Avacyn, Angel of Horror has been freshly spoiled via the decklist of the upcoming Multiverse Reforged precon – the premier commander precon from Magic: The Gathering’s Reality Fracture – and wow, what a card! Avacyn’s twisted echoverse variant binds beings into eternal servitude, ensuring that not even death can release them from worshiping her. What the heck, Jace?!
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Avacyn’s Strengths
Avacyn, Angel of Horror is a whopping 8 mana mono black 8/8 Angel with Flying and deathtouch. She bears a truly incredible triggered ability: Whenever Avacyn or another nontoken creature you control dies, return that card to the battlefield under your control at the beginning of the next end step. This reminds me of another similar ability owned by Liesa, Forgotten Archangel – but in comparison, I can see why we forgot poor Liesa!
This type of effect will quickly overwhelm the table. Control the board with Fleshbag Marauder effects, keep your hand full with Grim Haruspex effects, close out the game by looping drain effects like Gray Merchant of Asphodel combined with a sacrifice outlet.
Edict Loops
Being able to resolve a Fleshbag-style card after Avacyn is on the table will quickly deal with all creatures your opponents control. Then, depending on which flavor of fleshbag you’re using, you might start hitting planeswalkers and hands as well. Just resolving 1 of these can cost your opponents 4 creatures before your next turn! Pair this with Blood Artist effects to deal a ton of drain at the same time.
Note that you can really turbo-charge this with Grave Pact or its variants.
Card Draw Loops
There are a number of options that yield cards when creatures die. Grim Haruspex, Midnight Reaper, Dark Prophecy, Agent Venom, Liliana, Dreadhorde General and High-Society Hunter all work very nicely here. Note that High-Society Hunter will draw you cards off anyone’s non-token creatures dying, potentially yielding you a dozen cards before your next turn.
Ramp Loops
Pawn of Ulamog and Pitiless Plunderer turn your death triggers into sources of mana. Black Market turns everyone’s death triggers into a huge source of mana for you during your main phase. Paired with Avacyn and a sac outlet, our boy Solemn Simulacrum gets you a bunch of lands and keeps your hand full as well!
Win Condition for Avacyn, Angel of Horror
Looping large drain effects, combined with Blood Artist-style death drains, and swinging your creatures into likely empty boards, you’re looking to win the old fashioned way: bring everyone else’s life total to 0.
Gray Merchant of Asphodel is an all-star here. Combined with a sacrifice outlet and Avacyn, he might win you the game before your next turn! And he’s cheap to purchase. Kokusho, the Evening Star is similar, though his drain is only 5 and he is significantly more pricey. Dusk Mangler has a modest drain but also edicts and causes a discard – looping him might just cause your opponents to scoop.
With all the looped edict effects we’re running, opponents are likely to have empty boards. Your creatures can swing in for free extra damage, helping close the game out as soon as possible.
Avacyn’s Early Game
Since Avacyn is an 8 mana commander, we cannot rely on our win-condition cards or the aforementioned loops to bring us to victory. That’s effectively Act 2 of the deck: Act 1 is consistently making it to Act 2.
Consistently Reaching 8 Mana
Avacyn’s primary weakness is being 
– 8 mana is a lot to ask for. Our early game will be focused on making land drops, keeping our hand full, and finding mana acceleration in the deck. Black has a number of unique ways to go mana positive. Examples include lands like Cabal Coffers, which starts generating more and more extra mana with each swamp you add to the field. Classics like Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual give you temporary boosts in mana, and the infamous altars Ashnod’s Altar and Phyrexian Altar can turn your creatures into mana as well. K’rrik, Son of Yawgmoth allows you to spend life instead of , providing a significant discount to most of your spells.
Soldevi Adnate and Illuminor Szeras both have Sacrifice-style effects (yes, that’s a real card) to grant you equal to the sacrificed creature’s mana value. Culling the Weak sacrifices any creature to turn it into .
Consider Blood Pet and Blood Vassal – creatures that can sacrifice themselves for mana. These either help you get Avacyn out early, or can be repeatedly brought back by her for a steady supply of mana and death triggers for the deck’s card draw (Grim Haruspex) and drain effects (Blood Artist).
Lastly, there are the swamp value doublers that are all very valuable in mono black.
Finding Cabal Coffers
If you’re playing Cabal Coffers or other lands you’d like to find consistently, you have a few ways to get them more often. World Map, Expedition Map and Urza’s Cave all have the ability to find you specific lands in your deck.
