Going wide is essential for most MTG Aristocrats decks in Commander. After all, the more creatures you have in play to sacrifice, the more you can take advantage of powerful death triggers. While this means that many token generators have become extremely popular in Aristocrats, Skittering Precursor has remained surprisingly underplayed.
A Variety of Infinites in Aristocrats Shells
While Skittering Precursor does require a specific setup to generate value, the payoff is certainly there. By repeatedly sacrificing recursive creatures like Bloodghast and Gravecrawler, it’s easy to flood the board with Eldrazi Spawn tokens. From there, all you need is a way to make use of the tiny tokens, which isn’t hard to do.
The easiest method to maximize these Spawn is to pair them with premium sacrifice payoffs like Juri, Master of the Revue or Korvold, Fae-Cursed King. They also help you rack up experience counters to make Azlask, the Swelling Scourge a much more threatening Commander. Notably, the mana production from the tokens is quite useful in Rakdos, the Muscle decks, too, helping you cast a flurry of exiled spells.
Besides just serving as sacrifice fodder, these tokens also help make mass pump effects like Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest and Cathar’s Crusade more effective. In conjunction with token doublers like Doubling Season, or Eldrazi ability doublers like Echoes of Eternity, it doesn’t take long before you have a massive board of beefy threats.
If all this weren’t enough, Skittering Precursor can even pull off an infinite combo with Nether Traitor and Phyrexian Altar, creating infinite black mana. After sacrificing the Traitor to the Altar, just sacrifice the Eldrazi Token that the Precursor creates, bringing back the Traitor. Whether you use Walking Ballista or Blood Artist, winning the game from here is trivial.
Surprisingly Underplayed
Given how popular sacrifice decks are in Commander, Skittering Precursor’s low play rate is a bit shocking. Only appearing in 11,600 Commander decks according to EDHREC, there are plenty of homes for this creature that aren’t using it.
On the bright side, for anyone looking to give the card a shot, this forgotten uncommon is quite budget-friendly. Sitting at just $0.25, acquiring Skittering Precursor is extremely easy. Considering how low-risk this purchase is, Skittering Precursor is well worth taking for a spin at your next FNM.
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