Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today we are going to be talking about Edgar Markov!

Edgar is a six mana 4/4 with first strike, haste, an Eminence ability of whenever you cast another Vampire spell, if Edgar is in the Command Zone or on the battlefield you create a 1/1 black Vampire creature token and whenever Edgar Markov attacks you put a +1/+1 counter on each Vampire you control.

Game Plan

I figured that to celebrate Halloween, it would be great to talk about a truly terrifying Commander in Edgar Markov, who is at the time of writing this the second most popular Commander according to EDHREC.

Now Edgar is truly terrifying because he doesn’t need to be in play to get any value, and the best way to build Edgar is more so as a finisher after building a massive board of Vampires, both tokens and nontokens. So the question becomes how strong can Edgar be made?

Support

The best way to make use of Edgar’s ability is to get as many cheap Vampires into play so you can start accumulating those tokens.

Voldaren Epicure is a one mana Vampire that deals 1 damage to each opponent when it enters and it makes us a Blood token, Vampire Cutthroat is a one mana Vampire with skulk and lifelink, and Vampire of the Dire Moon is a one mana Vampire with deathtouch and lifelink.

However, we can’t just aim for cheap Vampires for the sake of cheap Vampires, we also need Vampires with some other function, like Master of Dark Rites, a one mana Vampire that can tap and sacrifice another creature to make three black mana that can only be used to cast Vampire, Cleric, and/or Demon spells.

If we do want to add some sacrifice synergies in the deck as well, we also have access to Cruel Celebrant, which has it so that when they or another creature or Planeswalker we control dies, each opponent loses 1 life and we gain 1 life.

As we move up the more mana expensive Vampires, we have access to Forerunner of the Legion which is a card that let’s us tutor for a Vampire card on top of our library and whenever a Vampire we control enters target creature we control gets +1/+1 until the end of turn.

We can then combine that with Vampire Nocturnus which has us play with the top card of our library revealed and as long as the top card of our library is black, Vampire Nocturnus and other Vampires we control get +2/+1 and have flying, which can help enable something like Rakish Heir which makes it so that when a Vampire we control deals combat damage, we put a +1/+1 counter on it.

As our board builds up, we can use cards like Kindred Judgement and Kindred Dominance to choose a creature type and destroy all creatures that are not of the chosen creature type, which can be very helpful in leaving an open space for us to attack.

Blood Tribute can also make our lives a whole lot easier because it can make target opponent lose half of their life rounded up, but for the small Kicker cost of tapping an untapped Vampire we control, then we can also gain life equal to the life lost this way.

As far as how we finish, we can easily get something like a Banner of Kinship in play which enters with a fellowship counter on for each creature we control of a creature type we declare and then each creature we control of the chosen type gets +1/+1 for each fellowship counter. If we manage to play one Vampire a turn until turn five when we can cast this and no other interaction comes our way, we have a cool +10/+10 boost for all of our Vampires.

Combine that with a haste enabler like Song of Totentanz which also gives 1/1 Rat tokens along with giving all of our creatures haste, Mass Hysteria if you want all creatures to have haste, or Samut, Hazoret’s Champion to give all creatures we control haste, we can very easily swing out a massive amount of damage to win the game.

Setbacks

The biggest problem that Edgar Markov has to deal with is the fact that Edgar has one of the strongest abilities in the game.

Eminence is an extremely powerful ability, especially when it comes to Edgar because he just wants us to cast our Vampire spells. We don’t need to jump through any crazy hoops or cast very expensive spells. From turn one we can start getting a massive board that grows and grows very quickly.

That means that our opponents will lock in to make sure that we don’t get to that point. Edgar not only is the second most popular Commander on EDHREC, but is also in their top 100 Saltiest Cards list, which means that a lot of players will not like seeing or playing against Edgar.

How quickly Edgar’s advantage can spiral out of control can put you ahead of the other players where it can feel unfun to play against, and it can even be unfun to play with if you are going for a more casual vibe.

Even as you get higher and higher in the brackets Edgar can be difficult to deal with because he doesn’t even need to enter the battlefield. He can sit in the Command Zone generating passive value where even if there is a board wipe he can start recovering much more quickly than other Commanders.

A lot of the weaknesses that decks that use the Commander as an engine to facilitate their strategy such as high mana value, no inherent protection, susceptible to board wipes all go out the window when the Commander doesn’t even need to be cast.

This can lead to your opponents attacking you, using every piece of removal or stax pieces against you in order to make sure that you don’t get a chance to get use out of Edgar, which to some players can be not very fun to play with.

Bracket Rating: 4

Edgar is an extremely powerful Commander, which is why they are as popular as they are.

Even as strong as Edgar is, I can’t really put him as a cEDH Commander, more so because the format is much more quick and combo focused with even the slower decks being hyper efficient value engines that blow Edgar out of the water. However, I still think that Edgar can be a powerful deck, holding his own against other powerful decks and being able to steamroll lower powered decks.

Thank you for reading, see you all tomorrow!

Happy Halloween!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual