The Commander
Your opponents can't gain life.
, Sacrifice another creature: Target player loses 1 life. If the sacrificed creature was legendary, amass Orcs 2.
Guide
Gameplan
Gríma is a mono-black aristocrats engine: turn extra creatures into a steady drain while keeping opponents off any lifegain. Flood the board with cheap, expendable bodies and tokens, then loop sacrifices to ping life totals down and pump your Orc Army with legendary fodder. You grind the table out incrementally before closing with a big drain or a wide Army swing.
Strengths
- Shuts down all opponent lifegain, neutralizing lifegain combos, fogs-via-life, and Aristocrats mirrors
- Cheap 3-mana commander that immediately provides repeatable value
- Mono-black gives access to the best tutors, ramp, and recursion in the format
- Turns dying creatures and tokens into guaranteed incremental damage and an evasive Army
Weaknesses
- Tap ability only sacrifices one creature per turn, so raw drain is slow without doublers
- Heavily reliant on the commander; repeated removal/tax can stall the engine
- Mono-black struggles with enchantment and artifact removal
- Vulnerable to graveyard hate that disrupts recursion-based fodder loops
Key Cards
- Pitiless Plunderer — Turns every sacrificed creature into Treasure, fueling more tutors, recursion, and combo loops.
- Bastion of Remembrance — Adds a second drain trigger to every death, doubling Gríma's clock across the table.
- Gravecrawler — Endlessly recastable fodder for the tap ability, providing near-infinite sacrifice value with Plunderer.
- Ashnod's Altar — Frees you from Gríma's once-per-turn limit by sacrificing creatures for mana on its own.
- Skullclamp — Converts your cheap and 1-toughness fodder into a relentless card-draw engine.
- Pawn of Ulamog — Spawns Eldrazi Spawn whenever creatures die, generating endless sacrifice fodder.
Upgrade Path
Add fast mana and tutors (Dark Ritual, Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Diabolic Intent) to assemble engines faster, and stack death-trigger payoffs like Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, and Cruel Celebrant alongside Bastion of Remembrance to convert your incremental drains into lethal bursts. Include free sacrifice outlets (Viscera Seer, Carrion Feeder, Ashnod's Altar) so you're not capped by Gríma's once-per-turn tap, then finish with Exsanguinate or Torment of Hailfire backed by Cabal Coffers and Nykthos for the mana.
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
- ▸Incremental life loss from repeated sacrifices, amplified by Blood Artist-style effects
- ▸Infinite combo loop (e.g. Gravecrawler + Pitiless Plunderer + Bastion of Remembrance) draining the table
- ▸Swinging with a massive evasive Orc Army built from sacrificed legendaries
- ▸Mass drain finishers like Exsanguinate or Torment of Hailfire
Archetypes
- Aristocrats — Gríma is a built-in sacrifice outlet and drain payoff, the core of any death-trigger deck.
- Tokens — Wide boards of expendable bodies feed the sacrifice engine and enable an Army finisher.
- Combo — With Pitiless Plunderer plus a free sac outlet and a recursive creature, you assemble infinite sacrifice/drain loops.
- Stax — The lifegain lock plus sacrifice taxes and edicts grind opponents' resources down.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (B), by popularity.
