Arcane Foundry › Commanders › Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness

Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness

Legendary Creature — Elder Dinosaur // Legendary Creature — Phyrexian Elder Dinosaur · {5}{R}{R} · Green/Red commander

Trample When Etali enters, each player exiles cards from the top of their library until they exile a nonland card. You may cast any number of spells from among the nonland cards exiled this way without paying their mana costs. {9}{G/P}: Transform Etali. Activate only as a sorcery. Trample, indestructible Whenever Etali deals combat damage to a player, they get that many poison counters. (A player with ten or more poison counters loses the game.)

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What Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness 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 · etbWhen Etali enters, each player exiles cards from the top of their library until they exile a nonland card. You may cast any number of spells from among the nonland cards exiled this way without paying
• Activated ability{9}{G/P}: Transform Etali. Activate only as a sorcery.
• Triggered ability · deals_damageWhenever Etali deals combat damage to a player, they get that many poison counters.
• Keyword · trampletrample
• Keyword · indestructibleindestructible

What an Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness deck needs

Plays as ETB free spells (blink) — poison voltron back face. What the commander asks of the other 99 — read from the card and checked by hand.

• blink and recursion to re-buy Etali's ETB
• a library of expensive spells (they are free when exiled)
• evasion for the transformed Etali (poison on connect)

The Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness deck plan

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

• 32× Mana value at or above the floor — for a cascade commander a cheap card is a DEFECT, not a bargain
• 6× Make the commander connect — a body that never deals combat damage never triggers
• 6× Exile a permanent you control and return it — the button a value-ETB deck presses
• 4× Evasion that does NOT target or attach — for a commander your own auras and equipment cannot legally touch
• 8× A permanent whose value is in its enter-the-battlefield trigger — the payload a blink deck reuses
• 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

Best cards for Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness

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