Image courtesy of Scryfall.com
Top Dimir Pairings for Death's Approach and Graveyard-Driven Commanders
Death's Approach is a deceptively sneaky little gem from Jumpstart’s draft-innovation era. For a single black mana, you slide an aura onto a creature and watch its power and toughness melt away based on the number of creature cards in its controller’s graveyard. That means in Commander, the value isn’t just about shrinking a single blocker; it’s about weaponizing someone’s own graveyard—your foe’s or your own—to tilt the battlefield in a blue-black, brainy way 🧙♂️🔥. In a deck built around graveyards, reanimation, and tactical discard, Death’s Approach becomes a pressure point that can swing a game from stalemate to scuttling our opponents’ boards. The challenge—and the fun—comes from pairing this effect with commanders who enable or exploit heavy graveyard activity, especially in Dimir color identity. Here are the top pairings that consistently sing when Death’s Approach hits the battlefield 💎⚔️.
The Scarab God – a graveyard-first control engine
The Scarab God is the poster child for blue-black graveyard strategy. As a commander, it invites you to lean into the dead’s market: recure, return, and reap value from cards that have passed beyond the veil. Death’s Approach fits into this plan by punishing a.k.a. “growing” graveyards wherever you want to apply pressure—on an opponent’s most dangerous creature or a key threat dragging a board state behind it. The negative stat boost scales with the number of creature cards in the target’s graveyard, so you can keep a creature pertinent to their strategy pinned down while your opponents scramble to protect their engine. In the meantime, The Scarab God’s ability to drain life and reanimate from their graveyards gives you a broad toolkit for late-game inevitability. It’s a synergy that feels thematic for Dimir: patient planning, a cool head, and a bit of necromantic mischief 🧙♂️🎨.
- Why this pairing shines: Graveyard-centric play, strong inevitability, and a consistent route to value through recursion and removal.
- Key inclusions: extra discard outlets, efficient removal, and ways to protect your life total while monsters in opponents’ graves fuel your engine.
- Gameplay vibe: A calculated, methodical grind with a crescendo finish; your opponents feel the chill of the Dimir net creeping closer 🔥.
Gisa and Geralf – reanimator tempo with a deadpan sense of humor
If you want to tilt the board by stuffing the graveyard with your own creatures to fuel Death’s Approach, Gisa and Geralf offer a delightful degree of synergy. This Innistrad duo excels when the graveyard becomes an active resource—your opponents’ fatties shrink as their cards clog the yard, while you stack a zombie workforce that your commander can leverage for value. Death’s Approach, enchanted on a big blocker or a critical creature, punishes anyone who leans on brute force with a heavier negative modifier while your zombie army clocks in. The two-headed pair embodies the flavor of Dimir trickery—two minds plotting the same plan, one brain for the spell and one for the graveyard 🧙♂️⚔️.
- Why this pairing shines: Direct graveyard exploitation, a clear path to reanimation, and a dynamic graveyard-to-board tempo swing.
- Key inclusions: zombies generation, cheap counterplay, and ways to maximize value from each creature card that lands in the graveyard.
- Gameplay vibe: A grim theater where your opponents watch their removal whittle down your engine while your horde grows—laughing softly as the necropolis network hums 🎲🎨.
Lazav, the Multifarious – copy, morph, and exploit creature cards in the graveyard
Lazav is the quintessential Dimir wild card in many EDH circles. In a Death’s Approach shell, this pairing rewards you for having a thriving graveyard—the very thing Death’s Approach twists into a policy lever. The aura’s -X/-X effect becomes a judgement call: do you aim Death’s Approach at an opposing creature to blunt their early game or at a threatening reanimation engine that’s about to swing the game your way? Lazav’s proclivity to leverage creature cards in your graveyard provides a natural bridge to a deck that uses the graveyard for advantage, and it makes Death’s Approach dramatically threatening when your opponents’ graveyards are bursting with beasts and brutes. It’s the kind of strategic misdirection that Dimir players adore 🧙♂️💎.
- Why this pairing shines: Graveyard-rich strategy meets a flexible commander with copy/clone potential; every game feels tailor-made.
- Key inclusions: disruption, steal effects, and a suite of ways to exploit copied threats or reanimated creatures.
- Gameplay vibe: Calculated, cerebral play with a dash of chicanery as Lazav becomes whatever the graveyard feeds him 🔥🎲.
Olivia’s Dimir cousins: Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow and friends
While Yuriko isn’t a quintessential graveyard commander, her popularity in Dimir-focused lists is undeniable. Death’s Approach works in a more utility role here—tagging a high-priority threat with a significantly reduced body can buy you the critical turns needed to set up a longer-term plan. The synergy with the graveyard shows up as a control layer; you’ll be thinning opponents’ boards and using the black mana’s cunning to keep disruption tight. The result is a nimble, spell-slinging Dimir shell that respects the power of a well-timed -X/-X on a big creature while you carve out a path to victory with surgical precision 🧙♂️⚔️.
- Why this pairing shines: Fast disruption and tempo with a touch of surprise; a recognizable commander that players trust in multiplayer settings.
- Key inclusions: bounce, removal, and cost-efficient card draw to keep you ahead as Death’s Approach stacks its negative pressure on a reliable target.
- Gameplay vibe: A confident, control-forward build that never forgets to have a trick up its sleeve 🎨🎲.
"It’s cold in the grave, and the dead crave your warmth. Who are you to deny them?" — Strava, Dimir mage
Death’s Approach is a deceptively simple card that shines brightest in the hands of players who appreciate the politics of the graveyard, the tempo of the battlefield, and the cunning of Dimir play. When you pair this aura with commanders who echo graveyard themes—The Scarab God, Gisa and Geralf, Lazav, the Multifarious—you’re not just playing a card. You’re weaving a narrative about who controls the dead and how deeply you can lean into that power without tipping your hand too early. And yes, you’ll probably end up smiling when that enchanted creature finally buckles under the weight of someone else’s buried army 🧙♂️💎.
For readers who want to explore similar strategic avenues, consider how this concept crosses into other black-blue pairings and the many ways EDH players build around graveyard value. If you’re curious about more ways to combine graveyard strategies with Dimir’s tempo and control, there are plenty of community guides and decklists worth checking out—the kind of deep-dive that makes EDH feel like a living anthology rather than a static ruleset. And if you’re looking for a collectible tie-in or crossover fun, swing by the featured product for a stylish shield against the day-to-day grind of the multiverse. 🧙♂️🔥💎
Want a little something extra to carry your love of the game on the go? Check out this sleek cross-promo product: