The Commander
Trample
Whenever a creature dealt damage by Axelrod Gunnarson this turn dies, you gain 1 life and Axelrod Gunnarson deals 1 damage to target player or planeswalker.
Guide
Gameplan
Axelrod is a beefy 6/6 trampler who snowballs through combat: each creature he kills feeds you life and pings an opponent. The real plan is making him a Voltron threat with evasion and deathtouch so every block becomes a chain of triggers, while a sacrifice/aristocrats shell turns his combat kills into reach damage. You ramp into him early, suit him up, and grind opponents out through repeated attacks.
Strengths
- Built-in lifegain offsets the aggro plan and stabilizes against other beaters
- Trample plus deathtouch turns him into a wall-breaking, multi-trigger machine
- Black-red gives access to elite removal, reanimation, and sacrifice synergies
- Free reach damage to players/planeswalkers makes blocking him painful
Weaknesses
- Eight mana for an effect that does nothing the turn he lands without haste
- Triggers only fire in combat or when creatures you damaged actually die
- Highly vulnerable to spot removal and being chump-blocked by a single token
- No card advantage engine baked in; can run out of gas in grindy pods
Key Cards
- Basilisk Collar — Deathtouch plus lifelink means any combat damage kills, maximizing his death-trigger chain.
- Gorgon Flail — Cheap deathtouch source so trample damage assigns lethal to everything and triggers him.
- Fireshrieker — Double strike doubles combat damage and effectively doubles deathtouch kill triggers.
- Swiftfoot Boots — Haste lets him attack immediately and hexproof protects your expensive investment.
- Pitiless Plunderer — Aristocrats payoff that turns the creatures Axelrod kills into treasure and value.
- Sneak Attack — Cheats Axelrod into play to swing the turn he arrives, sidestepping his huge cost.
Upgrade Path
Lean into cheat-into-play (Sneak Attack, reanimation like Reanimate and Goryo's Vengeance) so you skip the eight-mana tax, and prioritize deathtouch+evasion equipment so every combat triggers a damage cascade. Add an aristocrats backbone (Pitiless Plunderer, Mayhem Devil, Bastion of Remembrance) to convert kills into burn, and tighten the mana with fast rocks and tutors like Sword of Feast and Famine and Sneak Attack to deploy threats consistently.
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
- ▸Suit Axelrod with deathtouch and trample and crash through blockers for incremental player damage
- ▸Repeated death triggers ping each opponent down while lifegain keeps you safe
- ▸Reanimate and swing with a wide aggressive board for general combat damage
- ▸Treasure/sac engines plus burn convert his kills into a closing reach kill
Archetypes
- Voltron — Deathtouch and trample equipment turn him into a one-creature army that pings players on every kill.
- Aristocrats — His combat kills, plus sacrifice payoffs, convert dead creatures into life and damage.
- Reanimator — Black-red can dump and recur Axelrod cheaply to bypass his eight-mana cost.
- Big Mana Stompy — Ramp and cheat effects support a wider Giants/fatties beatdown plan around him.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (BR), by popularity.
