Editor's Note: As pointed out by one of our readers, one of the card interactions with Giant's Skewer didn't work out quite as intended. The article has been updated to remove the mention of this interaction.

Magic legend holds that Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar was a wizard and a cook from Dominaria. She summoned a Lord of the Pit (cutely named "Vincent") but ran out of stuff to feed him, so Vincent said he was going to eat her. She cut a deal, cooking for him for seven years and seven days, promising to never bore him with her food. She was successful, and compiled her recipes in The Underworld Cookbook. Intending to sell them, it was a terrible disappointment. She only sold two copies, one to Vincent and one to her mother. The remaining copies were found, though, and turned into quite the hit.

For the purposes of this article, though, we're just going to call her "Asmor", and we're not going to bother with the legend. Instead, we're going to look at what she does, and see if we can't do something fun with it.

First of all, we have a 3/3 for nothing. Not zero mana, no casting cost at all. Instead, we have to discard a card; if we do, we can pay one mana and cast our commander. So, we'll need some ways to discard cards, preferably early on in the game.

Second, she hunts for The Underworld Cookbook when she comes into play. That's good, because the Cookbook lets us discard cards (good for getting Asmor back if we need to) and creates Food tokens, which we'll need.

Third, she allows us to sacrifice two Food tokens to have a creature deal six damage to itself (presumably she's feeding something and poisoning it?).

There might be some sort of aggro/Voltron build here where we power her out early, suit her up, and beat down with a turn one 3/3 commander. Heck, it might even be fun. But all I could think when I saw her was combo. We're in Black, so we can run all the tutors (and we're going to, so this deck probably isn't for you if you're not a tutor person). Asmor's thing only lets us hurt creatures, but we might be able to come up with a way to work with that.

There are three major parts to this deck, with a couple of minor ones thrown in. They are:

• Major 1: Discard. We need plenty of ways to discard cards, because it's the only way to get our Commander out. We also don't want to tutor for one, so we have to run plenty.

  • Minor 1: Effects that like discard. As long as we have plenty of ways to discard cards, we may as well have some stuff that likes to be discarded.

• Major 2: Tutors. We will use these to tutor up our particular combo pieces.

  Minor 2: Ramp. We have a few pieces of mana ramp. This is probably good, though depending on your meta you may want to run some removal in these slots.

• Major 3: Combo(s). We have two. One is infinite, one isn't. The infinite one has a couple of variations depending on how you want to play it.

The discard effects should be pretty obvious. My favorite is Mox Diamond, because it allows for a turn one Asmor. We play the Mox, discard a land, tap the Mox for mana, and we're off to the races. The Underworld Cookbook, of course, is great too, being . Trading Post is just quality, and all of the abilities could be useful in different situations. Chainer, Nightmare Adept means a late Asmor, but that recursion ability is 100% worth it. Circling Vultures is weird (why on Earth did this card get made?), but we can simply pitch it to itself and cast our Commander.

You might wonder why Simian Spirit Guide isn't here. Unfortunately, it Exiles itself, so it doesn't count as a discard. Too bad, though, because that would be awesome.

We've also got a number of spells which allow us to discard and draw. Works great, and keeps us moving through our library looking for tutors and combo pieces.

Anger is a great example of cards we want to discard. Nothing wrong with giving our stuff Haste. Archfiend of Ifnir is another one; we can cycle it early to get out Asmor, or we can play it later and chip away at the board, keeping token players honest and preventing our own death. Bone Miser is fun because it will give us something no matter what we discard. And, of course, we're running a number of Madness cards.

We have a bunch of tutors. We're going to need them. We also have a copy of Grim Discovery, which isn't a tutor but will get us something back in case we lose a key piece. And as I said before, some mana ramp.

Let's take a look at our combo.

The Combo

We need to kill our opponents in one turn. All of them, not just one with a silly doll. To pull this one off, we need:

Here's the idea. We tap Witch's Oven, sacrificing Cauldron Familiar to make a Food. With Academy Manufactor on the battlefield, we make a Treasure and a Clue along with the Food. We tap two of the things we just created (it doesn't matter which two, though note if you want to use the Treasure tokens for mana, you need to leave them untapped. The Food tokens are sacrificed to the Cauldron Familiar, so they don't have to be untapped, and if we're trying to draw cards with these Clues we're probably in bad shape) to the Clock of Omens, untapping the Witch's Oven. We then sacrifice the Food to return the Cauldron Familiar to the battlefield, starting the loop over. We can do this as many times as we need to kill everyone at the table, since the Cat drains everyone for one with each loop. Dead table, living us.

