Hello and welcome to the first Commander Bites!

Today we are taking a look at Istvan, Butcher of Eln!

Istvan is a four mana 1/3 that must attack each combat if able, you prevent all damage that would be dealt to Istvan by creatures, and whenever a creature an opponent dies, you put two +1/+1 counters on Istvan.

Game Plan

Debuting in the upcoming Mystery Booster Commander boxes, Istvan is a reference to the original Uncle Istvan from The Dark, which only had the preventing damage aspect of this Istvan.

Now we have an aggro Commander that wants to have creatures your opponents control die so that he can get bigger and swing out to kill your opponents, ideally through Commander damage.

Black doesn’t often lean towards the straight up Voltron aggro game plan, especially since that is more of a red thing, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t cards that can’t help it.

Support

There are a ton of cheap removal spells that black has access to that can be used to take down small creatures to get Istvan bigger in the early game like Cut Down to destroy a creature with total power and toughness of 5 or less.

We also have access to ways that force our opponents to lose more creatures like Criminal Past, which gives Commander creatures we control menace and +X/+0 where X is the number of creature cards in our graveyard.

Defile is an amazing removal spell that scales really we during the game because for just one black mana, target creature gets -1/-1 until the end of turn which can definitely help us get rid of bigger creatures as the game goes on as well as deal with creatures that have indestructible.

Speaking of -1/-1, Massacre Girl is the perfect card for a massive board wipe that happens to pair extremely well with Istvan. Massacre Girl gives each other creature -1/-1 when she enters the battlefield, and if a creature dies then each other creature gets -1/-1 again.

This can then become a massive chain reaction that can kill every creature because the more creatures die, the smaller creatures get because of the additional -1/-1’s that Massacre Girl gives, while Istvan gets bigger and bigger and can survive because those +1/+1 counters stay and help keep Istvan in the clear while our opponents creatures get whittled away.

Even on the less extreme side of things, cards like Fleshbag Marauder and Accursed Marauder can make it so that each player sacrifices a creature, with Accursed Marauder making sure that we get rid of a nontoken creatures. That is six +1/+1 counters on Istvan that can make him into a much more lethal threat since he can’t be destroyed in combat.

You can even double down on Istvan’s effect with a card like Sadistic Glee, which puts a +1/+1 counter on enchanted creature whenever a creature dies, not just your opponents creatures, which makes the Marauder cards even better since they will net you at least one additional counter.

Struggles

Which leads to where the deck will struggle the most, and that is through noncombat based removal spells.

While Istvan can survive combats no problem, any burn spell or removal spell or board wipe can take him out of play no problem, which means that if we dedicated a bunch of resources in killing our opponents creatures and they bring up a Swords to Plowshares, then we need to do that all over again.

There are some ways that we can help protect Istvan from burn or destroy based effects with cards like Battle-Rage Blessing which gives target creature deathtouch and indestructible until the end of turn or even a Feign Death which gives a creature the ability “When this creature dies, return it to the battlefield tapped under its owner’s control with a +1/+1 counter on it.”

However, black does not have the tools for us to prevent exile based effects since one of the few mono-black ways to prevent Istvan from being targeted that isn’t an artifact is through Cultist of the Absolute which gives Commander creatures we control “Ward – Pay 3 life” but we need to sacrifice a creature at the beginning of our upkeep, which doesn’t help give Istvan counters.

Black has tools to allow us to recover from using too many resources with plenty of draw spells like Sign in Blood, Phyrexian Arena, and Village Rites, so at the very least there is some way to keep us in play.

Since we are also in mono-black, then Gray Merchant of Asphodel can really be a massive life swing in our favor, and maybe can take out a couple opponents if we’re lucky.

The other major downside is that Istvan doesn’t really lend himself to any other strategies other than a Voltron aggro strategy. Once your opponents see that you are playing Istvan, especially if you play him often, then they will know exactly what your game plan is and how to handle it.

Bracket Rating: 2

While Istvan can be built in way that can be tough to deal with, at a certain point Istvan will run out of steam, and when he does then there are going to be struggles in winning, especially if you play against heavy removal decks.

However I do think that a lot of Voltron decks can do really well in Bracket 2 because it tends to be removal light when compared to the other Brackets and the deck won’t really interfere with other people’s strategies too much if you spread your removal spells around.

You aren’t going to be winning out of nowhere and people will be able to see what you’re going to do, so might as well lean into it and not be too competitive about it.

Thank you very much for reading, see you tomorrow!

Peace

J.M. Casual