Quick Links
Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim is one of the commanders available inMagic: The Gathering’sFoundations set. While the card isn’t new, it had only seen a reprint on The List since its debut in 2016’s Oath of the Gatewatch. With Foundations, many players are re-introduced to this card.
Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim is a unique Orzhov (white/black) commander that is a mixture of a sacrifice and lifegain deck. Luckily, Orzhov is one of the best color combinations for both these strategies, making it easier to blend the two together to make a formidable Commander deck with Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim at the helm.
Speaker of the Heavens
Voice of the Blessed
Debt to the Deathless
Authority of the Consuls
March of the Canonized
x13 Plains
x9 Swamp
Tainted Field
Vault of the Archangel
The decklistcontains 32 creatures, four sorceries, four instants, seven artifacts, 17 enchantments,and34 lands. Most of the creatures either gain you life, or benefit from gaining you life, while enchantments provide sacrifice outlets and board control.
Key Cards
Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim
Thecommander of the deck,Ayli, Eternal Pilgrimis your primary value engine. You canalways sacrifice a creature to get a lifegain triggerso long as you have one mana to pay. It can alsobe used as removalso long as you have ten more life than your starting total, something easy to accomplish in the deck.
The benefit of using Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim isyou do not need it on the battlefield for your deck to function. The hybrid lifegain and sacrifice strategy works without it, Ayli just makes it easier to control the battlefield once you have enough life to start exiling any nonland permanents.
Dictate Of Erebos/Grave Pact
Dictate of ErebosandGrave Pacthave essentially the same effect, though Grave Pact costs slightly less to cast. They bothturnall of your creatures being sacrificedinto forced sacrifice for your opponents. It doesn’t matter how strong or weak the creature you sacrifice is, so long as it dies both of the enchantments will trigger.
If both Dictate of Erebos and Grave Pact are on the battlefield and a creature dies, they will both be triggered, forcing two sacrifices to happen for one creature dying.
Notably, Dictate of Erebos and Grave Pactonly care if a creature you control dies. This means that even if you don’t sacrifice a creature, your opponents won’t want to attack into sincea chump blocker dying will force your opponents to need to sacrifice creatures.
Jacked Rabbit
Jacked Rabbitis one of the most useful creaturesin the entire deck.Ravenous will let it enter with a ton of +1/+1 counters, which then leads to not just bigger stats, butmore 1/1 Rabbit tokens onto the battlefield. These tokens will all trigger cards that gain life when a creature enters, which can give you a ton of life with one swing.
If need be, Jacked Rabbit can besacrificed to Ayli’s effect to gain life equal to its toughness. If you manage to get a ton of counters onto Jacked Rabbit, this can lead to a ton of lifegain with one Ayli activationto recover from low life totals or verify you stay ten life over your starting totalto use Ayli’s removal effect.
Elenda’s Hierophant
Eledna’s Hierophantis a creature you want on thebattlefield as quickly as possible once you can consistently start gaining life. It’ll slowly grow in stats, and thanks to having flying, can become an evasive attacker if your opponents don’t have a way to block it.
Elenda’s Hierophant synergizes well with Ayli sincethe life you’ll gain when you sacrifice Elenda’s Hierophant to Ayli is very highsince it’ll likely have high toughness. This thenturns into a ton of 1/1 Vampire tokens which then trigger all your lifegain abilities while giving you more sacrifice fodder.
How To Play The Deck
AnAyli, 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 such asSoul Warden, Soul’s Attendant, andSuture Priest. In addition, cards that burn when a creature dies are great too such asBlood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat,andCurel Celebrant.
To addeven more lifegain opportunitiesto the mix, enchantments that create creature tokens are especially useful. Thistriggers the lifegain abilities when creatures enter,and gives you sacrifice fodder for Ayli for more lifegain triggers and removal.
These permanents include cards likeBitterblossom, Skrelv’s Hive, March of the Canonized,andBlack Market Connections, the last of which can also provide you with ramp and card draw.
There are multiple cards that get +1/+1 counters when you gain life, which makes them both solid and combat and a good choice to sacrifice with Ayli to gain a ton of life.Ajani’s Pridemate, Voice of the Blessed,andElenda’s Hierophantare some of these cards.Archangel of Thuneis the best of them, since it’llput a +1/+1 counters on all your creatures when you gain life instead of just itself.
The cards that get counters when you gain life will get a counter for each lifegain trigger. So if multiple effects go off that gain a life, each one will trigger them 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.
Theprimary win condition of the deck is out-grinding your opponents. With lifegain decks, it’s all about building up such a high life total that it becomes near-impossible to be taken out of the game through traditional means.
You can also win the game withTest of Endurance,which automatically wins the game at your upkeep if you have 50 or more life.Felidar Sovereignalso has a similar win condition, but only requires you to have 40 or more life to win. There is also the combo ofExquisite Blood and any card that does damage when you gain life to deal infinite burn damage.
Thebiggest downside of the deck is you often don’t have major threats. The deck can make a lot of weak creature tokens and a lot of them, but they aren’t threatening. As such, your opponents likely won’t fear attacking you unless you have cards likeDictate of Erebos or Grave Pacton the battlefield.
Stall cards likeAuthority of the ConsulsandBlind Obediencehelp to slow your opponents down so you can get to your win conditions quicker.
