Duskmourn has brought us an amazing selection of new options for the Command Zone. I believe that all of the precons were a slam dunk and all of the options included in the decks are viable options. That brings us to who we are going to be looking at today; The Master of Keys!

The Master of Keys is a powerful new Commander that allows us to cast enchantments out of the graveyard using his ability. He is also able to fill the graveyard singlehandedly thanks to the X in his mana cost. The Master of Keys does provide us with a ton of advantage, however he alone isn't enough to win the game. I struggled with finding the direction I wanted to take this brew. Saga typal crossed my mind, as well as a Voltron variant playing lots of All That Glitters type effects. While all of those are definite possibilities for this Commander, I wanted something different. This deck of The Master of Keys is focused on Group Slug. Simply put we are going to drain out our opponents' life totals and strip them of their resources. Let's dive in!

Filling up the Graveyard

First thing we need to be doing with this deck is getting cards into our graveyard. Luckily, this is not a hard thing to accomplish in our colors.

• Hedron Crab and Scrabbling Skullcrab are perfect turn one plays that will fill our graveyard over the course of the game.
• Deranged Assistant and Millikin are mana dorks that also add to our graveyard overtime.
• Perpetual Timepiece, Ripples of Undeath, Cemetery Tampering, and Out of the Tombs are going to mill us for multiple cards every turn.

Remember, our Commander gives our enchantment spells escape. We need to have cards to exile in our graveyard as well as the enchantment we want to cast. Gravebreaker Lamia can tutor up any card into our graveyard for us to cast while also reducing the cost of our spells from the graveyard; bonus points for it also being an enchantment creature!

Sagas are some of the best spells we can be playing since we can recast them from the graveyard over and over again.

• Ballad of the Black Flag will fill up our graveyard and also give us the chance to cast some sagas from the graveyard at a reduced rate.
• The Tale of Tamiyo is a brand-new card that fits perfectly into this strategy. This deck is playing a whopping 39 enchantments, which helps this saga feed our graveyard extremely fast.
• King Narfi's Betrayal gives us the chance to cast some creatures since we do not play very many.
• Founding the Third Path is the last saga that can add cards to our graveyard. 2 mana to add four cards to the graveyard is a pretty standard rate. The final chapter is not that great for this deck, however, Glimpse the Unthinkable is a really great spell we can recast off this saga making it an easy inclusion.

Drain Plan

Typically the drain plan comes from lifegain strategies, but here we don't play any lifegain.

• Grim Guardian will slowly drain the table as all our enchantments keep entering.
• Underworld Dreams and Fate Unraveler will punish our opponents when they draw cards. We also have the ability to force them to draw.
• Standstill is a really cool card we can play with our Commander. Being able to cast it over and over again each turn will have us drawing cards and our opponents.

Having a way to also punish our opponents for drawing those cards will help lessen the blow of giving them extra resources. Measure of Wickedness is one of the most interesting cards I found when brewing. Having someone lose eight life in a single card is huge. This can help us end the game if life totals become low enough from our slow drain throughout the game. It also sacrifices itself, meaning we can cast it again! Gray Merchant of Asphodel is just a classic piece of drain that we can bring back from the graveyard using Dance of the Dead or Animate Dead. Merchant also boosts our life total which might matter from time to time.

Synergistic Removal

Removal can sometimes be some of the most boring parts of a Commander Deck. Every deck has to play some form of it, but I like to find any that synergizes with my strategy. Luckily, there are a ton of enchantments that are great for removing every nonland permanent type.

Seal of Removal, Seal of Cleansing, and Seal of Doom are the best pieces of removal we can play. Seal of Removal is a repeatable bounce spell for only a single Blue mana! Seal of Cleansing can deal with artifacts or enchantments and Seal of Doom can knock out non-Black creatures. These are already pretty strong cards, but having the ability to reuse them over and over makes them a must in this deck.

Blink is also a great piece of removal we can recast that also provides us with a few blockers. Grasp of Fate is a 3-for-1 on an enchantment. Sheltered by Ghosts is a new Oblivion Ring type effect from Duskmourn that gives our Commander Ward 2 and lifelink, a win win in my book! Last but not least, we have Amphibian Downpour. This enchantment is a great piece of interaction we can use on our turn or on our opponents' turn. Turning multiple creatures into frogs with no abilities is great at messing up our opponents off course. Also, if the original makes it back into our graveyard, we can recast it all over again!

