One way to conceptualize an Aristocrats deck is as a three-legged stool. Without any one of these three legs, the deck won't perform well. It's important to have a balance of all these components in your 99, and possibly even one of them in your command zone, to ensure that you'll have access to each of them when you need it.

1. Sacrifice Outlets

Sac outlets, or cards that let you sacrifice other creatures at a low cost (or no cost at all) are crucial to an Aristocrats deck's success. These cards ensure that you're making use of important death triggers, which a good Aristocrats deck will have plenty of.

Without a sac outlet, you're reliant on your opponents killing your creatures in combat, or with removal. If they see that you'll benefit from their death, your opponents likely won't do that. So, ensuring you've got a way to speed up the process of death is key.

2. Sacrifice Fodder

It's also important that you've got enough creatures to sacrifice. Whether that's creature tokens, disposable creatures, or creatures that can be brought back from the graveyard easily, it's important to have a lot of creatures that you won't mind killing.

Every deck is different, and most decks will pick one of those three types of creatures to focus on, while including the other two creatures secondarily.

3. Sacrifice Payoffs

Now, for the fun part. We'll hopefully have access to a cheap sacrifice outlet, and a lot of creatures to kill. But, if we don't have a payoff, we'll just be spinning our wheels. Whether the payoff for creatures dying is making more creatures, drawing cards, or even directly draining our opponents' life totals, we need some way to gain advantage from all the death we're causing.

This is the "leg" that most deckbuilders neglect: Aristocrats decks have a reputation for taking long, solitaire-esque turns with very little having changed at the end of them. Including enough sacrifice payoffs ensures that you avoid falling into that trap.

So, we've established the importance of each leg. Now let's talk about some specific cards that fill those roles well. I'll focus primarily on cards, as most Aristocrats pilots will include it in their deck's color identity, but I'll branch out into other colors to showcase Commander's coolest tech.

Sacrifice Outlets

There's an abundance of sacrifice outlets available to Commander players, and I'll be focusing on the free ones. While low-cost ones, like FleshtakerFleshtaker certainly have their place, the difference between paying and paying for an effect is massive.

One of my favorite sac outlets is Warren SoultraderWarren Soultrader, which turns creatures into mana. At the low cost of just one life, this is essentially free in our 40-life format. Other great options include Priest of Forgotten GodsPriest of Forgotten Gods for mana and card advantage at an efficient rate, and Greater GoodGreater Good for the massive card advantage and graveyard-filling potential it provides.

Sacrifice Fodder

Decks often stick to one of three game plans: flooding the board with tokens, running a lot of disposable creatures in their 99, or including lots of creatures that can be recurred easily. I'll give one example for each.

Token creators, like OphiomancerOphiomancer, are particularly powerful when paired with free, instant-speed sacrifice outlets. When that condition is met, this Human Shaman can provide four creature tokens per table rotation - an incredible rate for just .

Cheap, disposable creatures like Greedy FreebooterGreedy Freebooter are also great, letting us gain little bits of value over and over again.

And, creatures that can bring themselves back from the graveyard easily, like Ox of AgonasOx of Agonas, can be great inclusions too.

Sacrifice Payoffs

The most iconic card for modern Aristocrats decks, Blood ArtistBlood Artist is also one of its most powerful payoffs. This Vampire is everything we want: It's cheap, it triggers off of all creatures dying - including our opponents' - and it can end games quickly. It should be automatically included in most every Aristocrats deck that can run it.

Other payoffs include Black MarketBlack Market, which can provide a truly remarkable amount of mana, and Battle of Hoover DamBattle of Hoover Dam, which has two extremely useful modes in graveyard-centric decks.

To show you an example of an Aristocrats deck, we'll be putting together an Orzhov () list, with Zahur, Glory's PastZahur, Glory's Past at the helm. This Zombie Cat Warrior covers at least one of our three needs, acting as a free sacrifice outlet that we'll always have access to.

Plus, if we're able to get up to max speed (by making an opponent lose life on at least three separate turns), we'll get a nice sacrifice payoff too!

I like this commander for a few reasons. First, it's cheap; at just two mana, we'll be able to access Zahur early and often. Second, his color identity lets us access the best Aristocrats cards in Commander. Let's see what the rest of the deck has in store.

Sacrifice Outlets

We've got some powerful cards here, including some of the favorites I mentioned earlier. But, I've also included some Zombie-centric outlets, to lean into the typal theme that our commander encourages.

Ghoulcaller GisaGhoulcaller Gisa can provide a ton of 2/2 Zombie tokens for us, even if the average power of creatures in this deck is relatively low. Turning a 3/3 into three 2/2s is amazing, letting us trigger our Blood ArtistBlood Artist effects and giving us more sacrifice fodder for later.

Speaking of, the recently released Umbral Collar ZealotUmbral Collar Zealot fits right in as a backup version of our commander. Because we've got some reanimation effects, like UnearthUnearth, available to us, being able to simultaneously sacrifice a creature and dump more cards into the graveyard is quite strong.

Sacrifice Fodder

This list is focused pretty heavily on tokens. Our commander can make us tokens pretty frequently, and cards like Adeline, Resplendent CatharAdeline, Resplendent Cathar, Jadar, Ghoulcaller of NephaliaJadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia, and On Wings of GoldOn Wings of Gold are each useful ways for us to flood the board with creature tokens.

Adeline is probably the most powerful of the bunch, netting us three 1/1 tokens every single time we attack!

Sacrifice Payoffs

Our death triggers are focused primarily on life loss, to ensure Zahur and our other max speed cards are as effective as possible. Cruel CelebrantCruel Celebrant, Elas il-Kor, Sadistic PilgrimElas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim, and Marionette ApprenticeMarionette Apprentice are all nice companions to Blood ArtistBlood Artist.

We've also got card advantage pieces, like Morbid OpportunistMorbid Opportunist, and mana advantage pieces, like Pitiless PlundererPitiless Plunderer. Because we're a deck, we've got no shortage of payoff pieces.

This deck's also got a fun Zombie subtheme. From GravecrawlerGravecrawler to Death BaronDeath Baron, we've got some of Commander's strongest undead in our 99.

We've also got more ways to make Zombie tokens, like God-Eternal OketraGod-Eternal Oketra and Liliana, Dreadhorde GeneralLiliana, Dreadhorde General, ensuring we'll have on-theme sacrifice fodder.

There's even typal cards like Accursed DuneyardAccursed Duneyard and CryptbreakerCryptbreaker in this list.

Other max speed cards, like Embalmed AscendantEmbalmed Ascendant, Gas GuzzlerGas Guzzler, and Hour of VictoryHour of Victory, let us take advantage of the lifeloss we're sure to be spreading around the table, while also furthering our main game plan.

And, finally, here's our full deck list: