Aristocrats

“Aristocrats” is a Magic deck archetype that seeks to sacrifice its own creatures, especially many low-cost and/or token creatures, to accumulate game-winning benefits. Aristocrats decks use a combination of sacrifice outlets and cards that trigger when their creatures enter and/or leave the battlefield. The archetype derives its name from cards such as Cartel Aristocrat and , Falkenrath Aristocrat, which reward a player for sacrificing their own creatures.

Aristocrats decks are commonly found in color combinations that include black.

## **Popular Cards & Commanders**

**Popular Aristocrats cards include:**

* Blood Artist
* Zulaport Cutthroat
* Grim Haruspex
* Cruel Celebrant
* Viscera Seer

**Popular Aristocrats commanders include:**

* Teysa Karlov
* Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
* Meren of Clan Nel Toth
* Shirei, Shizo’s Caretaker

## **Strategy**

Artistocrats decks commonly include the following components:

### **Sacrifice Outlets**

Aristocrats players want their creatures to die, but not by natural causes, choosing instead to sacrifice their own creatures at will. They therefore make use of many sacrifice outlets, such as:
* Viscera Seer
* Woe Strider
* Phyrexian Altar
* Ashnod’s Altar
* Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

### **Death Triggers**

Aristocrats players use cards that trigger when their creatures die or leave the battlefield to defeat their opponents. These cards may help them accumulate additional resources after their creatures perish, or help deal damage to opponents. Death trigger payoffs in Aristocrats decks are often found in the following four categories:
**Life Loss:**
This is the most common form of Aristocrats death trigger, either dealing damage or draining life from opponents for each creature that perishes. Common cards in this category include:
* Blood Artist
* Zulaport Cutthroat
* Cruel Celebrant
* Syr Konrad the Grim
* Mayhem Devil
* Judith, the Scourge Diva

**Card Draw:**
Aristocrats may sacrifice their creatures to draw additional cards, helping to keep up their supply of sacrifice fodder. Cards often used for this purpose may include:
* Grim Haruspex
* Midnight Reaper
* Moldervine Reclamation
* Smothering Abomination

**Mana:**
Some cards help provide additional mana resources when creatures die:
* Pitiless Plunderer
* Pawn of Ulamog
* Black Market

**Removal:**
Sacrificing creatures can also be a useful form of removal for Aristocrats decks to use again unwanted permanents on an opponent’s battlefield. Cards that are popular examples of this include:
* Grave Pact
* Dictate of Erebos
* Archon of Justice

### **Tokens**

Aristocrats decks often employ the use of cards that create many tokens, to help keep them supplied with a high number of creatures to sacrifice. This most commonly takes the form of other creature cards that generate tokens as part of their abilities, such as:
* Avenger of Zendikar
* Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder

This may also include cards that create tokens after they die, such as:
* Ministrant of Obligation
* Requiem Angel
* Teysa, Orzhov Scion
* Elenda, the Dusk Rose

These types of cards are especially useful to allow an Aristocrats player to continue sacrificing additional creatures each turn.
### **Recursion**

Arisocrats decks are rarely satisfied with sacrificing creatures a single time, preferring instead to bring those creatures back from the graveyard with recursion, so they may be sacrificed again. This can take the form of spells such as:
* Living Death
* Phyrexian Reclamation

Or creatures with triggered abilities that help return dead creatures to play, such as:
* Luminous Broodmoth
* Mikaeus the Unhallowed
* Tayam, Luminous Enigma

## **Common Deck Categories**

* Sacrifice Outlets
* Sacrifice Fodder
* Token Makers
* ETB Creatures / Dies trigger Creatures
* Sacrifice Payoffs
* Renanimation Effects / Recursion
* Card Draw
* Ramp
* Removal
* Board Wipe Cards

**10 cards** will probably give you **2 cards in a given game** from that category, and a good chance to **start with 1** in your opening hand. Critical categories for your deck may require a similar or larger number than this, depending on expected levels of Counterspells or Removal.
**5 cards** will probably give you **1 card per game** of that category. Cards you don't want to overload on but still want access to (*board wipes in a tokens deck for instance*) may want a similar figure to this... Going smaller than this number makes receiving a card of this category very unlikely without Tutors or some other Toolbox approach.

## **Strengths and Weaknesses**

### **Strengths**

* Aristocrats decks gain benefit from their own creatures dying, which makes it difficult for opponents to remove pieces from an Arisocrats player’s battlefield without accidentally providing that player with additional resources or helpful death triggers.

