Magic: The Gathering - Myojin Of Night's Reach Commander Deck Guide

One of the most mysterious yet most influential creatures in the history of Magic: The Gathering, the Myojin of Night's Reach is shrouded in mystery. She was one of the few creatures that managed to travel between planes before planeswalkers were ever introduced, manipulating events on both Kamigawa and Dominaria.

Myojin of Night's Reach was designed before Commander was an officially supported format, and the ability that makes her difficult to cheat into play also makes her a uniquely challenging commander to design around. But with a little forethought (and this guide) you'll be reaching for this deck all night.

Sample Decklist

Black is a great color to build a mono-colored deck in, since black contains a little bit of everything for the right price. There are plenty of ways to increase your card draw, and several to ramp up your mana base in order to play your expensive Commander reliably.

Myojin Of Night's Reach works best when played from your hand, so the decklist below includes a handful of ways to move it directly from your command zone to your hand for maximum effect.

Commander
Myojin Of Night's Reach
Creatures (18)
Blightbelly Rat	Burglar Rat	Burnished Hart	Crypt Ghast
Dauthi Voidwalker	Elderfang Disciple	Fell Specter	Gray Merchant of Asphodel
Hypnotic Specter	Magus of the Coffers	Miasmic Mummy	Necrogoyf
Rotting Rats	Sangromancer	Syr Konrad, the Grim	Tergrid, God of Fright // Tergrid's Lantern
Tinybones, Trinket Thief	Yawgmoth, Thran Physician	Sorceries (11)	Bubbling Muck	Damnation	Dark Deal
Diabolic Tutor	Drown in Ichor	Raise Dead	Sign in Blood
Syphon Mind	Torment of Hailfire	Vat Emergence	Instants (7)	Defile	Go for the Throat	Infernal Grasp
Malakir Rebirth // Malakir Mire	Whisper of the Dross	Artifacts (17)	Campfire	Charcoal Diamond	Contagion Clasp
Contagion Engine	Expedition Map	Extraplanar Lens	Geth's Grimoire
Jet Medallion	Lightning Greaves	Netherborn Altar	Sol Ring
Swiftfoot Boots	That Which Was Taken	The Rack	Thran Dynamo
Wheel of Torture	Enchantments (9)	Leyline of the Void	Liliana's Caress	Megrim
Phyrexian Arena	Quest for the Nihil Stone	Raiders' Wake	Shrieking Affliction
Waste Not	Planeswalkers (2)	Liliana of the Dark Realms	Lands (35)	Cabal Coffers	Cabal Stronghold	Command Beacon
Geier Reach Sanitarium	Karn's Bastion	Myriad Landscape	Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
Snow-Covered Swamp x24	Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth	Urza's Cave	Witch's Cottage

The Commander

Myojin of Night's Reach is a 5/2 legendary Spirit creature originally printed in Champions of Kamigawa. She costs Eight mana to cast, five generic and three black.

To offset the high casting cost, Myojin of Night's Reach comes into play with a divinity counter, but only if you cast her from your hand. This stipulation was included to prevent players from cheating Myojin of Night's Reach into play from the graveyard, which black excels at, but also makes her tricky to play as a commander.

As long as Myojin of Night's Reach has a divinity counter, she is indestructible. Also, you can remove a divinity counter at any time to force all of your opponents to discard their hands.

The requirement to play your commander from your hand is restrictive, but not insurmountable: there are a couple of ways to move your commander from the command zone to your hand, which becomes a central focus of the deck.

How To Play The Deck

There are far better attackers than Myojin of Night's Reach in mono-black, but she's amazing at forcing your opponents to discard their whole hands if you can get her into play from your hand.

Lacking Unsummon effects, this deck includes a couple of ways to move her into your hand from the command zone, one way to add a divinity counter if she's already in play, and lots of proliferate effects to make the discard effect repeatable.

An empty hand doesn't lose your opponents the game, especially if they have strong creatures already in play. Including several effects that punish opponents for either discarding or having an empty hand can turn it into a win condition for you.

If you build exclusively to take advantage of Myojin of Night's Reach's ability, you'll run into the monolith commander problem, where your opponents will be able to completely shut down your deck by countering or destroying your commander. A healthy mix of other discard options allows you to play effectively without your commander.

Ramp

Black has the best land-based ramp outside of green, particularly in the form of Cabal Coffers and Cabal Stronghold. Both of these lands produce mana based on how many Swamps you control, so they start slow but can escalate quickly. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth enhances this effect by turning all lands into Swamps, allowing your Cabal lands to count themselves and the rest of your nonbasic lands.

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth adds the Swamp land type to lands, and both Cabal lands check for land type, not card name. Nonbasic Swamps like Witch's Cottage work well with both.

Using the Cabal lands means you can lean into a "Swamps matter" mana theme. Liliana of the Dark Realms supports this theme in two ways, both searching for a Swamp to add to your hand each turn and providing you with an emblem to quadruple your Swamp mana production if your opponents don't keep her in check.

Crypt Ghast also ups your mana production, allowing you to tap each Swamp for two black mana instead of one. This is cumulative with Liliana's emblem, so if you manage to get both, you'll be able to tap each Swamp for five mana. Crypt Ghast also gives you an outlet to spend excess mana by extorting your spells to drain life from your opponents.

