Sworn to Darkness

Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath is a ruthless tyrant who will stop at nothing to achieve his aims. This Planeswalker commander saps his opponent's strength, summons powerful demons to the battlefield, and compels the dead to rise and fight again.

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Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath

The man called Ob Nixilis was a cruel, ruthless tyrant on a hellish plane of unending war. No tactics were too merciless – and no magic too dark – to secure his ascendancy. By the time he was forty years old, he had dominated the entire world. With nothing more to conquer, he was left without purpose… until his Planeswalker spark ignited. Infinite worlds opened to him, undreamt-of vistas just waiting to box before the vast new power he had unlocked. Soon, however, he learned that there were others like him – other Planeswalker – whose power and ambition equalled his own. To best these new rivals, Ob Nixilis would do what he had always done: betray any trust, commit any blasphemy, and pay any price for power.

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Ghoulcaller Gisa

The necromancer Gisa was a ghoulcaller on Innistrad, specializing in reanimating the rotting corpses of the dead and commanding them in battle. Among other purposes, Gisa used these to engage in a twisted, long-standing war game with her brother, the stitcher Geralf. Though Geralf’s stitched-together skaabs were often individually more powerful, Gisa could call up seemingly limitless armies of expendable ghouls. She and Geralf put their differences aside to assault the city of Thraben, home of the Church of Avacyn. Gisa withdrew her army from the battle when the initial assault was checked, but the damage was done: Thraben, stronghold of the Church, had fallen.

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Playing the deck

The Planeswalker commander Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath is willing to sacrifice anything in pursuit of power, and he beckons vile Demons to do his bidding. When playing the “Sworn to Darkness” deck, your spells that draw cards and eliminate opposing creatures will pave the way for your Demons and Zombies to run rampant over your enemies.

Your strategy revolves around getting creatures onto the battlefield and sacrificing them to produce effects powerful enough to overwhelm all opposition. Cards like Skirsdag High Priest and Overseer of the Damned help you generate a throng of creature tokens, while cards like Flesh Carver and Ghoulcaller Gisa let you sacrifice these creatures to fortify your position.A particularly great combination involved sacrificing a creature equipped by Lashwrithe using Ghoulcaller Gisa’s ability to create a massive amount of Zombie tokens. And if you can defend Ob Nixilis long enough to use his third ability, the emblem he creates provides you with the deck’s most potent means of sacrificing creatures for profit.

In the early game, it’s best to play defensively as you build up lands and draw more cards. Use creature removal spells to deter opponents from attacking you, but make sure to save an answer for devastating threats that may appear later on. As te game progresses, menacing creatures like Reaper from the Abyss and Grave Titan allow you to outmuscle the competition. Don’t be afraid to risk these creatures in combat, since you have a number of ways to reanimate them if they die.

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The original decklist can be found here.

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Improving a commander deck

If you own and want to play the likes of Mana Crypt and Imperial Seal, then you are more than welcome to, but I am writing this under the assumption that you do not have an unlimited budget and are instead looking to improve a pre-con to play for fun. Our goal is to cut the very worst cards and improve our game play experience. I also want to keep the deck as intact as possibleand make as few cuts as possible.

CHANGE LOG

Part 1: Mana base and ramp

Cut:

Barren Moor & Polluted Mire - These are slow, they do not count as swamps for cards which care about that sort of thing, and we do not play the likes of Life from the Loam to abuse them. Keep them in your collection, but we will not be using them here.

Everglades - Complete trash.

Arcane Lighthouse - We do not care about this ability enough to dedicate a land slot. This is good for other decks.

Bojuka Bog - When you can target this with Ghostly Flicker, Bojuka Bog card can be quite strong. We cannot do that in our deck. Instead, this costs us tempo and doesn't cunt as a swamp. Grave yard hate must be instant speed.

Jet Medallion - In the right deck, such as K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth, that wants to chain black spells which have colorless in their cost, this is useful. Not so much here.

Commander's Sphere - Another overrated rock which fits 3 or more colored decks. This works great in my Breya deck where we can tap it for colored mana, sacrifice it for card draw, then return it to play many times in a single turn. In our mono black deck? No. This slot would be better served by a 2cmc rock so we can increase the deck's speed and consistency.

Add:

Star Compass - 2cmc ramp that taps for black.

Coldsteel Heart - 2cmc ramp that taps for black.

Fellwar Stone - 2cmc ramp which has the potential to tap for black.

Wayfarer's Bauble - Not exactly a 2cmc mana rock, but it acts like one if you start the game with it. It gets you a basic swamp, which matters when several cards check how many swamps you have in play.

Thran Dynamo - Powerful 4cmc ramp which should not be ignored in a mono colored deck.

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx - This card is becoming less budget all the time without a reprint in sight, but is a staple nonetheless. Black, more than any other color, has many permanents with multiple color pips in their cost which fuel this land.

Cabal Stronghold - Budget Cabal Coffers. There is no replacing the original, but at $80+ as of this update, it is out of reach for most players. This deck is made up of almost all basic swamps anyway.

