Hello and welcome back to the Weekly Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Ashnod, Flesh Mechanist!

Ashnod is a one mana 1/1 with deathtouch, and whenever she attacks you may sacrifice another creature and if you do you create a tapped Powerstone token and for five mana and exile a creature card from your graveyard you create a tapped 3/3 colorless Zombie artifact creature token.

Ashnod is a proactive take on a sacrifice Commander in that she needs to attack to sacrifice a creature and make a very specific token that can help fuel her ability to make a Zombie token. What I think is pretty neat is that since she is a one mana 1/1 with deathtouch, most opponents will either let her through or have something small block her.

We can circumvent her dying in a number of ways, as well as take advantage of the fact that while Powerstone mana can’t be used to cast nonartifact spells, we have plenty of cards that will let us deal with that issue, not just Ashnod’s own ability.

Bodies to Stones

The first thing that we need to do are find creatures that have some sort of value when they die or when another creature we control dies.

Since our Powerstone tokens can’t cast nonartifact spells, we will have plenty of artifacts that we can use that mana. Solemn Simulacrum is a solid pick for us because when it enters it tutors a basic land from our library and puts it onto the battlefield tapped and when it dies we can draw a card.

Additionally anything that can make an additional body for us to sacrifice is going to serve us really well, like Myr Sire because when it dies we can put a 1/1 Myr token onto the battlefield for us to sacrifice our next turn.

Infestation Sage makes a 1/1 Insect with flying when it dies, Nezumi Linebreaker makes a 1/1 Mercenary that can tap to give a +1/+0 buff at sorcery speed when it dies, and Nested Shambler makes X tapped 1/1 Squirrel tokens where X is it’s power.

Again death triggers are ideal for the deck, and the cheaper the better so something like Callous Inspector to deal us one damage and make a Clue token when it dies is pretty good, Shambling Ghast to either make us a Treasure token or give a creature -1/-1 until end of turn is solid, and Abyssal Gatekeeper to have each player sacrifice a creature when it dies can be a tricky way to remove a creature.

There are also creatures that have some form of recursion, the cheaper the better, so something like Nether Traitor is perfect because whenever another creature we control is put from the battlefield into the graveyard, we can pay a black mana to put it from the graveyard to the battlefield.

Rotting Rats is pretty cool because when it enters it has everyone discard a card and it also has Unearth so we can do it again, Nether Shadow can come back from the graveyard if there are three or more creatures above it at the beginning of our upkeep, and Bloodghast can come back to the battlefield from the graveyard as a Landfall ability.

We can even get a bit of value from Tenacious Underdog, which can be cast from the graveyard with its Blitz ability, which means that when it dies we draw a card and if we cast it with its Blitz ability then it gains haste and sacrifices itself at the beginning of the end step.

Sacrifices I’m Willing to Make

The next thing we need to look at are additional ways for us to gain a benefit from our things dying.

Pitiless Plunderer is a classic way for us to get a major benefit because whenever another creature we control dies we get to make a Treasure token, which can be considerably better for us than a Powerstone token because it gives us mana we can use for spells that aren’t artifacts.

Blood Artist has it so that whenever it or another creature dies target player lose 1 life and you gain 1 life, Bastion of Remembrance which enters with a 1/1 Human Soldier token and whenever a creature you control dies each opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life, and Vein Ripper which whenever a creature dies target opponent loses 2 life and you gain 2 life.

There are also cards that have a payoff whenever you sacrifice a creature, like with Smothering Abomination, which does have you sacrifice a creature at the beginning of your upkeep, but also has it so that whenever you sacrifice a creature you draw a card, so not only will you get a Powerstone token from Ashnod, but you also get to draw a card.

Popular Egotist has it so that whenever you sacrifice a permanent target opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life while also being able to sacrifice a creature to gain indestructible until end of turn to make sure that we have some way to keep something in play in case of a board wipe.

We also can use Evin, Waterdeep Opportunist which can make us a tapped Treasure token once each turn whenever one or more players sacrifice one or more creatures, while also gaining a +2/+0 bonus for each Treasure we control and has a Ward cost of sacrificing a creature, meaning that in order for an opponent to deal with them then they need to trigger their ability at least once.

If we are stuck in the long game, then Phoenix Fleet Airship is a pretty good pick because at the beginning of our end step, if we sacrificed a permanent this turn we make a token copy of it, and if we control eight or more permanents named Phoenix Fleet Airship, then it becomes an artifact creature, and it has the very cheap Crew cost of just 1.

Insurance Policy

Since Ashnod is a one mana Commander, it is highly likely that she gets targeted in the early game by removal spells, so we need to make sure that we can get her back into play as soon as we can.

Ashnod’s Intervention is actually perfect for this because it also happens to give target creature a +2/+0 boost and it gives the creature the ability to come back into our hand whenever it dies or is put into exile from the battlefield, which is very helpful against exile based removal spells.

