At a glance
- Format: Brawl (100-card)
- Commander: Kaito, Bane of Nightmares
- Colors: Blue / Black (UB)
- Archetype: Dimir control
- Power tier: mid-high
- Competitive Brawl: ✅ Legal
Strategy
Classic Dimir attrition: answer everything, then let a protected planeswalker grind the game to dust. A dense suite of counterspells and cheap removal keeps the board clean while card-advantage engines (Read the Bones, Cruel Truths, Bad Deal, Phyrexian Gargantua) refuel you past every trade. Kaito, Bane of Nightmares is the win condition — ninjutsu him in off any of the deck’s many cheap flyers, then ult toward inevitability, with the surveil/mill creatures feeding Consuming Aberration as a backup finisher. Three sweepers (Languish, Malicious Eclipse, Deadly Cover-Up) reset aggressive boards. This refinement pass kept the proven core and tightened the edges: added Stock Up (the format’s premier dig-for-answers selection, now untruncated and correctly valued) and Into the Flood Maw (1-mana flexible bounce that resets hexproof threats and re-enables ninjutsu), upgraded removal with the owned-rare Black Sun’s Twilight (scalable -X/-X that also reanimates late) and Tragic Slip (a 1-mana -13/-13 the instant any creature trades — trivial in this trade-heavy shell), and slotted Fatal Fissure — a cheap instant earthbend payoff that turns a removal trigger into a 4/4 land-body, sneaking ramp plus a blocker into the control plan. Cuts were the narrowest/most redundant filler: Cruel Cut (destroy power ≤2), Diresight (sorcery-speed clone of instant-speed Cruel Truths), Opt (weakest cantrip), Curious Cadaver (clunky Clue-dependent recursion), and Buzz Bots.
Upgrade path
Zero rare/mythic SPELL crafts — every rare and mythic in the 99 (Languish, Deadly Cover-Up, Consuming Aberration, Raven Eagle, Bitterbloom Bearer, Riddlemaster Sphinx, Dragonlord Silumgar, Junji, Demon of Loathing, Wan Shi Tong, Sidisi, Postmortem Professor, Drag the Canal, and the newly added Black Sun’s Twilight) is already OWNED (own>=1), so rare discipline holds — no wildcards spent. The other adds this pass are commons/uncommons (Stock Up uc, Into the Flood Maw uc, Tragic Slip c, Fatal Fissure uc), all freely owned. Manabase is all-owned nonbasics + basics; no shock added (none approved for this pair). All 99 verified against the pool DB: owned, brawl-legal, UB color identity, singleton respected, 37 lands. Upgrade path if Mik spends wildcards later: swap a couple of the tapped basic-fixers (Dimir Guildgate, Serpent’s Pass, Murky Sewer) for new untapped UB duals once printed/owned — singleton blocks dupes of Watery Grave/Gloomlake Verge.
Cards
Decklist
Paste straight into MTG Arena (or Moxfield/Archidekt):
Commander
1 Kaito, Bane of Nightmares
Deck
1 Command Tower
1 Watery Grave
1 Gloomlake Verge
1 Undercity Sewers
1 Restless Reef
1 Dimir Guildgate
1 Dismal Backwater
1 Murky Sewer
1 Serpent's Pass
1 Treno, Dark City
1 Temple of Deceit
1 Capital City
1 Conduit Pylons
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Starting Town
11 Island
10 Swamp
1 An Offer You Can't Refuse
1 Spell Pierce
1 Spell Snare
1 Disdainful Stroke
1 Essence Scatter
1 Negate
1 Spellgyre
1 Refute
1 Sokka's Haiku
1 Syncopate
1 Drag the Canal
1 Bitter Triumph
1 Hero's Downfall
1 Murder
1 Bake into a Pie
1 Infernal Grasp
1 Heartless Act
1 Long Goodbye
1 Feed the Swarm
1 Annihilating Glare
1 Tragic Slip
1 Black Sun's Twilight
1 Fatal Fissure
1 Into the Flood Maw
1 Sold Out
1 Bigfin Bouncer
1 Exclusion Mage
1 Languish
1 Malicious Eclipse
1 Deadly Cover-Up
1 Quick Study
1 Chart a Course
1 Winged Words
1 Read the Bones
1 Cruel Truths
1 Stock Up
1 Phyrexian Gargantua
1 Bad Deal
1 Landscape Painter
1 Spellbook Seeker
1 Calamitous Tide
1 Cloudkin Seer
1 Dreadwing Scavenger
1 Consuming Aberration
1 Raven Eagle
1 Bitterbloom Bearer
1 Bone Picker
1 Riddlemaster Sphinx
1 Dragonlord Silumgar
1 Junji, the Midnight Sky
1 Demon of Loathing
1 Wan Shi Tong, Librarian
1 Clinquant Skymage
1 Gravelighter
1 Vampire Soulcaller
1 Postmortem Professor
1 Sidisi, Regent of the Mire
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Dismember
1 Tishana's Tidebinder
1 Archmage of Runes
1 Solemn Simulacrum
Card images & data via Scryfall.