The Commander
Gyrus enters with a number of +1/+1 counters on it equal to the amount of mana spent to cast it.
Whenever Gyrus attacks, you may exile target creature card with lesser power from your graveyard. If you do, create a token that's a copy of that card and that's tapped and attacking. Exile the token at end of combat.
Guide
Gameplan
Cast Gyrus for as much mana as possible to make him a big attacker, then attack to reanimate creatures from your graveyard as temporary tapped, attacking copies that trigger powerful ETBs and death triggers each combat. You fill the yard early via dorks, self-mill, and sacrifice, then grind incremental value or pivot into a combat/aristocrats kill. Bigger Gyrus = bigger creatures you can copy, so ramp and pump enable a snowball.
Strengths
- Repeatable free reanimation every combat with no recast cost on the copies
- Abuses ETB and death triggers since the tokens are exiled at end of combat
- Scales with mana ramp — a huge Gyrus unlocks copying nearly anything
- Jund colors give elite ramp, removal, recursion, and sacrifice payoffs
Weaknesses
- Copies must have lesser power than Gyrus, so a small Gyrus is weak and removal resets him
- Heavily commander-dependent and a frequent removal magnet
- Tokens are exiled, not kept, so it builds no permanent board on its own
- Needs both a stocked graveyard and a way to attack safely each turn
- Graveyard hate (Rest in Peace, Bojuka Bog) shuts down the engine
Key Cards
- Grave Titan — Copying it on attack makes 4+ zombies that stick around even after the token is exiled.
- Meteor Golem — An ETB you can repeat every combat to blow up a permanent for free.
- Cauldron of Souls — Persist effects pair with the death/ETB value, and it protects your board from wraths.
- Pitiless Plunderer — Aristocrats payoff that turns sacrificed and dying creatures into Treasure to recast Gyrus huge.
- Doubling Season — Doubles the counters Gyrus enters with, making him gigantic immediately.
- Buried Alive — Instantly stocks the graveyard with the exact value creatures you want to copy.
Upgrade Path
Lean into making Gyrus reliably huge with rocks and rituals (Sol Ring, Jet Medallion, dorks) and counter-doublers like Doubling Season and Hardened Scales so he can copy your largest creatures. Add fast graveyard-filling (Buried Alive, Entomb, self-mill) and aristocrats payoffs (Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, Pitiless Plunderer) to convert the recurring triggers into a kill. Protect the engine with haste enablers, recursion, and graveyard insurance so removal on Gyrus doesn't end your game.
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
- ▸Repeatable ETB value (Meteor Golem, Woodfall Primus) grinds opponents out of resources
- ▸Aristocrats drain with Blood Artist effects as copies and tokens die
- ▸Going wide/tall with copied token armies plus Gyrus connecting for big combat damage
- ▸Reanimating game-ending bombs each turn until you outvalue and overwhelm the table
Archetypes
- Reanimator — Gyrus is a built-in repeatable reanimation engine off the graveyard every combat.
- Aristocrats — ETB/death triggers from copied creatures and dying tokens fuel sacrifice payoffs.
- Blink/Value — Copying high-impact ETB creatures each attack mimics flicker value on a stick.
- Big Mana Ramp — More mana spent means a bigger Gyrus and access to copying your biggest threats.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (BGR), by popularity.
