BlueLegendary Creature — Human WizardLier, Disciple of the Drowned
Mana value5Rank#2,213
The Commander
Spells can't be countered.
Each instant and sorcery card in your graveyard has flashback. The flashback cost is equal to that card's mana cost.
Guide
Gameplan
Lier turns your graveyard into a second hand by giving every instant and sorcery flashback, so you durdle through cantrips and removal early, then recast your whole yard for double the value once Lier hits the battlefield. You win by chaining draw and burn spells into a lethal storm/recursion turn, often locking opponents out of interaction since their counters do nothing against you. Treat the early game as setting up card advantage and protecting Lier, then go off in one big flashback turn.
Strengths
- Spells can't be countered shuts off a huge swath of blue interaction
- Doubles the value of every instant/sorcery via flashback, giving relentless card advantage
- Mono-blue gives access to the best counters, cantrips, and tutors when Lier isn't out
- Excellent at grinding out attrition matchups thanks to recursion engines
Weaknesses
- Lier is fragile and a high-priority kill-on-sight target
- Flashback cards exile after use, so the engine can run dry without recursion
- Mono-blue struggles to interact with resolved permanents and lacks ramp
- Vulnerable to graveyard hate which can blank the entire strategy
- Needs Lier on board to function, making it commander-dependent
Key Cards
- Underworld Breach — Combos with Lier and rituals/cantrips to recast spells repeatedly, often enabling a game-ending storm turn.
- Mystic Sanctuary — Returns key instants like counterspells to the top of your library and chains with Islands for value loops.
- Brain Freeze — With Lier's flashback and storm, it becomes a repeatable mill-everyone-out win condition.
- Snapcaster Mage — Redundant flashback enabler and flexible value creature that synergizes with the graveyard plan.
- Mind's Desire — Storm payoff that, alongside Lier, can cascade into a lethal or game-winning chain of free spells.
- High Tide — Mana doubler that fuels explosive flashback and storm turns in mono-blue.
Upgrade Path
Add fast mana (Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, Mana Vault) and tutors (Mystical Tutor, Merchant Scroll, Personal Tutor) to assemble Lier plus a payoff faster. Build a dedicated storm/Underworld Breach combo line with rituals like Dark Ritual-equivalents (Cabal-style aren't blue, so lean on High Tide, Turnabout, and Frantic Search) plus Aetherflux Reservoir or Brain Freeze as compact kills. Finally, prioritize cheap interaction and Lier protection (Veil of Summer effects, free counters like Force of Negation) and trim clunky high-cost spells to lower your curve and increase consistency.
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
- ▸Brain Freeze or other mill loops to deck out all opponents
- ▸Storm payoffs like Mind's Desire chaining into lethal
- ▸Recurring burn (Banefire, repeated bolts) to finish low life totals
- ▸Grinding card advantage until you take over with Aetherflux Reservoir or big finisher
Archetypes
- Spellslinger — Lier rewards a deck packed with instants and sorceries by letting you cast each one twice.
- Storm — Flashback plus rituals lets you build absurd storm counts for Brain Freeze or Mind's Desire kills.
- Control — Uncounterable spells and recurring counters/removal let you durdle and lock the table out of the game.
- Combo — Underworld Breach and ritual loops turn the graveyard into an engine for repeatable, infinite turns.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (U), by popularity.