Winning the Game

Winning the game is the goal of this deck, of course, so what cards push us over the edge into victory? Well there are a couple.

• Wound Reflection will double all of our drain effects and hopefully drain out our opponents quickly.
• Painful Quandary can also cause our opponents to die rather quickly if they have a low life total.
• Forced Fruition goes without saying. Thanks to cards like Fate Unraveler and Underworld Dreams, Forced Fruition will end up killing someone after only casting a couple of spells.

This deck has a sub-theme of group mill. Since we need cards in the graveyard, we might as well send everyone's cards there.

• Mesmeric Orb can start to eat away libraries quickly if unchecked.
• Court of Cunning and Fascination can also be great at filling up graveyards in an instant.
• Mindcrank is a two-mana artifact that will cause our opponents to mill while we have our drain effects out. Watching their key pieces of their strategy be lost to the graveyard can be entertaining, but we aren't playing enough mill to completely remove their deck from play.
• One Ring to Rule Them All is a saga that drains our opponents for each creature in their graveyard while also doubling as a repeatable board wipe. This is the most powerful card for this deck, because we can keep recasting it!
• Bloodchief Ascension combos with Mindcrank, but can start to tear life totals apart with our other mill effects. The fact that it can be online as early as turn three-4 if we play it on turn one is crazy!

This deck shouldn't struggle with finding a route to victory. Just take a look at the list!

The Key Master | Commander | Nigel Kurtz

• Commander (1)
• 1 The Master of Keys

• Creatures (13)
• 1 Demon of Fate's Design
• 1 Deranged Assistant
• 1 Fate Unraveler
• 1 Fear of Sleep Paralysis
• 1 Gravebreaker Lamia
• 1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 1 Grim Guardian
• 1 Hedron Crab
• 1 Millikin
• 1 Ornithopter of Paradise
• 1 Scrabbling Skullcrab
• 1 Starfield Mystic
• 1 Vohar, Vodalian Desecrator

• Spells (7)
• 1 Drown in Dreams
• 1 Faithful Mending
• 1 Frantic Search
• 1 Careful Study
• 1 Fascination
• 1 Glimpse the Unthinkable
• 1 Sevinne's Reclamation

• Artifacts (10)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Mesmeric Orb
• 1 Mindcrank
• 1 Perpetual Timepiece
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Talisman of Dominance
• 1 Talisman of Hierarchy
• 1 Talisman of Progress

• Enchantments (34)
• 1 Amphibian Downpour
• 1 Animate Dead
• 1 Ballad of the Black Flag
• 1 Blink
• 1 Bloodchief Ascension
• 1 Bottomless Pit
• 1 Cemetery Tampering
• 1 Court of Cunning
• 1 Dance of the Dead
• 1 Forced Fruition
• 1 Founding the Third Path
• 1 Ghostly Prison
• 1 Grasp of Fate
• 1 King Narfi's Betrayal
• 1 Luminarch Ascension
• 1 Measure of Wickedness
• 1 Mystic Remora
• 1 Omen of the Dead
• 1 Omen of the Sea
• 1 One Ring to Rule Them All
• 1 Oppression
• 1 Out of the Tombs
• 1 Painful Quandary
• 1 Propaganda
• 1 Ripples of Undeath
• 1 Seal of Cleansing
• 1 Seal of Doom
• 1 Seal of Removal
• 1 Sheltered by Ghosts
• 1 Sphere of Safety
• 1 Standstill
• 1 The Tale of Tamiyo
• 1 Underworld Dreams
• 1 Wound Reflection

• Lands (35)
• 1 Adarkar Wastes
• 1 Arcane Sanctum
• 1 Caves of Koilos
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Contaminated Landscape
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 8 Island
• 1 Isolated Chapel
• 6 Plains
• 9 Swamp
• 1 Temple of Deceit
• 1 Temple of Silence
• 1 Underground River
• 1 Valgavoth's Lair

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If you are interested in building with Master of Keys, or if you are just looking for some neat enchantments, I hope this deck list has been helpful to you. I am excited to actually put this list together and give it a spin. There are so many neat Commanders out of Duskmourn I can't wait to get my hands on. I hope you enjoy brewing some decks out of this new set!

See you on the battlefield!

-Nigel