(Braids, Cabal MinionBraids, Cabal Minion | Art By: Eric Peterson)

If there's one thing a commander player loves, it's new cards. There is, however, possibly one thing that they love even more than that: unbanned cards. With the latest update to the format, five cards were freed from the prison known as the Commander Banned List.

Four of these cards are very cool in their own right, and I won't lie to you and say I am not excited about the possibilities of Panoptic MirrorPanoptic Mirror and Gifts UngivenGifts Ungiven. I'm even happy to lose the game for the first time to Coalition VictoryCoalition Victory. There is one card, and one card alone, that we will discuss today, and that is the big baddie with the braids.

Typical Mono-Black Nonsense

Braids is a reasonably simple card, especially by 2025 design standards. It's a stax piece in the command zone that is meant to punish your opponents for playing permanents.

Unless your entire deck is enchantments, planeswalkers, or battles, you are going to be losing a permanent to Braids every upkeep.

The most common idea is to turbo out Braids as soon as possible with cards like Dark RitualDark Ritual and fast mana, such as Sol RingSol Ring, and then lock your opponents out from playing the game until they concede.

BUT THAT'S BORING! All screaming aside, if this is what you want to do, go ahead. I'm not here to stop you. Play the game however you want, as long as everyone is having fun.

What I want to do is the cruelest trick of them all: make the table agree that Braids is...helping? Well, maybe not helping, but not hurting until it's too late.

It's Braids, But Backwards

What's one of the most essential things needed in any Braids deck, regardless of the strategy? Trash. Things to throw away to her effect so that you're not caught in a loop of recasting your commander every two turns and doing nothing else until you lose the game.

So, what type of things make the best trash-producers? Tokens and cards that put other trinkets onto the board.

Trinkets For Us, Trinkets For The Table

While the deck might be backwards, we do need some cards that can allow us to put on the facade that we are a regular Braids deck.

We also have cards like Jadar, Ghoulcaller of NephaliaJadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia and Liliana, Heretical HealerLiliana, Heretical Healer that have situational ways of providing us with a token.

Some cards in the deck even give all players tokens or at least an option to get tokens.

Horrors, Horses, and Trolls Oh My!

The real driving force of the deck is, however, is what we have that gives our opponents the direct counter to what's expected of the deck. Some of these cards you might be familiar with:

What do you mean you've never seen these cards? But you know these next few, I bet.

Odds are, most of these cards have never crossed your sightline and have almost certainly never been put into a sleeve and jammed into a deck box.

These are the keys to the deck. These are the puzzle pieces that will make our opponents forget we're playing Braids.

Why would you want to attack the Braids player when I can blink my Hunted HorrorHunted Horror with Conjurer's ClosetConjurer's Closet and give you more Centaurs? These are the thoughts I'm trying to plant in the table's mind.

Profit?

So, after we successfully flood the board of our opponents with Myr, Centaur, Goats, and Soldiers, what do we do? We spring the trap.

This is the point in the game that we show our opponents how mean we can truly be. We show them that they never should have underestimated Braids.

First, it'll be something small, like another version of Braids. Braids, Arisen NightmareBraids, Arisen Nightmare will have opponents throwing away the tokens to prevent us from drawing cards, sure, but this is exactly what we want.

Second, we add Evin, Waterdeep OpportunistEvin, Waterdeep Opportunist to the table to start gaining small amounts of mana.

Third, if our opponents haven't caught on by this point, start to tip your hand with something like SangromancerSangromancer; it's amazing how fast three life adds up.

Finally, we hit them with a card that will feel like getting slammed with a Colossus HammerColossus Hammer.

Cards with the word "massacre" in the title and a decimating opponent's board full of creatures have always been a match made in heaven.

Another classic for black-centric decks is Toxic DelugeToxic Deluge. In this deck, it's especially easy to profit from paying as little as one life to wipe a board away.

While the Girl and the Deluge are skilled at killing boards, they struggle to turn that into a personal advantage. That is where some old classics and new players come in.

Classics

Staples in back decks often focus on an Aristocrat-ic vibe, these are how we best turn the cards given to our opponents into their downfall.

The Artist and the Noble do double duty by keeping our life total nice and high because no matter what we do in this deck, we should expect a healthy dose of retaliation.

Luckily for us, the designers have decided over the years that more cards of this nature were needed.

New Players

Creatures have seen a significant increase in the arbitrage of gaining value by eliminating an opponent's board. Archfiend of the DrossArchfiend of the Dross and Vein RipperVein Ripper even became powerhouses in multiple 60-card formats.

But one card stands above the rest when it comes to the new players, and it might even rival some of the old classics. I am, of course, talking about:

This card is so powerful that it had to be banned in Standard. Now, without having a board of our own, this card won't be enough to win us the game, so we need to use some cards that are more typical of mono-black strategies that your opponents are used to seeing.

Familiar Faces

Call it a backup plan or call it filling out the curve, either way, the deck needs to be 100 cards, so these are making it into the list. Gray Merchant of AsphodelGray Merchant of Asphodel is possibly the most classic card in a mono-black deck if there ever was one.

At this point, it might as well be the first card added to any of those decks, even before the likes of SwampSwamp. Bastion of RemembranceBastion of Remembrance and Zulaport CutthroatZulaport Cutthroat make sure that if an opponent decides they no longer want us to have a board, it's going to cost them dearly.

Nice to Have

A deck like Braids, Cabal MinionBraids, Cabal Minion lends itself to being able to run cards not often seen anywhere else, and when you see those cards at the table, you can't help but to audibly exclaim, "Nice".

Artifacts aren't safe from the wrath of Braids, and for us, that can be to our advantage. More specifically, card advantage and mana advantage.

Lands also allow us to do silly things. Drownyard TempleDrownyard Temple can help us in a pinch when the board has gone bad, and the best thing for us to do is throw away a land. Gods' Eye, Gate to the ReikaiGods' Eye, Gate to the Reikai might only see play in a Braids deck, and it happens to be perfect.

Hidden Commander

One final card that deserves special attention for the deck:

For this deck, I wish there were four or five different versions of this card. Sadly, we only have one. The card can be tutored up with Bitterheart WitchBitterheart Witch, and the sacrifice effect on Braids feeds into finding this card nicely.

I didn't want any of the other mono-black Curses in the deck, so the Witch did not make the cut. Sometimes, the thrill of drawing this card at the right time will be the reason to come back to the table and shuffle up for another game. Or we just cast our Demonic TutorDemonic Tutor and grab it when the time is right.

Wrap Up

Is this the best version of a Braids, Cabal MinionBraids, Cabal Minion deck to ever hit the table? No, it certainly is not. Is the ideal strategy still going to be turboing out Braids with fast mana, slamming down a token producer for yourself, and loading up on other cards like SmokestackSmokestack?

Most likely yes. That deck, however, builds itself, and if I am going to bring you a Tech the Deck article, I want to do my best to think outside the box to the degree in which I can without going completely insane. You know. Like Braids.

Braids as a commander is not my cup of tea. I would sit down at a table and, depending on the day, agree to play against your deck no questions asked. I even claimed that this card should be unbanned when discussing bringing back the Banned as Commander rule in January of this year.

Whatever the case, I hope you find this Braids deck interesting at the very least. Someday, if you ever set up a Braids lock across the table from me as you recur your Strip MineStrip Mine with Crucible of WorldsCrucible of Worlds, I will shake your hand and shuffle up for another game, hopefully against a non-Braids deck. Unless it's Braids, Conjurer AdeptBraids, Conjurer Adept, because nothing can go wrong if she's your Commander.

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