Etrata, Deadly Fugitive First Look

Murders at Karlov Manor brings us a new assassin commander with a unique set of abilities: Etrata, Deadly Fugitive. She joins other assassin commanders with narrow abilities out there – Ramses, Assassin Lord‘s unique win condition; value in exchange for carnage via Mari, the Killing Quill; and of course the original Etrata, the Silencer, a fun but complex alternate way to take out an opponent.

Etrata, Deadly Fugitive is a 1/4 Vampire Assassin for with Deathtouch and two abilities to consider.

Ability 1: Face down creatures you control have “: Turn this creature face up. If you can’t, exile it, then you may cast the exiled card without paying its mana cost.”

This ability pairs with Etrata’s second ability. Any card you have cloaked off of your opponent’s libraries you can turn face up by paying . The portion of “if you can’t [turn this creature face up]” refers to cloaked cards that aren’t creatures; enchantments, instants, sorceries, etc. If you’ve cloaked your opponent’s Portal to Phyrexia, you can pay to exile it and cast it for free.

There’s a number of things to consider with this first ability. The cost applies to any face down creature you control, not just cloaked creatures. This can be creatures that are morphed, manifested, cloaked, disguised, or any other “play face-down” keywords I may have missed. Let’s consider alternate ways to play face-down creatures and use the cost to discount it into play.

Ability 2: Whenever an Assassin you control deals combat damage to an opponent, cloak the top card of that player’s library.

While straightforward, Etrata unfortunately doesn’t give us any way to ensure we connect with our opponents. To play around this we’ll look to play assassins or changelings and give them evasion. Since we’re investing resources to get this trigger, we can consider cards that ensure we cloak something good. We can play spells that manipulate the top of our opponents’ libraries. Agonizing Memories, Bamboozle, Memory Lapse and Time Ebb are good examples.

Let’s look into building Etrata. Many of the build themes provide you a few great cards to include but not enough to build entirely around. You’ll be looking to mix and match themes to build the deck that suites your playstyle.

Cloak & Dagger – Assassins and Evasion

Evasive Assassins & Changelings

We should consider two types of assassins to play. Those that come with evasion to help us trigger Etrata and those that provide us some other sort of value. Aven Heartstabber, Suq’Ata Assassin, Midnight Assassin and Silumgar Assassin all have some sort of built in evasion. All Changelings are Assassins so let’s include evasive ones as well: Changeling Outcast being an allstar option for this deck; Mistwalker and Mothdust Changeling also have or can get flying. Consider Cephalid Facetaker as well, as she keeps unblockability when transformed into one of your other assassins.

Value Assassins & Changelings

There are a handful of value assassins we could include in the deck. While they aren’t going to get in for combat damage without some help, they provide value in other ways. Big Game Hunter, Callidus Assassin, Dark Impostor, Nekrataal, and Termination Facilitator provide some form of removal. Kiku, Night’s Flower also provides removal with the added bonus of getting to say “stop hitting yourself! stop hitting yourself!”

Mari, the Killing Quill gives your typal creatures deathtouch, provides a bit of graveyard hate, card draw and ramp. Massacre Girl board wipes; the new Massacre Girl, Known Killer gives you card draw and typal wither. Ramses, Assassin Lord gives your assassins +1/+1 and an alternate win condition. Virtus the Veiled can deal half of a player’s life to them if he can connect via combat damage.

Maskwood Nexus is an excellent include in this deck. All of your creatures are now assassins, including your cloaked and stolen face-up creatures. This allows you to continue collecting those Etrata triggers!

Black Market Connections generates you a changeling, treasure, and card each turn if you’re willing to pay the price. (Take the 6! Take the 6!)

Scryfall Link to all eligible changelings & assassins

Unblockability

Blue has a plethora of aura enchantments that allow your creatures to be unblockable. Examples include Aether Tunnel, Aqueous Form, Cloak of Invisibility and many others. These can be used to allow your creatures to deal combat damage and trigger Etrata. Shout out to Open into Wonder which can make a number of creatures unblockable and net you cards at the same time.

You can use classics like Rogue’s Passage to get through, and cards like Access Tunnel and the new Escape Tunnel can help you out too.

You can look for equipment to help you out – Whispersilk Cloak provides both shroud and unblockability; Mask of Riddles grants fear and card draw; Trailblazer’s boots, Prowler’s Helm, Psychic Paper and more; you can also run an Archetype of Imagination to ensure your creatures are able to connect every time. Psychic Paper allows you to turn any creature you have into an Assassin as well.

I considered Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive, though not all of your creatures will have power or toughness 1 or less. She’d be a slam dunk if she could also grant your cloaked creatures unblockable. Crafty Pathmage can get most of your creatures through and Writ of Passage can be a repeatable way to grant unblockability.

Scryfall link to non-creature evasion. Some filtering needed.

Cheating Big Spells

Let’s dive into ways to ensure we have face down creatures of value.

Getting more face-down creatures

The Dr. Who Universes Beyond set has been looking our for us, providing us a few ways to get face down creatures from our opponents. Cybership gets us 2 face-down 2/2 cards from an opponents library whenever it connects and it comes with flying, ensuring we’re likely to have at least one target. Death in Heaven is a graveyard hate saga that returns the creatures it has exiled under your control as 2/2 face down creatures. The Cyber-Controller is similar but faster, entering the battlefield to mill your opponents, stealing creatures milled this way as 2/2 face down creatures.

While not in Dr. Who, Thieving Amalgam is also a great include here, triggering at the beginning of each opponent’s upkeep allowing you to manifest the top card of that player’s library. Ghastly Conscription is graveyard hate that could net you a large number of manifested creatures from a player’s graveyard.

Returning to the top of opponent’s library

You could build this deck to hunt for Quality not Quantity, playing cards that manipulate the top of your opponent’s deck to allow you to cloak specific targets. I believe Memory Lapse is the only counterspell that puts the card on the top of your opponent’s deck. There are a number of blue spells costing between 3-4 mana that puts a creature on top of its owner’s library such as Run Aground. Submerge is also a great option, in a 4 player game someone is likely to have a forest, making this an instant speed creature bounce for free. You can play Agonizing Memories as a hand hate spell to put two cards from an opponent’s hand on the top of their library. You can Bamboozle your opponent to dig 4 deep for cards you’d like to cloak. Misinformation can be instant graveyard hate as well as moving a high value spell from their yard into the top of their library at instant speed – allowing you to respond to Etrata’s trigger to stack their deck at the most opportune moment. Scheming Symmetry is a tutor for you and an opponent – no one is going to put anything high value here if you’re ahead, but you can politic an opponent to allow you to steal something mutually beneficial if you’re both behind.

Doubling Triggers

While it does make sense to try and have as many of your assassins deal combat damage as possible, you could also ensure that even if one or two hit, you get a bunch of extra triggers. You’re in blue so you can play all of the copy-your-commander copy spells like Irenicus’s Vile Duplication, Sakashima the Imposter, or Spark Double. You can also run Roaming Throne, itself being an assassin, it can double all of your assassin’s triggers. Lastly, cards like Strionic Resonator or Lithoform Engine can double Etrata’s cloak trigger as well.

Manifesting Our Cards

Manifesting my own cards to cheat them into play discounted was my original thought behind this deck. Cards like Scroll of Fate were the first on my mind – surely there must be many more ways to manifest my own cards! Sadly, there are only a handful of ways to do this in Dimir and it’s proven to be a difficult build around. Scroll of Fate and Primordial Mist are the best cards here, as they provide a one-time cost to continuously manifest things that you can then play with Etrata’s ability. The other manifest cards, combined with the cost of Etrata’s ability, means you’re unlikely to actually be getting cost reductions since you’re looking at paying 7+ total mana each time. Nonetheless, the other self manifest cards you could consider are: Cloudform, Write into Being, Reality Shift (a good removal spell in blue that you could use on yourself in a pinch), Omarthis, Ghostfire Initiate can manifest a lot if you can have him die, and Qarsi High Priest can sacrifice a creature (perhaps you cloaked a land?) to manifest the top card if your library.

It is important to note that Scroll of Fate with Etrata out allows you to play any nonland card in your hand at instant speed for ! Unless you’re running a very low curve, you’ll likely get a lot of mileage out of this card in your deck.

Scryfall link for eligible manifest cards

Discounting Etrata’s Activated Ability & Flickering Face Down Creatures

You can run a few cards that help you pay for Etrata’s ability. Training Grounds, Omen Hawker, and The Enigma Jewel can all be ways to augment the traditional ramp spells you may run.

Fun fact – flickering/blinking face-down creatures does return them to the battlefield face up! Just be careful the flicker ability you’re using specifies that the creature returns to the battlefield under your control, not its owners control. Ghostly Flicker, Conjurer’s Closet, Thassa, Deep-Dwelling, Deadeye Navigator, Sword of Hearth and Home are all options for flickering face-down creatures back onto the battlefield under your control. Note that this is the only way to get the ETB effects of creatures you steal, as turning face-down creatures face up using Etrata’s ability won’t trigger that creature’s ETB.

Just be careful not to flicker a face-down card that isn’t a creature face up – you won’t get to cast it for free, it will just remain in exile.

Special Considerations

Note that paying is not the same as paying a morph cost. Face-down creatures paying to be turned up is an ability that goes on the stack and can be responded to/cannot be used in response to split second.

This is in contrast with the morph keyword, which reads “You may cast this card face down as a 2/2 creature for . Turn it face up at any time for its morph cost.” It’s important to note that morphing is a special action that does not use the stack – meaning turning morphed creatures face up with their morph cost is one of the few things you can do in response to a split second spell like Krosan Grip (you could turn a Willbender face up to redirect the target of Krosan Grip).

Building the Deck

Etrata, Deadly Fugitive provides us with a unique set of abilities to build a deck around. Hopefully the themes highlighted in this post inspire your own brew of Etrata. Like other theft decks, Etrata is likely to scale with your playgroup. She is not necessarily that strong or fast, meaning you’re unlikely to be seen as the threat at the table early game, hopefully buying you time to build a board state and steal some cards. The activated ability Etrata gives face down creatures can be activated at instant speed, allowing you to pick the perfect moment to surprise your pod with whatever spell lies hidden beneath the cloak.

What do you think? Time to start Stealing your opponents cards and Cheating bombs into play? Got any spicy tech you’d like to share? Comment below!

Sample Etrata, Deadly Fugitive Deck