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Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim

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Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim

At a glance

  • Commander: Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim
  • Colors: Orzhov
  • Archetype: Orzhov aristocrats drain control
  • Power tier: mid-high

Cards

Gameplan

Turn the battlefield into a self-feeding attrition engine. We flood cheap bodies and token-makers, run them through free/cheap sacrifice outlets, and every death is a drain off Elas (and Falkenrath Noble, and the death-trigger creatures). We refuel the fodder with one- and two-mana reanimation so the same bodies die over and over. Meanwhile edicts and spot removal keep opposing boards thin, and three pseudo-wipes (-X/-X sweeps) blow up go-wide decks while killing our own expendable tokens into more Elas drains. There is no “draw-go-into-wrath” plan here — the win is grind inevitability.

Win condition

Cumulative life loss. Elas drains each opponent for 1 per creature death; Falkenrath Noble adds a second drain per death; Tattered Mummy / Blistergrub / Etched Familiar / Nocturnal Feeder / Brotherhood-style death-pingers and the Lampad/Acolyte/Vermin Gorger sac outlets stack on top. Loop fodder with Grim Harvest / Disturbed Burial (buyback) / Tortured Existence / Unearth and you can sacrifice the same creature on a clock until the table is dead. In a 3-opponent pod a single creature death through Elas + Noble is already 4 total life lost across the table.

Key synergy lines

  • Free-outlet engine: Carrion Feeder / Viscera Seer / Cartel Aristocrat sacrifice for no mana → each sac is an Elas drain + a Noble drain. Viscera Seer turns the loop into card selection.
  • Drain outlets: Lampad of Death’s Vigil (, sac: each opp loses 1, you gain 1), Acolyte of Aclazotz and Vermin Gorger (sac: each opp loses 1–2`) — stack their drain on top of Elas’s death trigger for 2–3 per sacrifice per opponent.
  • Ramp that’s also fodder: Myr Moonvessel is a 1-mana body that dies into an Elas/Noble drain and adds — it ramps, chumps, and feeds the engine in one card. Sol Ring jump-starts the whole thing a turn early.
  • Reanimation loops: Grim Harvest recurs itself (Recover), Disturbed Burial has buyback, Tortured Existence rebuys a creature every turn for + a discard. Each returned body is a fresh ETB lifegain and a fresh death drain.
  • Sac-fueled draw doubles as the outlet: Village Rites / Deadly Dispute / Costly Plunder / Altar’s Reap each sacrifice a creature at instant speed — that’s a draw-two and an Elas ping in one card.
  • Sweepers that profit us: Drown in Sorrow / Mephitic Vapors / Nausea(-cut) clear opposing tokens and X/1s; our own dying tokens each fire Elas (and Noble).
  • Edicts past hexproof/protection: Fleshbag Marauder, Demon’s Disciple, Innocent Blood, Diabolic Edict, Geth’s Verdict force sacrifices the hard-to-target generals can’t dodge.

Role breakdown (with counts)

  • Lands — 36: 21 nonbasic (Command Tower, Path of Ancestry, duals, fetches, Bojuka Bog / Mortuary Mire utility, Piranha Marsh drain) + 9 Swamp + 6 Plains. Black-weighted because the engine and removal are mostly black.
  • Ramp — 11: Sol Ring, Everflowing Chalice, Myr Moonvessel, Charcoal Diamond, Marble Diamond, Mind Stone, Orzhov Signet, Arcane Signet, Orzhov Cluestone, Commander’s Sphere, Pristine Talisman. (Sol Ring accelerates the engine a turn early; Myr Moonvessel doubles as sac-fodder that adds on death; Mind Stone / Cluestone / Sphere / Talisman all convert to cards or lifegain later so excess ramp isn’t stranded.)
  • Card advantage — 7 dedicated: Night’s Whisper, Sign in Blood, Read the Bones, Village Rites, Deadly Dispute, Costly Plunder, Altar’s Reap. (The four sac-draw instants pull double duty as outlets.) On top of that, Phyrexian Vivisector scries on each death and Mind Stone / Commander’s Sphere / Orzhov Cluestone cash in for a card — roughly 10 sources of card flow once you count the rock-to-card conversion.
  • Spot removal / interaction — 11: Innocent Blood, Diabolic Edict, Geth’s Verdict, Fleshbag Marauder, Demon’s Disciple, Bone Splinters, Feed the Swarm, Murder, Bake into a Pie, Deadly Derision, Abyssal Gatekeeper (death-edict).
  • Mass / pseudo-wipe — 2: Drown in Sorrow, Mephitic Vapors (-2/-2 and -1/-1 board-wide; black has no true Wrath at common but these sweep go-wide and feed Elas). Demon’s Disciple / Innocent Blood act as additional symmetric-but-favorable pseudo-wipes.
  • Payoffs / enablers / fodder (rest): sac outlets (Carrion Feeder, Viscera Seer, Cartel Aristocrat, Lampad, Acolyte, Vermin Gorger), drain-on-death bodies (Falkenrath Noble, Tattered Mummy, Blistergrub, Etched Familiar, Nocturnal Feeder, Spirit of Malevolence, Serrated Scorpion), token/fodder makers (Doomed Traveler, Hunted Witness, Garrison Cat, Carrier Thrall, Festering Goblin, Infestation Sage, Voracious Vermin, Ministrant of Obligation, Imperious Oligarch, Raise the Alarm, Gather the Townsfolk, Queen’s Commission), recursion (Gravedigger, Cadaver Imp, Grim Harvest, Disturbed Burial, Tortured Existence, Unearth).

Pilot notes

  • Mulligan for a sac outlet or an early fodder source plus a land. Elas wants to be on the battlefield, but the engine works even when he’s not — recast him cheaply at and the lifegain ETB triggers help survive aggro.
  • Sequence death triggers: drop the creature, let Elas/Noble see the death, then resolve drains. With both out, every sac is +2 drain to each opponent.
  • Hold edicts for protected/recursive commanders. Save Bake into a Pie / Murder for must-kill bombs.
  • Sweepers are also “go off” buttons when you have a wide token board and an outlet you can’t activate fast enough — wrath your own board into Elas drains.
  • Don’t over-commit into open mana; you want fodder to die on your terms, not get exiled.

Weaknesses

  • Graveyard hate (Bojuka Bog effects, exile-removal) chokes the reanimation loops — lean harder on token-makers when the yard is gone.
  • Lifegain opponents can outpace incremental drain; prioritize Falkenrath Noble + a sac outlet to spike multiple drains a turn, and use edicts to remove their lifegain engines.
  • No true board wipe at common — go-wide aggro that outsizes our -2/-2 sweeps can race us. The deathtouch commander and 11 removal pieces are the answer; chump-and-drain to stabilize.
  • Single-target drains (most non-Elas payoffs) are slow in a full pod; Elas and Noble are the multiplayer-scaling pieces and should be protected.

Decklist

⬇ Download as .txt — paste into Moxfield, Archidekt, or MTG Arena.

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