* Aristocrats strategies become highly interactive when they have sacrifice outlets on the battlefield, as those sacrifice outlets can frequently be activated at any time. This gives Aristocrats players the ability to avoid dangerous forms of exile-based removal, for instance, by sacrificing their creatures in response to unfriendly spells.

* Aristocrats decks that make use of sacrifice-based removal (such as Grave Pact) can persistently control enemy battlefields by forcing enemies to sacrifice their valuable creatures. This can leave opponents, especially Commander-Centric and Voltron strategies, unable to enact their deck’s primary gameplan, or without enough creatures to block an offensive strike.

### **Weaknesses**

* Aristocrats decks are very vulnerable to ‘grave hate’ effects that exile graveyards, especially cards like Rest in Peace. Effects that prevent them from triggering any abilities when creatures leave the battlefield will wholly turn off an Aristocrats player’s strategy and negate the majority of benefits they would receive from sacrificing their creatures.

* If an Aristocrats player is unable to find a death trigger payoff card (or if that card is swiftly removed by their opponents) they may not be able to assemble a meaningful advantage, and may wind up with many small, non-powerful creatures to sacrifice without making a significant impact on their enemies.

* Without an appropriate balance of token-makers, card draw and/or recursion, Aristocrats decks can quickly run out of creatures to sacrifice and therefore cause the deck to stall out.

## *Aristocrats in non-standard colors*

EDH is known for unusual deckbrewing, for instance taking a mechanic and using magic's long history to demonstrate ways of doing it in a highly unusual color combination. Below are details on replicating Aristocrats style decks without Black. (*For deck examples see: Mind Bend - Temur Aristocrats & Do Your Worst - Mono-Blue Aristocrats*)

 **White** Aristocrats: White has a solid density of Aristocrats style cards, in most categories but suffers in card draw and life loss finishers, making it a solid support color. A Mono-White Aristocrats deck may need to rely on another color or Artifacts for finishers if it does not want to shift part of it's game plan into winning through Tokens or Combo.

 **Green Aristocrats**: Green has a solid density of effects that can be repurposed to suit an Aristocrats but can be awkward to use since this wasn't their intended usage. Like White, Green also does not have access to life loss finishers, so it works best as a support color.

 **Red Aristocrats**: Red has a smaller pool of cards with an excellent spread of effects. It has a heavy focus on damage based finishers, suffering mostly from lack of depth in it's effects... This makes it a good color to add, but an awkward base for a deck... as a result Mono-Red Aristocrats would rely heavily on artifacts and/or tutors to fill out the 99.

 **Blue Aristocrats** Blue by far has the least in common with the Aristocrats archetype.

 **Colorless Aristocrats**: Colorless cards have great diversity, letting them cover a lot of effects, but also making it more difficult to standardize the effects desired. Much like Red this makes it a good pool of cards to add but a difficult base to build from.

Some unusual commanders to consider for this purpose: (Ellyn Harbreeze, Busybody + Cloakwood Hermit), Tobias, Doomed Conqueror, Rienne, Angel of Rebirth, Gerrard, Weatherlight Hero, Zirda the Dawnwaker, Hua Tuo, Honored Physician, Kiki Jiki, Mirrorbreaker, Pashalik Mons, Grumgully, the Generous, Drizzt Do'Urden, Inga Rune-Eyes

### **Reanimator**

When you gain benefits from sacrificing creatures it makes sense to consider bringing them back. Cards that exchange one creature for another can pull double duty as both recursion and sacrifice outlet, as well as allowing you to get back engine/value pieces that happen to get destroyed or need to block attacking creatures.
**Example Cards:**Hell's Caretaker, Whisper, Blood Liturgist, Coffin Queen
### **Tokens**

Many Aristocrats decks already generate tokens as part of their sacrifice to keep a chain going and providing value, but additional tokens sources and buffs may provide an extra avenue to victory, while token payoffs may allow you to pivot your game plan if your graveyard is disabled or you fail to find sacrifice payoffs.
**Example Cards:**Doubling Season, Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest,, Idol of Oblivion, Ogre Slumlord
### **Lifegain**

Many Aristocrats payoff cards already cause you to incidentally gain life, while you have more recurrable black creature options once you care about life gain. In addition, Aristocrats decks normally want the game to go long as extra time to accumulate value goes in their favor and lifegain plays well into this.
**Example Cards:**Zulaport Cutthroat, Angelic Accord, Sanguine Bond, Oathsworn Vampire

**Related EDHREC Resources**

* EDHREC Aristocrats theme
* Aristocrats tagged articles on EDHRec
* Deep Analysis - Aristocrats
* Mind Bend - Temur Aristocrats