One of the coolest combo cards that’s been printed over the past few years in my opinion is Acererak, the Archlich. Acererak is a pretty mediocre card on the surface. Without tons of other dungeon synergies, Acererak is just a super inefficient value engine that doesn’t help you stabilize the board in any meaningful way.
However, we’ve seen Acererak pop up from time to time in various formats due to some sweet infinite combos that can be assembled. For instance, in Pioneer, Acererak pairs super nicely with Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea. Throw in a Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy and you can win the game by casting Acererak infinite times!
Now, it appears Acererak is making an impact in Duel Commander as well. Duel Commander is on the rise on Magic Online, and one player managed to split the finals of a Trial event over the weekend with Acererak at the helm. Acererak is super underrated, and we felt this deck deserved some more attention.
Acererak Combos in Duel Commander
Obviously, with Acererak as the Commander of choice, you are restricted to playing only black cards. So, otherwise common combo elements like Gwenna are off the table. Nonetheless, there are a still a bunch of ways to ensure you can win the game with your Commander.
One of the most important pieces of the puzzle is Relic of Legends. With Relic in play, every time you cast Acererak, before bouncing it back to your hand, you get to float a black mana by tapping Acererak.
This means that if you have an effect in play that makes your Acererak cost two less mana, you get to cast Acererak an infinite number of times. By doing so, you also venture into the dungeon an infinite number of times. You’ll want to choose Lost Mine of Phandelver each time and choose to enter the “Dark Pool” room over and over to drain your opponent of all of their life.
Both Heartless Summoning and Urza’s Incubator accomplish the task of making Acererak cost two mana less. You can also combine multiple effects that each reduce Acererak’s cost by one. Helm of Awakening, Bontu’s Monument, and Jet Medallion all fit the bill.
As for replacements for Relic of Legends, Carnival of Souls can supply a constant supply of black mana to cast Acererak repeatedly. The life loss means that even with Heartless Summoning or Urza’s Incubator in play, you won’t be able to go truly infinite. However, the life gain from Bontu’s Monument or Prism Ring can negate the life loss from Carnival of Souls just fine.
Supporting Cast
As a combo deck through and through, the rest of the deck is constructed to help you assemble your combo kills as quickly and reliably as possible. As such, most of the other cards fall into either the disruption, tutor, or ramp categories.
For interaction, you’ll find a large number of discard spells. Cards like Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize strip your opponents of their Counterspells and artifact destruction spells so you can safely land your important pieces and close the game.
This deck doesn’t have a great backup plan outside of the typical combo lines. In fact, Grief is the only creature in the entire deck, so winning via combat damage is pretty much off the table. So, paving the way for your combo pieces is essential.
Beyond that, you also need plenty of tutors so that you can find your combo pieces in a reasonable time frame. Dark Petition, Beseech the Queen, and Beseech the Mirror are solid tutor options in mono-black. Even Wishclaw Talisman is a solid option here, since you can often set up a win on the same turn you activate it so your opponent doesn’t get a good chance to make use of it themselves.
Finally, you will find some interesting ramp sources like Sceptre of Eternal Glory and Throne of Eldraine. These cards help you cast a bunch of spells in one turn. Sometimes, you can even use these ramp pieces to set up a win via Tendrils of Agony after casting Acererak a bunch of times without an infinite combo set up.
A New Piece
It’s cool to see Acererak have such a great tournament run in Duel Commander. It’s certainly not on the same tier as Aragorn, King of Gondor or Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury, but Acererak has what it takes to compete.
Interestingly, Tarkir: Dragonstorm should be providing a nice tool for Acererak Duel Commander decks in just a couple weeks. Duel Commander is the perfect environment for The Sibsig Ceremony to shine.
It functions as a replacement for cards like Heartless Summoning as a combo piece. Adding some redundancy in that department alone should make the card worthwhile. Furthermore, The Sibsig Ceremony can act as a reasonable alternate win condition in the event you don’t have Relic of Legends or another way to go infinite rolled up.
See, each time you cast Acererak for one mana with The Sibsig Ceremony in play, you can stack your triggers such that Acererak returns to your hand before it gets destroyed. You still get a 2/2 Zombie Druid token in the process, so you’re free to cast Acererak a bunch of times and flood the board with 2/2s. These tokens combined with the value the Dungeon gives you might just be enough to cross the finish line.
Acererak is a sweet combo card, and we look forward to seeing it in action in Duel Commander once Tarkir: Dragonstorm drops.