The Commander
Flying, lifelink
At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice Piru unless you pay 
.
When Piru dies, it deals 7 damage to each nonlegendary creature.
Guide
Gameplan
Piru is a 7/7 flyer with lifelink that demands an upkeep tax but turns dying into a one-sided board wipe dealing 7 to every nonlegendary creature. You play attrition, drain the table with lifelink while protecting your own legendary creatures, and use sacrifice or recursion to repeatedly reset boards. Win by grinding opponents out with the wrath-on-a-stick and commander damage in the air.
Strengths
- Recurring 7-damage board wipe that spares your legends and planeswalkers
- Evasive lifelink body stabilizes you and races aggressive decks
- Mardu color identity gives deep access to recursion, removal, and reanimation
- Punishes go-wide token and creature decks brutally
Weaknesses
- Eight mana and an ongoing upkeep tax strain your mana base
- Dies easily to its own neglect, and the damage hits your nonlegendary creatures too
- Color identity lacks blue countermagic and card draw efficiency
- If opponents play legendary-heavy or noncreature strategies, the death trigger whiffs
Key Cards
- Goldhug, Founder's Faithful — Stand-in for legendary creatures that survive Piru's wipe and let you rebuild while opponents lose everything.
- Phyrexian Altar — Lets you sacrifice Piru on demand to trigger the wipe and refunds mana to recast it.
- Ashnod's Altar — Free sacrifice outlet that converts Piru into mana while detonating the 7-damage trigger.
- Reveillark — Recurs Piru and other key pieces, though here recursion engines like Reanimate reliably return Piru cheaply.
- Reanimate — Cheats Piru back from the yard for one mana so you can reset the board far ahead of its eight-mana cost.
- Sun Titan — Recurs altars and low-cost pieces to keep the sacrifice loop running between wipes.
Upgrade Path
Add fast mana like Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, and Mardu signets to hit eight mana and pay the upkeep tax reliably. Lean into reanimation (Reanimate, Animate Dead, Victimize) and free sacrifice outlets (Goblin Bombardment, Viscera Seer) to control when the wipe fires. Round out with legendary-heavy creatures and recursion (Sun Titan, Sevinne's Reclamation) so your board survives every Piru detonation while opponents don't.
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
- ▸Repeated one-sided board wipes starve opponents of creatures while you rebuild with legends
- ▸Commander damage with the evasive 7/7 flyer
- ▸Lifelink swings combined with drain effects to gain insurmountable life and grind out
- ▸Reanimator loops looping Piru's death trigger to clear and pressure the table
Archetypes
- Control — Repeatable board wipes plus lifelink let you stabilize and grind opponents into the dirt.
- Reanimator — Reanimation sidesteps the eight-mana cost and abuses Piru's death trigger over and over.
- Aristocrats — Free sacrifice outlets weaponize Piru's death trigger on demand for value and board control.
- Voltron — Flying lifelink 7/7 closes games fast as commander damage while you protect it with auras.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (BRW), by popularity.
