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Sedris, the Traitor King

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Sedris, the Traitor King

At a glance

  • Commander: Sedris, the Traitor King
  • Colors: Grixis
  • Archetype: Grixis unearth reanimator midrange
  • Power tier: mid-high

Cards

The commander’s real ability (quoted)

Each creature card in your graveyard has unearth . (: Return the card to the battlefield. The creature gains haste. Exile it at the beginning of the next end step or if it would leave the battlefield. Unearth only as a sorcery.)

This is the printed text and the whole deck is built around it. Sedris turns every creature in your yard into a hasty, one-shot reanimation target for a flat — no native unearth required. So the deck does two things at once: (1) jam value ETB creatures so they’re good on cast, and (2) fill the graveyard so that after they die/get milled/get discarded, Sedris buys them back for one more ETB trigger and a hasty swing before they exile at end of turn. There’s no conflict with the assignment’s “Grixis unearth reanimator” framing — the scout text matches the card.

Gameplan

  1. Fill the yard. Self-mill (Shriekhorn, Merfolk Secretkeeper, Mire Triton, Crow of Dark Tidings, Returned Centaur, Corpse Churn) and loot/draw-discard (Faithless Looting, Dusk Legion Zealot chains, the ETB “draw then discard” Merfolk) dump creatures into the graveyard.
  2. Grind ETB value. Each unearth re-triggers an enter ability: draw (Phyrexian Rager, Cloudkin Seer, Gargantuas), an edict (Fleshbag Marauder, Demon’s Disciple, Slum Reaper, Rot-Tide Gargantua), or removal (Vraska’s Finisher, the flash assassins). With Sedris out, every one of these is a repeatable engine.
  3. Out-attrition the table. Even into board wipes and spot removal your threats come back from the yard. Pingers (Vithian Stinger, Prodigal Pyromancer) enable the “destroy a creature dealt damage this turn” assassins for a removal lock.
  4. Close. Recurring evasive/hasty bodies plus Crypt Rats / Pestilence drain as inevitability.

Key synergy lines

  • Sedris + edict bodies (Fleshbag/Slum Reaper/Demon’s Disciple/Rot-Tide Gargantua): unearth one for every turn = a repeatable table-wide sacrifice. Brutal vs. go-wide and vs. single big threats.
  • Sedris + Grixis Slavedriver: unearth it, get the 2/2 Zombie token on ETB and another token when it exiles at end step (leaves the battlefield). Two bodies per .
  • Pinger + assassin: Vithian Stinger / Prodigal Pyromancer pings a creature, then Vraska’s Finisher / Lurking Deadeye / Stingblade Assassin (all “destroy a creature dealt damage this turn”) kills it — and all of those can be unearthed to do it again.
  • Crypt Rats / Pestilence: with a board of disposable unearth bodies you can sweep the table while your graveyard reloads. Doubles as reach/drain inevitability.
  • Combat-sac unearth bodies (Brackwater Elemental, Kathari Bomber-style): they sacrifice themselves into the yard, then come right back via Sedris.

Role breakdown (with counts)

  • Lands: 36 (three-color manabase, high end as the rubric wants).
  • Ramp / mana rocks: 11 — Arcane/Dimir/Rakdos/Izzet Signets, Commander’s Sphere, Manalith, Mind Stone, Prophetic Prism, Chromatic Star, Wayfarer’s Bauble, + Sailor of Means (Treasure). Most also fix colors.
  • Card advantage: ~10 dedicated — Night’s Whisper, Sign in Blood, Read the Bones, Deadly Dispute, Faithless Looting, Corpse Churn, Gravedigger, plus draw-rocks (Prophetic Prism, Mind Stone, Commander’s Sphere). Many ETB creatures (Phyrexian Rager, Gargantuas, Cloudkin Seer, Nimble Innovator, Gryff Vanguard, Dusk Legion Zealot) pile on more.
  • Spot removal / interaction: ~11 dedicated — Terminate, Cast Down, Go for the Throat, Doom Blade, Murder, Tragic Slip, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Strike, Magma Jet, Fire Prophecy, plus the recurring assassin package (Vraska’s Finisher, Fathom Fleet Cutthroat, Lurking Deadeye, Stingblade Assassin) and edicts.
  • Mass / pseudo-wipe: 2 — Crypt Rats, Pestilence (black X-damage sweepers).
  • Native-unearth engine creatures: Dregscape Zombie, Kathari Screecher, Scrapwork Mutt, Rotting Rats, Brackwater Elemental, Molten Gatekeeper, Vithian Stinger, Viscera Dragger, Scrapwork Rager, First-Sphere Gargantua, Grixis Slavedriver, Scourge Devil — these can pay their cheaper native unearth or Sedris’s .
  • Yard-fill enablers: Shriekhorn, Merfolk Secretkeeper, Mire Triton, Crow of Dark Tidings, Returned Centaur, Faithless Looting, Corpse Churn, Unearth.

Manabase / fixing note

36 lands + 11 rocks/ramp = ~17 dedicated fixing sources on top of basics: Command Tower, Path of Ancestry, Arcane Signet, Commander’s Sphere, Manalith, Prophetic Prism, Chromatic Star, Rupture Spire and Unknown Shores all tap for any color; three guildgates, three karoo bonds, four taplands, Submerged Boneyard and Cinder Barrens cover the pairs; Wayfarer’s Bauble and Escape Tunnel fetch basics. No common five-color/tri-land exists, so the pairs do the heavy lifting — black is the heaviest pip (Sedris’s unearth) so Swamp count is highest.

Pilot notes

  • Mulligan for fixing + a yard-filler. You want black mana online for unearth ASAP.
  • Don’t over-commit to the board into open mana — let things die, then grind them back. Sedris rewards patience.
  • Unearth at sorcery speed only, and the creature exiles at end of turn — sequence your activations for the ETB you need this turn (edict before combat, draw post-combat).
  • Hold edict bodies in the yard as removal-on-demand against hexproof/big threats.
  • Crypt Rats/Pestilence are your reset button when behind; your yard refills the board faster than opponents’.

Weaknesses

  • Graveyard hate (Bojuka Bog, Relic of Progenitus) shuts the engine off — lean on the cards being fine on cast and keep some hard removal in hand.
  • No counterspell suite at common worth running here, so you’re reactive on the stack.
  • Exile-based removal denies the recursion loop; the unearthed copies also exile naturally, so you don’t get infinite mileage from any single card.
  • Color-screw is the real risk — keep fixing in opening hands.

Decklist

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

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