The Commander
: Target opponent discards two cards. Activate only during your turn, before attackers are declared.
Guide
Gameplan
Cao Cao is a mono-black discard general that grinds opponents out of resources, then closes with reusable hand attack and aristocrat or reanimator value. Each turn you tap him to strip two cards from a chosen opponent, supporting him with untap effects, ramp, and recursion so you can repeat the effect and pressure multiple players. You win by reducing the table to topdecks while you out-card them with black tutors and recursion.
Strengths
- Repeatable two-card discard pressures combo and control decks
- Mono-black gives access to the best tutors, ramp, and recursion in the format
- Commander-based engine you always have access to
- Cheap to protect and recast at 5 mana
Weaknesses
- Targeted discard is symmetrically slow and can be card-disadvantageous in multiplayer
- Discard is poor against decks operating off the top of their library or empty-handed aggro
- Only hits one opponent per turn unless you find untap effects
- Mono-black struggles to remove resolved enchantments and to deal with fliers
Key Cards
- Bubbling Muck — Explosive ritual lets you ramp into Cao Cao early and still hold up plays.
- Thousand-Year Elixir — Untaps Cao Cao so you can discard four cards a turn and gives him haste.
- Liliana of the Veil — Symmetrical edict-discard stacks with Cao Cao's grind plan and adds removal.
- Megrim — Turns every forced discard into direct damage, converting your engine into a wincon.
- Bottomless Pit — Adds a recurring discard tax across the whole table to accelerate hand starvation.
- Reliquary Tower — Lets you hoard cards while everyone else discards to your effects.
Upgrade Path
Add untap enablers (Thousand-Year Elixir, Aphetto Alchemist, Magewright's Stone) and rituals to fire the discard multiple times per turn. Pivot toward a payoff package—Megrim, Bottomless Pit, Waste Not, Sangromancer—so discarding actively wins rather than just denies. Round it out with premium black tutors (Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor), strong reanimation (Reanimate, Animate Dead), and fast mana like Dark Ritual and Cabal Coffers to power through clunky early turns.
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
- ▸Discard-payoff damage from Megrim/Liliana's Caress effects
- ▸Aristocrats drain via Blood Artist effects and sacrifice loops
- ▸Reanimated bombs beating down once opponents are hellbent
- ▸A big finisher like Torgaar or commander damage after the table is resource-starved
Archetypes
- Discard/Hand Disruption — Cao Cao is a repeatable engine that fuels a dedicated stax-style hand-attack theme.
- Aristocrats — Mono-black supports sacrifice value and drain to convert grind into life loss.
- Reanimator — Discard outlets enable pitching fatties and cheating them back with black reanimation.
- Mono-Black Control — Removal, tutors, and recursion let Cao Cao headline an attrition control shell.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (B), by popularity.
