Magic: the Gathering

Review

Budget Commander - Gisa, Glorious Resurrector

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This article introduces a list to punish your opponents and reanimate their creatures with one of Midnight Hunt's new commanders!

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translated by Romeu

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revised by Tabata Marques

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Introduction

One of the Commander's strongest strategies is known as Group Slug, which consists of using cards that penalize opponents for spells and plays throughout the game, to exhaust their resources.

Gisa, Glorious Resurrector's deck proposal is a sacrifice-based Group Slug, generating great value with triggered abilities and asymmetry with the commander creating hordes of decayed.

This deck seeks to end the game through combat with decayed or direct damage. There is an alternate wincondition through the interaction between Fraying Omnipotence and Warlock Class.

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Thraben's Undisputed Queen

Gisa Cecani, the undisputed queen of Thraben, is one of the most powerful Ghoulcallers on Innistrad. She believes the dead must be resurrected directly from their graves, which is why most of her undead creations are ghouls. Gisa's talent and great abilities make her a prima donna assoluta, that is, ingenious, temperamental, capricious and vain, revealing a boastful vision of herself and her importance, bordering on insanity. Disquieting and beautiful, the Empress of the Empty Tomb, has in her brother Geralf, her greatest rival and companion of madness.

“My dear brother - (...) as you are the only brother I have and the only person remotely intelligent enough to understand my genius, I suppose you will unfortunately have to.(... ) I dream of something worthy to oppose!”

- Gisa and Geralf

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In the latest release, Innistrad: Midnight Hunt was represented with the card Gisa, Glorious Resurrector with a formidable ability to recruit threats thrown by opponents. Whenever an opponent's creature is sent to the graveyard it is exiled, on the next upkeep it is put into play under your control, and the creature gains decayed.

A source of immense value if it remains a few turns on the battlefield. Commander Gisa, Glorious Resurrector is balanced and fun, unlike her successor Tergrid, God of Fright, Gisa is fair but still strong. Her recent story can be read in the short story The Dance of Undeathlink outside website.

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The Ghouls' Night

Gisa, Glorious Resurrector's strategy is based on removing creatures from opponents to be reanimated on the next turn. The use of removals is an important part of the deck and can be divided into sacrifices and destruction.

For sacrifices, the choices favor the Group Slug archetype affecting all players, thus reducing the resources of all opponents equally. Creatures like Fleshbag Marauder are a great choice, especially associated with using power-ups like Butcher of Malakir and Overseer of the Damned.

The mass sacrifice is Fraying Omnipotence, which can often easily be a finisher. We dedicate a set of removals to enchantments with Feed the Swarm, Mire in Misery, Pharika's Libation.

And to deal with artifacts we have Introduction to Annihilation, which showed good results; previously, Xenic Poltergeist was used. There are plenty of targeted removal and aim to be effective against as many threats as possible, including indestructible creatures, using -1/-1 counters.

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The Empty Tomb's Empress

When I first met Gisa, Glorious Resurrector during the Innistrad: Midnight Hunt spoiler season, the idea was to create a deck with lots of control elements, as the decayed mechanics reminded me from my first Commander deck: Merieke Ri Berit.

The Cold Storage and Synod Sanctum cards are great options to definitely remain in control of your opponent's creatures. An interesting addition, Nightmare Shepherd, would send all my decayed creatures into exile and replace them with tokens, permanently eliminating opponents' creatures.

Permanent capture decks without red lack haste, and to get around that, Minion Reflector generates copies of creatures when they enter the battlefield and grants those copies haste, and the recent Crashing Drawbridge grants haste to all creatures.

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Given the need for our commander to remain on the battlefield, we have some protection with Gift of Doom, Swiftfoot Boots, and Mirror Shield.

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The Ghoulcaller's Harvest

An efficient way to eliminate opponents is to deplete another fundamental resource of the game: life totals. Liability is one of my favorite cards in this deck, as it has a double efficiency, as creatures are sent to the opponent's graveyard over and over again. Syr Konrad, the Grim deals a relevant amount of damage in a very short time, similarly we have Dreadhound, a fairer version of the knight.

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The Dark Realms

Reactivity to threats and constant activation costs require a significant number of resources, so this deck has a high amount of mana sources, among rituals and creatures we have Blood Pet, Blood Vassal and Dark Ritual.

Mana rocks include Leaden Myr, Ornithopter of Paradise, Everflowing Chalice, Springleaf Drum, Star Compass, Charcoal Diamond, Corrupted Grafstone and Prismatic Lens.

Complementing the mana base are lands that can be sacrificed to speed up or correct the curve, Crystal Vein, Peat Bog, Ebon Stronghold. In addition to some utility lands, Cabal Pit, Barren Moor and Mortuary Mire.

Conclusion

Gisa, Glorious Resurrector is a strong Commander and ideal for budget decks and casual games. Versatile, it allows for numerous themed or free constructions, and what they have in common is guaranteed fun.

Thanks for reading and good games!

Any questions, I'm available in the comments!