Commander Spotlight: Olivia, Crimson Bride
Author’s note: If you’re looking for a full decklist, you can find it at the end of the article!
It seems like every new set that comes out includes tons of new legendary creatures, which means that it’s almost impossible to keep track of them all. We’ve all likely experienced this when someone sits down with a commander that we’ve never played against and their deck does something really fun and cool. You might even feel inspired to put your own spin on the deck after a game like that one.
Commander Spotlight is where we look at commanders that aren’t necessarily the most popular options out there and show what they have to offer. Today’s commander is a real femme fatale, hailing from 2021’s Innistrad: Crimson Vow. Olivia, Crimson Bride focuses on a Rakdos reanimator strategy that rewards you for turning creatures sideways during the combat step. This can have deadly results.
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 Mid Power, so you can play it there without any changes!
You might remember Olivia from the cinematic trailer for Innistrad: Crimson Vow. She was the main antagonist from the set, so it stands to reason that she’d feature as one of the most distinctive commanders on offer in the set. I was drawn to Olivia because of her fantastic character design and her potential to reanimate a lot of fun and powerful creatures in Rakdos colors when she attacks.
Why should you play Olivia, Crimson Bride?
Good question. Edgar Markov is basically everything that you could ask for in a Vampire commander, but Olivia doesn’t just have to stick to just Vampires. You can reanimate all sorts of huge bombs in your commander’s colors without worrying about creature types. Chainer, Nightmare Adept is similar, but you’ll have to pay to cast the creatures in your graveyard instead of cheating them into play tapped and attacking.
There are plenty of ways to play reanimator strategies in Commander. One of the most popular ways to play involves a heavy emphasis on self-mill in order to gradually fill up the graveyard with enticing options. This is typified by commanders like Sidisi, Brood Tyrant and Araumi of the Dead Tide and usually involves Dimir or Sultai colors. In contrast, most Rakdos reanimator decks have higher velocity and less overall targets.
Enablers
Olivia, Mobilized for War synergizes pretty well with her future self, allowing you to discard cards to reanimate later and giving haste to creatures when they enter the battlefield. This can come in handy when you’re casting creatures from hand or taking extra combat steps. Drana, the Last Bloodchief is another way to reanimate creatures. Both of these creatures have flying and can help buff up your team for extra damage.
They’re also both Vampires, which can come in handy if Olivia gets removed while reanimated creatures are on board!
Jaxis, the Troublemaker makes copies of your creatures that will draw you cards when they die, while dumping new ones into the graveyard for Olivia to reanimate when you discard cards to pay for the ability. This type of card selection can be extremely important to this commander, as exemplified by Cavalier of Flame’s enters-the-battlefield (ETB) trigger. You always want to have plenty of options in both your hand and your graveyard.
Treasonous Ogre is a card that can help get her out faster and pay for commander tax easier and Hellkite Courser is a great way to bring her onto the battlefield if she’s been removed and you just need her to get a single trigger to push yourself to victory. These are just some cards to consider when building a commander that costs six mana and is likely a target for priority removal by your opponents.
In a deck like this one, Buried Alive is almost like tutoring three creatures to hand since Olivia can reanimate them right away to cause all sorts of problems for your opponents. You can also leverage cards such as Corpse Dance—the singular Reserved List card that I’m going to mention in this article—to reanimate creatures at instant speed and give them haste. The exile clause won’t matter if you’re winning this turn!
Spells like Hostile Negotiations can be cast at instant speed to provide new cards in your hand and graveyard. You never want to run out of gas in a deck like this one, because Olivia is a lot less threatening without access to scary creatures to reanimate. The retrace ability on Decaying Time Loop means that you can use it again and again when you need to fill up on new options.
Mana and card selection? Jeska’s Will is a Commander all-star that has rightly earned a reputation as one of red’s best rituals. You can use it to ramp out your commander early or you can use it as a way to generate tons of mana and provide more cards that you can cast right away. Unless you’re playing Planechase, you can ignore the bottom half of Path of the Pyromancer. The top half does everything that this deck wants to do.
Answers
Feed the Swarm is one of the few ways for Rakdos to effectively deal with a card like Rest in Peace, and it can also hit something like a Drannith Magistrate or a Containment Priest in a pinch. Cast into the Fire is a great way to deal with artifacts that you don’t want to see again, especially a certain four-drop legendary artifact that’s indestructible and draws tons of cards for its controller.
The last thing that you want to do is cast Olivia and have her get blown out right away, because a six-drop commander can be hard to keep casting throughout the game in the face of removal. Make sure that you play a few spells that will allow you to keep her safe from board wipes and targeted removal. Cards like Deflecting Swat and Malakir Rebirth can help mitigate a lot of these risks.
Threats
What’s a reanimator deck without kill-on-sight creatures? Master of Cruelties synergizes very well with any commander that can cheat it into play tapped and attacking, allowing you to finish off a defenseless opponent on the spot. Vilis, Broker of Blood can take over the game by drawing you loads or cards when you lose life, making it easy to always have plenty of things in hand to discard and reanimate later.
Bloodthirster can dish out plenty of extra damage by allowing you to take additional combat steps and hit each of your opponents. Port Razer can be even better, since it can untap Olivia and your other creatures and allow you to get multiple attacks and reanimate multiple creatures. While neither of these cards goes infinite all on their own, both of them can often provide enough damage to carry you to victory.
There are plenty of combos in Rakdos colors that allow for infinite combat steps. My personal favorite for a deck like this one is reanimating an Ancient Copper Dragon and then using it to create tons of Treasure to pay for the ability of Aggravated Assault. This means that you’ll need to be able to keep swinging the Dragon, but even taking just a few extra attacks can be enough to kill off your opponents.
I hope that this article inspires you to give Olivia, Crimson Bride a try in Commander. I think that she has a lot to offer and I couldn’t possibly go over everything that you can do with her in just one article. Rakdos reanimator is a strategy that’s pretty far from my usual style of deck-building, but I had a lot of fun brainstorming ideas for this commander and putting together a decklist of my own.
You can find this deck and plenty more on the PlayEDH Mid 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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