Ayli, Eternal Wanderer's Deck Guide – Best Cards to Play

Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim is one of the available commanders Magic: The Gathering's A set of basics. While the card isn't new, it's only seen a reprint on the List since its debut in Oath of the Gatewatch in 2016. The Basics are reintroducing many players to this card.

Ayli, the Eternal Pilgrim is a unique Orzh (white/black) commander that is a combination of sacrifice and life deck. Fortunately, Orzhov is one of the best color combinations for both of these strategies, making it easier to mix them together to create a formidable command deck with Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim at the helm.

Decklist

Decklist contains 32 creatures, four sorceries, four instants, seven artifacts, 17 spells, and 34 countries. Most creatures either gain you life or benefit from your life gain, while spells provide sacrifice and board control options.

Key cards

Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim

deck commander, Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim is your primary value engine. You can always sacrifice a creature to get a life trigger if you have one mana to pay. He can too use as removal if you have ten more life than your starting total, something that can easily be accomplished in a deck.

The benefit of using Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim is you don't need it on the battlefield for your deck to work. The hybrid life gain/sacrifice strategy works without it, Ayli just makes it easier to control the battlefield once you have enough life to start driving any permanents off the land.

Dictate of Erebos/Grave Pact

Erebos' dictation and Grave Pact they have essentially the same effect, although Grave Pact costs slightly less to cast. Both of them turn all your sacrificed creatures into forced sacrifices for your opponents. It doesn't matter how strong or weak the creature you sacrifice is, if it dies, both spells will trigger.

If both Dictate of Erebos and Grave Pact are on the battlefield and a creature dies, they both trigger, forcing two sacrifices per creature dying.

Especially the Dictate of Erebos and the Grave Pact only care if the creature you control dies. This means that even if you don't sacrifice the creature, your opponents won't want to attack it from then on dying chump blocker will force your opponents to sacrifice creatures.

Jacked rabbit

Jacked rabbit is one of the most useful creatures in the entire deck. Ravenous lets him in with a ton of +1/+1 counterswhich then leads not only to greater statistics but more 1/1 Rabbit tokens on the battlefield. All of these tokens trigger cards that gain life when a creature enters, which can give you a lot of life in one swing.

Can be Jacked Rabbit if needed he sacrificed Aylia's effect to gain life equal to his toughness. If you can get a ton of chips on Jacked Rabbit, it can lead to many lives with one Ayli activation. to recover from low health totals or make sure you stay ten health above your starting total use Ayli's removal effect.

Hierophant of Elenda

Hierophant of Eledna is the creature you want on battlefield as quickly as possible once you can start gaining life consistently. He will slowly grow in stats and his flying can make him an evasive attacker if your opponents have no way to block him.

Elendin Hierophant has been working well with Ayli ever since the life you get when you sacrifice Elenda's hierophant to Ayla is very high because it is likely to have high stiffness. So this it turns into a ton of 1/1 vamp tokens that then trigger all your life gain abilities while giving you extra victim fodder.

How to play the board

An Ayli, the Eternal Pilgrim deck is all about constantly gaining life while pushing your advantage through board control. Very important are cards that gain life when a creature enters, such as Soul Warden, Soul's Attendantand Suture Priest. Additionally, cards that burn when a creature dies are also great, such as Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, and Celebrant Curel.

To add even more opportunities to gain life, spells that create creature tokens are especially useful. This triggers life abilities when a creature enters, and lets you sacrifice fodder for Ayli to get more triggers and removal.

These permanents include cards like Bitter Flower, Skrelv's Hive, March of the Canonized, and Black market connectionsthe last of which can also give you a ramp and card draw.

There are a few cards that gain +1/+1 counters when you gain life, making them solid as well as fighting, and a good choice to sacrifice with Ayli to gain a lot of life. Ajani's primemate, Voice of the blessed, and Hierophant of Elenda are some of these cards. Archangel Thune is the best of them because it will put +1/+1 counters on all your creatures when you gain life instead of just yourself.

Cards that gain tokens when you gain life get a token for each life trigger. So if multiple effects that gain life are triggered, they will each be triggered 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 those creatures to trigger three times, for a total of three tokens.

The the deck's primary win condition is crushing your opponents. With life decks, it's all about building up such a high life total that it's nearly impossible to take out of the game through traditional means.

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

The the deck's biggest downside is that you often don't have big threats. The deck can create a lot of weak creature tokens and a lot of them, but they aren't threatening. This way, your opponents will probably not be afraid to attack you if you don't have similar cards Dictate of Erebos or Grave Pact on the battlefield.

Stands like cards Authority of Consuls and Blind obedience help slow down your opponents so you can get into winning conditions faster.