If we include a Reassembling Skeleton and the Witch's Oven, we can make an additional Food token by sacrificing the Skeleton to the Oven. By adding Academy Manufactor, we also make a Treasure and Clue, which means with Clock of Omens we can do the same trick, except we're doing our damage by sacrificing the Foods to Asmor and doing damage to a Stuffy Doll.

There's one more silly thing we can do. If we get Stitcher's Graft on the battlefield with either of the fully fleshed-out combos, we can equip either our Cat or our Skeleton and make its Toughness 4. That means when we sacrifice it to the Oven, we make two Foods, and with the Manufactor we also make two Treasures. That gives us two mana to play with, so we can use it to re-equip the Graft each time. With the Giant's Skewer, we'll actually make infinite Food tokens (and infinite Clues) this way. That allows us to make infinite Treasures (we make a million extra Food tokens, then we don't have to keep equipping the Graft, so we keep our Treasures). This means we can have infinite mana, which is good, because if we're on the Stuffy Doll/Brash Taunter roll, we may need to sacrifice it, then use Trading Post or Grim Discovery to fish it out of the 'yard and recast it to point it at another opponent.

Asmor's Underworld Cookbook | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar

• Creatures (22)
• 1 Academy Manufactor
• 1 Anger
• 1 Anje's Ravager
• 1 Anje Falkenrath
• 1 Archfiend of Ifnir
• 1 Asylum Visitor
• 1 Big Game Hunter
• 1 Bone Miser
• 1 Brash Taunter
• 1 Cauldron Familiar
• 1 Chainer, Nightmare Adept
• 1 Circling Vultures
• 1 Conspiracy Theorist
• 1 Grave Scrabbler
• 1 Merchant of the Vale
• 1 Reassembling Skeleton
• 1 Rune-Scarred Demon
• 1 Sidisi, Undead Vizier
• 1 Street Wraith
• 1 Stuffy Doll
• 1 Surly Badgersaur
• 1 Tempting Witch

• Instants (4)
• 1 Bake into a Pie
• 1 Chef's Kiss
• 1 Dark Withering
• 1 Thrill of Possibility

• Sorceries (18)
• 1 Call to the Netherworld
• 1 Coveted Prize
• 1 Dark Petition
• 1 Demonic Collusion
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Diabolic Intent
• 1 Diabolic Tutor
• 1 Faithless Looting
• 1 Flameshot
• 1 Foreboding Fruit
• 1 Gamble
• 1 Grim Discovery
• 1 Increasing Ambition
• 1 Mastermind's Acquisition
• 1 Outbreak
• 1 Profane Tutor
• 1 Razaketh's Rite
• 1 Taste of Death

• Enchantments (15)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Clock of Omens
• 1 Desecrated Tomb
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Giant's Skewer
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Mox Diamond
• 1 Rakdos Cluestone
• 1 Rakdos Locket
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Stitcher's Graft
• 1 Tamiyo's Journal
• 1 The Underworld Cookbook
• 1 Trading Post
• 1 Witch's Oven

• Lands (40)
• 10 Swamp
• 7 Mountain
• 1 Arcane Lighthouse
• 1 Blighted Fen
• 1 Blighted Gorge
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Castle Locthwain
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Detection Tower
• 1 Dragonskull Summit
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Foreboding Ruins
• 1 Graven Cairns
• 1 Homeward Path
• 1 Inventors' Fair
• 1 Luxury Suite
• 1 Memorial to Folly
• 1 Rix Maadi, Dungeon Palace
• 1 Rocky Tar Pit
• 1 Scavenger Grounds
• 1 Smoldering Marsh
• 1 Stensia Bloodhall
• 1 Temple of Malice
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse

Buy This Deck Export text format

Let's be honest: the point here isn't to have a deck that's going to win game after game. Probably lean into the aggro method if you want to try with this Commander. This deck is designed to do something completely outrageous. You will piece together a combo so silly, so wild, with so many pieces, it will make everyone at the table laugh and tell the story to all your friends who couldn't make it that night. And because the payoff is so absurd and hilarious, it makes the tutors feel way less bad.

How would you build Asmor? A lot of people are curious what to do with her, so let us know in the comments!

Thanks for reading.