Commander Spotlight: Massacre Girl, Known Killer
Author’s note: If you’re looking for a full decklist, you can find it at the end of the article!
There’s a killer on the loose! Murders at Karlov Manor is just around the corner, and this return to Ravnica finds us trying to solve a murder as we sift through the rogues’ gallery of one of Magic’s most iconic planes. There's a whole bunch of cool new commanders in this set, but one of them really caught my eye and started the wheels turning upstairs.
In today’s Commander Spotlight, we’re going to take a look at the aptly named Massacre Girl, Known Killer. We’ll be playing mono-black, which means we can find plenty of synergies with reducing power and toughness, -1/-1 counters, proliferate, evasion, and even a touch of infect for people who are feeling a bit rambunctious. I’m especially into the way that Massacre Girl rewards you for downsizing enemy creatures by making sure to keep your hand full of new cards!
Rather than offering a full deck tech, this article aims to highlight some great options for this commander. After all, there are plenty of ways to build any deck and Commander has plenty of room for self-expression. I’ve still taken the liberty of creating a sample decklist for this commander, which you’ll find at the end of the article. This deck has been checked for PlayEDH Low Power, so you can play it in the Low Power queue as is!
Why should you play Massacre Girl, Known Killer?
Much like our commander of choice, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician and The Scorpion God are both focused around using -1/-1 counters to draw cards. A key difference is that she offers a strategy that’s less likely to revolve around combos and more likely to involve combat. This makes her an ideal fit for casual Commander tables focused around turning creatures sideways in longer, grindier games with friends. That’s the mentality that I followed when looking to highlight some choice cards to play alongside her.
Enablers
Cards like Midnight Banshee get me excited in Commander. We’re not very likely to run into this card in the average Commander game, but it feels perfect for a deck like ours where we want to put -1/-1 counters on creatures as a core part of our strategy. Necroskitter is much the same, offering us a strong payoff for finishing off creatures once we’ve put counters on them by letting us borrow them to bolster our own forces.
Corrosive Mentor and Mari, the Killing Quill play really nicely alongside our commander while also allowing us to keep our gameplan on track if she gets removed or otherwise incapacitated during the game. Being able to give our entire team wither can really supercharge our strategy and Mari will be happy to help us keep the board clear and turn recursive enemy creatures into card advantage.
While we want to engage with creatures in combat, there will also be times when we want to have an easier time getting through. This is where creatures like Spitting Dilophosaurus and Defiler of Flesh come in. Rendering creatures unable to block or providing menace so that we can more easily hit opponents or their planeswalkers is an invaluable tool to have in our arsenal.
Creepy art aside, Gaze of Pain is a pretty neat card that allows us to turn unblocked attackers into direct damage to creatures instead. With abilities like wither, this can clear problematic creatures off the board and provide us with some card draw alongside our commander. Predators’ Hour gives our team menace and lets us steal a bunch of cards when our creatures get through for damage.
Author’s note: If you’re playing on SpellTable, I highly recommend having note paper or InfiniTokens on hand when playing Predators’ Hour and similar spells.
Answers
I always enjoy when decks get to run specialized removal that gives them additional benefits. Spells like Tragic Slip and Defile are perfect alongside our commander as efficient answers that also become cantrips due to our commander’s ability to draw cards when creatures have their toughness reduced. Getting around indestructible is also always a nice perk in Commander.
We can get a similar effect on our board wipes with Toxic Deluge and The Meathook Massacre. It is worth noting that our commander will see our opponents’ creatures die, even if she’s no longer on the battlefield because of cards like these. This can come in handy for refilling our hand when we have to send a bunch of our own creatures to the graveyard when we’re in a tight spot due to enemy creature threats that need to go.
Outside of creature removal and board wipes, mono-black often doesn’t have great options for interaction. Two notable exceptions appeared in the Time Spiral Block in the form of Sudden Spoiling and Imp’s Mischief. Having unique answers like these in our arsenal can allow us to catch our opponents by surprise and deal with a wider array of threats to our own gameplan!
Threats
We’re going to be sending a lot of creatures to the graveyard, so Massacre Wurm and Syr Konrad, the Grim will be invaluable tools to help us whittle down our opponents’ life totals while we’re doing it. Outside of a dedicated aristocrats strategy, I tend to favor cards like these over smaller creatures such as Blood Artist due to their powerful secondary effects that synergize with what we’re already trying to do.
Once we’ve chipped away at ours opponents’ life totals, we can finish them off with classic black drain effects like Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Exsanguinate. These cards can also prove invaluable to help stabilize our life total if we face heavy aggro early on during the game. While they don’t directly fit into the commander’s strategy, it’s hard to deny the efficacy of classics like these.
I mentioned infect earlier. While this deck certainly isn’t all-in on poison counters, there’s plenty of crossover synergy between wither and infect that makes cards like Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon and Contagion Engine feel right at home as finishers in a deck like this one. The infect cards that are included in this deck offer an additional way to win the game, but it’s unlikely to present an infect kill for the whole table out of nowhere.
Massacre Girl, Known Killer is certainly one of my favorite recent commander designs and I’m really looking forward to seeing her in action when Murders at Karlov Manor drops in February. There are plenty of different ways to build her, but I hope that you’ve enjoyed my take on her. As always, one of the best things about Commander is how many ways there are to build and play your own decks. I look forward to seeing all of the different ways that people construct and pilot decks with this commander.
You can find this deck and plenty more on the PlayEDH Low Power Hub that’s hosted by our good friends at Moxfield. All of these decks are ready to play right away in our curated power levels, but you can also use them for inspiration when brewing new decks of your own. We’re always on the lookout for new decks to feature in this collection with credit to the original brewers, so your deck might even be the next addition!
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