Part 2: The spells

Cut:

Swiftfoot Boots - I am just not sold on this card. Even with Ghoulcaller Gisa as our commander, I don't want ot wait until I have 7 mana to cast her. Yes, 7. Five to pay for her, one to equip her, and if we are granting haste, then we want to activate her for a seventh mana. No. I want to ramp her into play. I tihnk I want to replace this with Expediion Map. We have some nonbasic lands that we want to search up

Dregs of Sorrow - This just costs far too much to do far too little. At 5 mana, it does nothing. When we spend 8 mana, equall to Decree of Pain, we do far less. For now, I want to go with Reckless Spite to kill two nonblack creaures for only 3 mana. If the nonblack clause is a problem, we can always try Decree of Pain. However, I am favoring the spell with alower cmc so we can afford to do more things and do them faster. Dregs of Sorrow has the same nonblack clause, so we are making a direct improvement.

Skeletal Scrying - Ineffecient card draw. I would rather see Night's Whisper as a second Sign in Blood. Just allow me ot dig two cards deep for two mana rather than needing to pay three mana and exiling two cards for the same effect. Sure, it is an X spell that can dig deep, but i would rather dig quickly and early.

Annihilate - This is terrible. Give me Dictate of Erebos at the same converted mana cost and the ability to cast it at instant speed.

Wake the Dead - A cute card design for commander, but I don't like it. Gve me Nim Deathmantle.

Raving Dead - This card is random and unreliable. It is an easy cut, especially at 5 mana.

Spoils of Blood - This is another one of those "cute" cards designed for multiplayer. The goal is to get a big generic creature token for only one mana after a borad wipe. It is far too situational and vanilla. This siwhere we make a big addition to the deck - Dark Depths. If I want a big genric beater, I want Merit Lage itself. The deck comes with Vampire Hexmage and Aether Snap. It is begging to have Dark Depths added to the list. More so when we are using Expedition Map as well. I would much rather see Dark Depths in my hand than Spoils of Blood.

Aether Snap - I just mentioned how this deck has this card and that is a reason to play Dark Depths. O, why wouldI then cut it? Because we can improve it with Thief of Blood. Aether Snap has the possibility to removing all of our Zombie tokens, but Thief of Blood does everything we want Aether Snap to do and more. It also crushes opposing planeswalkers (Super Friends) but also works with Dark Depths and can end up as an 11/11 or larger, whereas Aether Snap ends up in the graveyard.

Add:

Expediion Map - Find our nonbasic lands.

Reckless Spite - Cheap removal upgrade.

Night's Whisper - Cheap burst draw

Dictate of Erebos - Works perfectly with Ghoulcaller Gisa in charge.

Nim Deathmantle - Works great with our Commander, as she sacrifices creatures for value and then we can pay 4 to return them to play and maybe benefit from EtB triggers.

Strata Scythe - We havea mono colored deck with a commander that creatureszombies based on the power of the sacrificed creature. Lastwrithe is already a great card for us. This is another. With the removal of Raving Dead, we have the space for this addition. You could use Nightmare Lash instead, but I don't own one. Maybe all three.

Dark Depths - As I wrote above, I would much rather have Dark Depths in hand than Spoils of Blood.

Thief of Blood - I will repeat what I said above: Thief of Blood does everything we want Aether Snap to do and more. It also crushes opposing planeswalkers (Super Friends) but also works with Dark Depths and can end up as an 11/11 or larger, whereas Aether Snap ends up in the graveyard.

Review:

The original deck had very little to do on its first three turns other than play a land and pass. With few exceptions, the deck did not start doing anything until it had access to four or more mana. By increasing the ramp, we do two things at the same time: We increase the things which we can play on turn two instead of wasting our mana; and we hit that important four mana on turn three and start getting down to business a turn faster. This results in every turn after the first having something to do.

I have changed 15 cards from the deck. There are many more changes that can and should be made, but I feel that I have cut the worst of the worst, lowered the curve a bit which gives us some early ramp and plays, and helped focus the deck a bit more.

EDIT:

After using the simulator and setting it to one million simulations, there is a 45% chance of you starting hand having 2 or fewer lands, with only about a 29% of having two lands and the rest being fewer. It looks like we want to increase the land coun, but not at the sake of our ramp.

I feel that Evernight Shade and Nantuko Shade are our worst crearures, as they are nothing but generic beaters that we have to pay mana into. Sure, we can create a lot of zombies after dumping a lot of mana into them and sacrificing them to our commander, but that is all. Evernight Shade can even pull double duty with Undying and return for even more value. That being said, when I have to make cuts to increase our land count, they are the easieist cuts to make. I actually like Shade creatures and want to find room for Liliana's Shade, which we can ramp into off of a mana rock, then it goes and finds another land drop for us while providing all of the benefits of a Shade.

Finally, I would like to cut Unstable Obelisk for yet another basic swamp, bringing the total up from 32 to 35.