Arcane Foundry › Commanders › Ardyn, the Usurper

Ardyn, the Usurper

Legendary Creature — Elder Human Noble · {5}{B}{B}{B} · Black commander

Demons you control have menace, lifelink, and haste. Starscourge — At the beginning of combat on your turn, exile up to one target creature card from a graveyard. If you exiled a card this way, create a token that's a copy of that card, except it's a 5/5 black Demon.

Build an Ardyn, the Usurper deck →

What Ardyn, the Usurper actually does

Read off the card by the same engine the Forge and Analyzer use — this is the mechanical classification, not a summary.

• Triggered ability · beginning_of_combatAt the beginning of combat on your turn, exile up to one target creature card from a graveyard. If you exiled a card this way, create a token that's a copy of that card, except it's a 5/5 black Demon.
• Static ability · keyword_grantDemons you control have menace, lifelink, and haste.
• Keyword · lifelinklifelink
• Keyword · starscourgestarscourge

What an Ardyn, the Usurper deck needs

Plays as copy engine. What the commander asks of the other 99 — read from the card and checked by hand.

• creature cards in any graveyard with strong abilities (each combat one becomes a 5/5 Demon copy)
• self-mill
• demons (they have menace, lifelink and haste)

The Ardyn, the Usurper deck plan

The roles the Forge fills for this commander, and how many cards of each.

• 12× A permanent whose value is in its enter-the-battlefield trigger — the payload a blink deck reuses
• 26× A body of the exact type the commander's trigger requires — the wrong type is worthless here regardless of quality
• 6× Put your own cards into your graveyard as a resource
• 4× A team pump that actually pumps tokens
• 5× Actually remove one problem permanent — preventing its damage is not removing it
• 9× Find the exact card the plan needs
• 1× Answer a whole board at once
• 7× Refill your hand
• 2× Keep a permanent you control alive through removal

Best cards for Ardyn, the Usurper

Ranked by an engine that reads what each card does — its real cost, its delay and how reliably it works — rather than counting how often other people play it.

Build this deck in the Arcane Forge →

Arcane Foundry is free to join and every tool is included: the Arcane Forge deck builder, the ARCANE Analyzer that scores a deck by simulating games rather than counting staples, a card scanner, a collection vault, and live webcam Commander tables. Read the guide · Browse all commanders · Pricing