 0, which means that we can bring it in to become a copy of some sort big creature or utility creature an opponent has and we can also pay two mana and tap to destroy a creature that has the same name.

Clone creatures are a pretty good choice since they usually have base 0 power, just so long as they can copy any target creature and not just one we control. Copycrook is pretty good because not only does it enter as any creature on the battlefield and it also happens to gain the attack trigger of conniving when it attacks.

If we manage to get Mirko to a bit of a higher power, then there are some other great creatures we can bring back. Vile Entomber can help us get whatever we want into the graveyard, Gray Merchant of Asphodel in order to drain our opponents equal to our devotion to black and we gain life equal to the total life lost this way, and Twilight Prophet which when we have the city’s blessing then we can reveal the top card of our library and have our opponents lose life and we gain life equal to the mana value of that card.

There also happen to be creatures that gain or give us an additional benefit whenever we surveil. Matoya, Archon Elder draws a card whenever we scry or surveil, Dimir Spybug gets a +1/+1 counter whenever we surveil while also having flying and menace, and Thoughtbound Phantasm which is a defender that gets a +1/+1 counter whenever we surveil and as long as it has three or more +1/+1 counters then it can attack as though it didn’t have defender.

We can also get some big creatures in our graveyard that have great utility for us and there are a plethora of creatures we can choose from. if I had to pick one, then I would choose Sheoldred, Whispering One which has swampwalk, and at the beginning of our upkeep we return a creature card from our graveyard to the battlefield and at the beginning of our opponents upkeeps they sacrifice a creature.

The best way for us to win the game is to make sure what we revive manages to stick to the battlefield, which means we need ways to remove the finality counters on our revived creatures.

Soul Diviner is perfect for what we need, because we can tap to remove a counter from an artifact, creature, land, or Planeswalker we control to draw a card, which is also amazing since Soul Diviner is two mana, meaning we can get this down early and start getting our creatures to stick longer and more reliably.

O’aka, Traveling Merchant can remove a counter from a nonland permanent we control to draw a card, Chisei, Heart of Oceans sacrifices itself at the beginning of our upkeep unless we remove a counter from a permanent we control, and Power Conduit which can remove a counter from a permanent we control to either put a charge counter on an artifact or to put a +1/+1 counter on a creature.

One of the best and most flexible of the counter removers is Fain, the Broker, which not only can remove a counter from a creature we control to create a Treasure token, but we can also sacrifice a creature to put two +1/+1 counters on a creature, sacrifice an artifact to create a 2/1 Inkling token or pay mana to untap it to choose any one of these abilities again.

Once we have on or two counter removers in play, then we can play bigger and better creatures more reliably. One thing we can play that works well is Syr Konrad, the Grim to deal 1 damage to each of our opponents whenever a creature dies, put into the graveyard from anywhere, or a creature card leaves from anywhere while also having the ability to have each player mill a card.

We can use Massacre Wurm to clear our opponents board of small creatures and if a creature an opponent controls dies they lose 2 life, Agent of Treachery to steal our opponents things with the ability to draw three cards if we control three permanents we don’t own, and if we don’t mind a Game Changer then Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur to continuously draw seven cards and have our opponents hand size reduced by seven.

Mirko serves as the engine for our deck to work, wanting us to surveil so that he gets bigger and any creature we put into the graveyard to be a potential reanimation target.

As with all graveyard decks we are weak to graveyard removal or cards that prevent us from interacting with the graveyard, but thankfully with surveil we at least have the option to not put the card into the graveyard to help us look for our answers.

This deck is heavily reliant on the graveyard, so any ways we can make sure we have access to the graveyard become important, otherwise our deck isn’t able to do what it needs to win.

Mirko isn’t a fast deck, but it can be a strong recursive deck that can be difficult to deal with if we play carefully.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual