Legendary Creature — Insect Shaman

Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest

Mana value5EDHREC#1,665

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The Commander

Flying

Whenever a player sacrifices another permanent, put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control.

Guide

Gameplan

Mazirek turns every sacrificed permanent—yours or an opponent's—into a board-wide pump, growing your whole team with each fodder you feed to sac outlets. You ramp into Mazirek, deploy cheap creatures and tokens, then trigger mass sacrifice off effects to swing for lethal or grind out value with drain and recursion. Each game plan revolves around chaining sacrifice triggers to snowball counters faster than opponents can stabilize.

Strengths

Each sacrifice pumps your ENTIRE board, so a single mass-sac can create a lethal alpha strike out of nowhere
Triggers off any player's sacrifices, including their own fetchlands and downstream creatures
Black-green gives elite ramp, tutors, and recursion to assemble engines reliably
Rewards token strategies and aristocrats with double payoff (drain + counters)

Weaknesses

Heavily commander-dependent—removing Mazirek shuts off the engine entirely
Counters are vulnerable to board wipes and don't grant evasion on their own
Slow to close without a free sac outlet and fodder online together
No card advantage built into the commander, so you must supply your own draw

Key Cards

Ashnod's Altar — Free sacrifice outlet that lets you machine-gun fodder for repeated team-wide counters and ramp.
Phyrexian Altar — Another no-cost sac outlet that fixes mana while pumping your board on each trigger.
Pitiless Plunderer — Generates treasure on every creature death, fueling sac loops that snowball Mazirek triggers.
Grave Pact — Forces opponents to sacrifice, triggering Mazirek and stripping their board simultaneously.
Skullclamp — Turns your dying tokens into a relentless card-draw engine while feeding sacrifice triggers.
Pawn of Ulamog — Replaces sacrificed creatures with Eldrazi Spawn tokens, providing endless fodder for the engine.

Upgrade Path

Add free sac outlets (Ashnod's Altar, Phyrexian Altar, Carrion Feeder) and recurring fodder engines (Pitiless Plunderer, Pawn of Ulamog, Endrek Sahr) to enable explosive loops. Layer in counter-doublers like Doubling Season and Branching Evolution plus proliferate for faster lethal, and include fast mana (Sol Ring, Mana Crypt) and tutors (Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor) to assemble your engine quickly. Finish with overrun effects like Craterhoof Behemoth or Triumph of the Hordes to convert a pumped board into instant wins.

Core Cards

The most-played cards for this commander, built from aggregated deck data (the Mythic Graph). Build public decks to seed it.

Win Conditions

▸Mass-sacrifice a wide board to swing for lethal commander damage after a huge team-wide pump
▸Drain the table with Blood Artist / Zulaport Cutthroat effects during sacrifice loops
▸Combo kill via infinite sacrifice loops doubling counters and creating overwhelming creatures
▸Grind opponents out with Grave Pact-style edicts shrinking their boards while yours grows

Archetypes

Aristocrats — Sacrifice outlets and death payoffs like Blood Artist pair perfectly with Mazirek's counter triggers.
Tokens — Wide boards of expendable creatures give both sac fodder and bodies to receive +1/+1 counters.
Combo — Free sac outlets plus token generators enable infinite or near-infinite counter loops for one-shot kills.
+1/+1 Counters — Mazirek natively builds an army of growing creatures, supported by counter-doublers and proliferate.