Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim Commander deck guide: best cards, how to play

Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim is one of the commanders available in Magic: The Gathering Set the foundation. While the card is not new, it has only seen one reprint on The List since its debut in 2016's Oath of the Gatewatch. With Foundations, many players are being reintroduced to this card.

Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim is a unique Orzhov (black/white) commander that is a mix of a sacrifice and lifegain deck. Luckily, Orzhov is one of the best color combinations for both of these strategies, making it easy to blend the two together to create a formidable Commander deck with Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim at the helm.

Decklist

The deck list contains 32 creatures, four sorceries, four instants, seven artifacts, 17 enchantments, AND 34 lands. Most creatures make you gain life or benefit from gaining you life, while enchantments provide outlets for sacrifice and board control.

Key cards

Ayli, eternal pilgrim

The bridge commander, Ayli, eternal pilgrim it is your primary value driver. You can always sacrifice a creature to gain a life-gain triggered ability as long as you have a mana to pay. It can too be used as a remover as long as you have ten more life than your starting total, something easy to accomplish in the deck.

The advantage of using Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim is you don't need it on the battlefield for your deck to work. The hybrid gain and sacrifice strategy works without it, Ayli simply makes it easier to control the battlefield once you have enough life to start exiling any nonland permanents.

Dictation of Erebos/Grave Pact

Dictation of Erebus AND Serious pact they essentially have the same effect, although Grave Pact costs slightly less to cast. Both turns all your sacrificed creatures into forced sacrifices for your opponents. It doesn't matter how strong or weak the creature you sacrifice is, as long as it dies both spells will activate.

If both Dictate of Erebos and Grave Pact are on the battlefield and a creature dies, they will both be triggered, forcing two sacrifices for a creature's death.

In particular, Dictate of Erebos and Grave Pact it only matters if a creature you control dies. This means that even if you don't sacrifice a creature, your opponents won't want to attack you after that the death of an idiot blocker will force your opponents to sacrifice creatures.

Rabbit Jack

Rabbit Jack is one of the most useful creatures in the entire deck. Ravenous will let him in with a lot of +1/+1 counterswhich then leads not only to larger statistics, but multiple 1/1 Rabbit tokens on the battlefield. All of these tokens will activate cards that gain life when a creature enters, which can give you a lot of life in one hit.

If necessary, Jacked Rabbit can be it sacrificed to Ayli's effect to gain life equal to its toughness. If you can put a lot of counters on Jacked Rabbit, this can lead to a lot of life with an Ayli proc to recover from a low life total or ensure you remain ten more life than your initial total to use Ayli's removal effect.

The Hierophant of Elenda

The Hierophant of Eledna it's a creature you want on the battlefield as quickly as possible once you can start gaining life consistently. His stats will slowly increase and, thanks to his ability to fly, he can become an evasive attacker if your opponents have no way to block him.

Since then, Elenda's Hierophant has good synergy with Ayli the life you will gain by sacrificing Elenda's Hierophant to Ayli is very high as it will likely have high toughness. This then turns into a ton of 1/1 Vampire tokens which then activate all your life gain abilities giving you more sacrificial fodder.

How to play the deck

A Ayli, the Eternal Pilgrim deck is all about constantly gaining life while pushing your advantage through board control. Cards that gain life when a creature enters are very important as Guardian of the Soul, Guardian of the SoulAND Priest of the Suture. Additionally, cards that burn when a creature dies are also great, such as Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, AND Celebrant Curel.

To add even more lifegain opportunities to the mix, spells that create creature tokens are especially useful. This activates lifegain abilities when creatures enter, and gives you sacrificial fodder for Ayli for additional life gain procs and removal.

These permanents include cards such as Bitter Flower, Skrelv's Hive, March of the Canonized, AND Black market connectionsthe latter of which can also provide you with ramp and card draw.

There are more cards that get +1/+1 counters when you gain life, making them solid and combative and a good choice to sacrifice with Ayli to gain a lot of life. Ajani's Pridemate, Voice of the Blessed, AND The Hierophant of Elenda are some of these cards. Archangel of Thune he is the best of them, since he will you put a +1/+1 counter on all your creatures when you gain life instead of just itself.

Cards that gain counters when you gain life will receive a counter for each life gain activation. So if you activate multiple life-gaining effects, each one will activate separately. For example, if Soul Warden is on the battlefield and three creatures enter at the same time, Soul Warden will trigger three times and cause these creatures to trigger three times for three total counters.

THE The main win condition of the deck is to defeat your opponents. With lifegain decks, it's about accumulating a life total so high that it becomes nearly impossible to be eliminated from the game through traditional means.

You can also win the game with Endurance test, which automatically wins the game on your upkeep if you have 50 or more life. Sovereign Felidar also has a similar victory condition, but only requires you to have 40 or more life to win. There is also the combination of Exquisite Blood and any card that deals damage when you gain life to deal infinite burn damage.

THE the biggest drawback of the deck is that you often don't have great threats. The deck can make a lot of weak creature tokens, and a lot of them, but they aren't threatening. Therefore, your opponents will probably not be afraid to attack you unless you have cards like Dictation of Erebos or Covenant of the Tomb on the battlefield.

Cards stall like Authority of the Consuls AND Blind obedience helps slow down your opponents so you can reach your victory conditions faster.