There are a slew of ways to get Ashnod back onto the battlefield when she dies like Undying Malice to bring her back to the battlefield tapped with a +1/+1 counter, Not Dead After All to bring her back to the battlefield tapped with a Wicked Role token, and Kaya’s Ghostform which has it so that the enchanted creature comes back to the battlefield whenever it dies or gets exiled.

We can also use other cheap forms of recursion like Reanimate, which can bring a creature back from the graveyard to the battlefield and we lose life equal to the mana value of the creature we brought back, which for Ashnod is negligible because she is only one mana.

Unearth can bring a creature back with mana value 3 or less to the battlefield with Cycling 2, Zuko’s Conviction to bring a creature back from the graveyard to our hand or if we pay the Kicker 4 then it goes back to the battlefield, and Stitch Together to return a creature card from our graveyard to our hand or to the battlefield if we have Threshold.

Our removal suite is going to be a bit light, but we do have a couple of cards that we can use pretty effectively, like Overwhelming Remorse which can exile a creature or Planeswalker and gets one mana cheaper for each creature card in our graveyard.

Archenemy’s Charm is pretty good for us since we are mono black and it gives us the option to either exile a creature or Planeswalker, return up to two creature and/or Planeswalker cards from our graveyard to our hand, or put two +1/+1 counter on a creature we control and give it lifelink for a turn.

Speaking of Planeswalkers, we can actually use Karn, Living Legacy to our benefit since it can make a tapped Powerstone token, let us pay any amount of mana to look at that many cards from the top of our library and put one into our hand and the rest at the bottom of our library in a random order, or give us an emblem that let’s us tap an untapped artifact to deal 1 damage to any target.

Game Changer wise, other then the tutors or The One Ring, we can actually use the Tergrid’s Lantern side of Tergrid, God of Fright to our benefit since we can actually cast it with our Powerstones and use the ability to have an opponent discard a card or sacrifice a nonland permanent or lose 3 life and can also use that Powerstone mana to untap it to do it a decent amount of times.

Paths to Victory

All we need now is a way to win, and we actually have a few ways to accomplish that task.

Bog Initiate is simple enough to understand, we pay 1 mana to make a black mana and that can seem like a far cry from a win condition. However, if we have been playing the deck correctly then we should have been making a good number of Powerstone tokens, which while they can’t be used to cast nonartifact spells, they can in fact be used to activate abilities of whatever we want, meaning we can feed that mana through Bog Initiate to have a ton of black mana.

We can use it to cast spells like Rise of the Dark Realms which puts all creatures from all graveyards onto the battlefield under our control, Open the Graves to make us a 2/2 Zombie whenever a nontoken creature we control dies, and Torment of Hailfire to have each player either lose 3 life unless they sacrifice a nonland permanent or discard a card and have it be done X times.

Speaking of going big, we can use those Powerstones for some big mana payoffs like Walking Ballista, which gets X +1/+1 counters and we can remove a +1/+1 counter to deal 1 damage to any target and can even give it more +1/+1 counters by paying four mana.

Portal to Phyrexia is another way for us to gain a massive advantage because it has each opponent sacrifice three creatures and at the beginning of out upkeep we can take a creature from a graveyard and put onto the battlefield under our control, with that creature also gaining the Phyrexia creature type in addition to its other types.

Forsaken Monument is a curious piece to include in the deck, but it allows our Powerstones to tap for an additional mana, which means that it becomes easier to activate Ashnod’s ability to make colorless Zombie tokens which get bigger because of the Monument as well.

If we do want a more aggressive way to win, we can use Phyrexian Triniform, which when it dies we make three 3/3 Phyrexian Golem artifact creature tokens, but the biggest thing is that if we use its Encore ability with access to all the Powerstone mana we have, then we can make a number of copies equal to the number of opponents we have and have them attack and sacrifice themselves at the beginning of the end step in order to get more Phyrexian Golems.

We can even cheat it out with something like Planar Bridge, which for eight mana can let us search our library for a permanent card and put it onto the battlefield. This let’s us bring out any permanent we need at the time, making Ashnod a potential toolbox Commander.

In Conclusion

Ashnod is a solid Commander that can split off into a decent number of deck types that has a solid engine in using the Powerstones to fuel what we want to do.

Some of the more obvious shortcomings are that the Powerstones can trip us up if we aren’t using some number of artifacts to help make them useful or don’t have things with activated abilities that we can use.

Artifact removal against us can be pretty bad and if there is some form of graveyard denial then we can potentially lose out on our death triggers or death payoffs, which is not great if that is our primary strategy.

However Ashnod does have more versatility than one would think, and being able to have access to a decent amount of mana that can slowly accrue into a lot of mana if left unattended is actually pretty great, especially if we lean more to the casting big artifacts or activating abilities side of Ashnod.

Thank you all for reading, see you next week for the next Weekly Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual

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