Choosing Your Commander - Dimir

Next we look at the commander choices that are both blue and black.  Powerful in card draw, milling eeffects, discard, and tutoring, blue/black can be a potent color combination.  Like blue/white, the Dimir color combination can be good for a more control style deck, but its also the color pair that is traditionally strong in combo decks.  As you will see, the blue/black Commanders that appeal the most to me are the ones that have either a strong combo potential or are really good at being the centerpeice of a UB "milling" deck.

Circu, Dimir Lobotomist:  I really like Circu as a commander choice, but I think that if you are going for a commander that will mill people out there are a few better options.  Still, I think that any UB milling deck will run Circu somewhere in the maindeck, as being able to get free milling that also gets around graveyard recursion cards like the vrious Eldrazi is a big positive.


 Dralnu, Lich Lord:  The drawback here is not insignificant, so you need to be careful when and where you play Dralnu.  However, Dralnu's ability can be brutally powerful with some of the instants and sorceries you can grant Flashback.  Minimizng the potential risk and maximizing the potential benefits is part of the fun of building a deck around Dralnu, but the risk/reward payoff is well worth the effort.











Grimgrin, Corpse-Born:
If you want to play with your blue Zombies along side your black ones, then Grimgrin is probably your man zombie.  His ability keeps opponent's creatures at bay, and can be combo'd with many different cards to produce creatuer tokens and a very large Grimgrin in a short amount of time.

Nebuchadnezzer:  Although this is a decent card, its not really powerful enough for the amount of mana you have to sink into it every turn.  Unless you are playing a Matrix-themed deck, I see no reason to run this at all.

Oona, Queen of the Fae:  Oona is a strong "millstone" creature that has the nice side-benefit of creating a swarm of 1/1 fliers with which to defend yourself or to kill off an opponent while you are milling another one out.  The fact that it exiles the milled cards is a big plus, not to mention it has a stout body for hte casting cost.  Oona is probably my favorite option for commander of a UB milling deck.

Princess Lucrezia:  Play a Dimir Signet for your fast mana and play a better commander...

Ramirez DiPietro:  Play this if you are looking for a general for your Pirate tribal or Pirate themed deck where the awesome Phil Foglio art will be appreciated.

Ramses Overdark:  Cool name, cool artwork, no-so-cool abilities.

Riven Turnbull:  Princess Lucrezia is at least a Human Wizard (as opposed to Riven's Human Advisor creature type). 

Sivitri Scarzam:  When your last name is an anagram for 'sarcazm', you don't have a lot going for you.

Skeleton Ship:  Pirate-themed decks will love this, but any other will pass.

Sygg, River Cutthroat:  Everybody loves free cards, and Sygg gives you plenty of those in exchange for doing things that you already want to be doing anyway; damaging the opponent.  Sygg isn't particularly powerful in having a strategy built around him, but being so inexpensive to play and creating large amount of card advanteg over the course of a game are two interesting traits to uild a UB "good stuff" deck that may focus more on some damage dealing elements moreso than other UB decks.










Szadek, Lord of Secrets:  Szadek is my pick for the second best UB commander to build a "milling" deck around.  He can get to be big relatively fast and he can mill multiple cards for the low cost of attacking a player that can't block him.  I like that his ability requires no mana investment (unlike Oona's), but the fact that the milled cards go to the graveyard is actually a bigger deal than most people take into consideration.  Building a Szadek deck just means you have to pack more graveyard hate (which you need to do anyway with any milling deck), so its not necessarily a bad option.

Ur-Drago:  I prefer his Scion as a commander.

Vela the Night Clad:  Vela is one of the class of commanders that was made for the Multiplayer game in the Planechase set, and as reprinted in Commander's Arsenal.  It's ability is strong in allowing some of your creatures to swing in unimpeded, but its life loss trigger when creatures you control leave the battlefield is very easy to use and abuse.  There are lots of cool ways to creature tons of Vela triggers, and its just a matter of time before you create a critical mass of them and essentially Drain Life the entire table.

Wrexial, the Risen Deep:  Unless you often play against players who you know will play juicy target for Wrexial, his ability doesn't really appeal to me to want to build around it.  He is a decent attacker and his ability is rarely dead, but I like to have more oomph behind my commander.

Wydwen, the Biting Gale:  Although Oona often gets the call as being the Fae tribal general (she is Queen of the Fae after all), Wydwen might actually be much better suited to do the job (especially if you go the whole Flash/Instant route).

Top 5 Dimir Commanders
1. Oona, Queen of the Fae
2. Vela the Night-Clad
3. Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
4. Dralnu, Lich Lord
5. Sygg, River Cutthroat