Keep Your Hand Full Early
It’s a good idea in decks like these to run card draw effects that don’t rely on any other particular synergy. Night’s Whisper, Sign in Blood and Phyrexian Arena come to mind. Creatures that enter and draw a card are also decent – they cantrip early and give you something to do, but also loop late game with Avacyn and sacrifice outlets. Dusk Legion Zealot is a good example of this. Bursty more expensive card draw is also not a bad option to keep your hand full mid game – cards like Ancient Craving or Stinging Study.
Contingency Plan: Reanimator Effects
Sometimes you won’t be able to keep your board state healthy by the time Avacyn comes out. You’ll need to block with value creatures, or a board wipe happens, or you need to sac your Blood Pet to bring Avacyn out in the first place. Cards like Whisper, Blood Liturgist and Hell’s Caretaker can help you recover lost creatures from the yard, either before Avacyn comes out or afterwards. You can sacrifice creatures (even Avacyn herself) to these effects and they’ll come back with Avacyn’s ability the next end step.
Living Death serves a dual-purpose board-wipe and mass reanimate effect for you. Dread Return can get back one creature two times, and the absolutely incredible Wake the Dead can bring back an army of previously permanently dead creatures to your battlefield for Avacyn to bind to eternal servitude once more.
Wake the Dead is a budget banger that has won me many games in my Old Rutstein list and will surely win you many with Avacyn as well.
The Importance of Sacrifice Outlets in Avacyn, Angel of Horror
If your opponents know you’re going to start dropping edict-shaped bombs like Plaguecrafter and repeat them 4 times per turn cycle, they’re going to be focusing removal on Avacyn as often as they can.
Luckily, with Avacyn’s ability to bring herself back when she dies, she is incredibly resilient to targeted removal and board wipes, provided you have a sacrifice outlet. We can respond to these effects with free sacrifice outlets like Viscera Seer, putting Avacyn out of harm’s way until the next end step. Just keep in mind you can’t sacrifice Viscera Seer to himself after Avacyn dies and expect him to come back too!
My decklist comes packed with sacrifice outlets, as they serve a dual purpose: dodging removal, and repeatedly getting value out of creatures dying and coming back with Avacyn’s effect. Woe Strider can escape, making him particularly versatile. Yahenni, Undying Partisan becomes indestructible for a turn in exchange for a creature, making him a resilient beater. Carrion Feeder can’t block but keeps getting bigger – but as a free sac outlet for , hard to go wrong with including him in the deck.
Vampiric Rites turns creatures into cards and life and we talked about how the Altars turn creatures into mana; you can also utilize the plethora of black spells that turn creatures into removal like Worthy Cost as well.
It’s also important to note that since sacrifice outlets protect Avacyn, it frees up deck real estate since we don’t need to include other common commander staples like Swiftfoot Boots or Kaya’s Ghostform.
True Weaknesses of Avacyn: Graveyard Hate and Countermagic
Graveyard Hate
When Avacyn or your creatures die, they sit in the graveyard until she brings them back. That opens them up for all kinds of graveyard based removal or stax effects. Rest in Peace-style effects prevent them from going to the graveyard at all; Soulless Jailer effects prevent the cards from leaving the graveyard. Bojuka Bog and Soul-Guide Lantern can outright exile your whole graveyard after you’ve decided to sacrifice your board in preparation for the next end step. And of course, someone could Stifle Avacyn’s effect when she dies, leaving her in the graveyard until you can reanimate her.
Black isn’t exactly adept at destroying things other than creatures (and their own life totals), making these problems hard to deal with. To destroy enchantments in mono black, you should include Feed the Swarm and Withering Torment in any mono black deck; the newer Shredder’s Technique from the TMNT set is also a worthwhile consideration.
Destroying artifacts is trickier: Phyrexian Tribute is on theme.
Lastly, you could look into colorless options to deal with problems. Meteor Golem takes care of any problem for 
but being a creature you can recur, it could potentially deal with numerous problems. Zuko’s Exile hits creatures, artifacts and enchantments. Or you can go into colorless board wipes like Nevinyrral’s Disk to blow up all problems, including your own.
Countermagic
Getting to 8 mana just to have your commander countered is a huge bummer; though conversely, getting your commander out is a potential huge bummer for your opponents too. Such is life!
Your options in mono black are limited – Cavern of Souls naming Angels, Chimil, the Inner Sun to get some free spells and ensure they all don’t get countered; or you can use Imp’s Mischief to redirect a counterspell to something else, assuming that there is something else on the stack to target. A counterspell can’t target itself. It’s in the rulings!
Avacyn, Angel of Horror Decklist
Avacyn asks a lot: eight mana, a sacrifice outlet, and a graveyard nobody’s hating on. Worth it, or is she a Coffers-or-bust commander?
I’m curious what you’d cut from this list – and if you could only buy five cards off it, which five? Drop them in the comments; I’ll be covering more of the Reality Fracture legends as spoilers roll out.
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