Finally, Bubbling Muck can provide a short-term mana boost. For only one mana, it increases the output of all of your Swamps by one black mana. Once you have at least three Swamps in play, this pays itself off, but like the Cabal lands, it gets better with each additional Swamp you control.

The last big tech for mono-black ramp is Extraplanar Lens, which increases the mana production of every land with the same name as the one you exiled when it came into play. Casting it and exiling a basic Swamp works just fine, but if your opponents also have basic Swamps, they'll get some free mana acceleration. Swapping all of your normal Swamps for Snow-Covered Swamps will block most players from stealing your thunder.

Draw

Black has a ton of draw options, but the best ones are the ones that synergize with your own deck.

Tinybones, Trinket Thief could easily be swapped with your commander, and the only drawback is that all the cards to move your commander into your hand would be useless. But for two mana, you get an ability that draws you a card at the end of each turn that one of your opponents discarded a card. If you can arrange for them to discard during their turns, you can draw a card every turn.

Tinybones also synergizes with Myojin of Night's Reach, allowing you to blast each opponent for ten life if they have no cards left in their hands. Since casting Tinybones and using its ability costs the same as casting your commander, you could easily drop this for a surprise shot the turn after playing your Myojin.

Waste Not provides you with different bonuses depending on which cards your opponents discard. A discarded creature card gets you a 2/2 Zombie token, while a discarded land card gives you two black mana. Any other card gives you a free draw. In practice, you'll draw a card almost every time that you force an opponent to discard.

Syphon Mind is one of those cards that was designed for two-player games, but works better in Commander. For four mana (one black, three generic), all three of your opponents discard a card and you draw three. Sure, it's a single-use effect, but it replaces itself while removing your opponents' options and triggering all the discard effects you have in play.

Playing The Commander

Myojin of Night's Reach is one of those tricky commanders that must be played from your hand in order to get its effect, which is tricky when it's in the command zone. Fortunately, there are a few ways to get it where it needs to be.

Since it's a mono-colored deck, you don't need Command Tower, so instead, use Command Beacon. It produces colorless mana most of the time, but when you're ready to grab the Myojin you can sacrifice it to move her to your hand. Expedition Map and Urza's Cave are also on the list in order to find this land more reliably, because it doesn't do you any good in the library.

Campfire does the same thing as Command Beacon, but also searches for your commander in the graveyard. Better yet, anytime you have spare mana, you can use it to gain one life. It isn't much, but it could be the difference between a win and a loss.

Netherborn Altar may be tough to find due to limited printings, but it's a reusable way to put your commander into your hand. This will prove particularly valuable if an opponent decides that you're a threat and keeps countering your commander.

Plan B is to play Myojin of Night's Reach from your command zone, then add a divinity counter once she's in play. The only way to do this is with That Which Was Taken, which can add a divinity counter to any other permanent and make them indestructible. This has the added bonus of protecting your other important permanents, but can be hard to find in your deck without several tutors.

Your final backup plan is once again to cast Myojin of Night's Reach from the command zone, and then let it die. Attaching Demonic Vigor first or using Raise Dead after it dies will return it to your hand, allowing you to play out your strategy.

Once you have your commander in play with a divinity counter, use one of the proliferate effects to make an extra one, ensuring she stays indestructible and allowing you to repeat the forced discard effect.

Discard

You don't want your commander to be your only way to force opponents to discard cards. Fortunately, black has access to a lot of options.

Several creatures have effects similar to Burglar Rat, which forces your opponents to discard cards when they enter the battlefield. For two mana you get three cards in the graveyards and a 1/1 body, which isn't a bad deal. Just watch out for Miastic Mummy and Rotting Rats, which force you to discard a card, as well.

Hypnotic Specter is a classic creature that can force your opponents to discard each time it deals combat damage to one of them, which is pretty simple since it has flying. Since it costs exactly three mana, you could invoke the early days of Magic by dropping it on turn one with a Dark Ritual!

Dark Deal is the closest thing you get to a Wheel of Fortune in mono-black. It affects you as well as your opponents, but since you'll see it coming, you can play all of your important spells before casting it. It's best used when you have effects in play that punish your opponents for discarding and one or more of them has a huge hand.

The Rack

Your opponents having empty hands doesn't spell victory the same way that empty libraries do, and unless you have a win condition, you'll just be stuck in a boring game where nobody else gets to play. That's where The Rack comes in.

The Rack is a classic card that punishes your opponent for having fewer than three cards in hand. Unfortunately, it was printed back when Magic didn't account for multiple opponents, so it only affects one of them. Wheel of Torture makes up the difference, punishing all of your opponents for having small hands.

For redundancy, the sample decklist includes several cards with similar effects, most notably Quest for the Nihil Stone, which makes each opponent lose five life when they have no cards in hand, and Shrieking Affliction, which makes them lose three life when they have one or fewer cards.

Relying on effects like The Rack gives your opponents opportunities to work around them by saving draw opportunities until right before their turn. To more actively punish them, there are several payoffs specifically for forcing your opponents to discard.

Megrim is the classic discard win condition. It deals two damage to your opponents when they discard a card, and similar effects, like Liliana's Caress and Fell Specter stack with it. Just a couple of these effects in play when you activate your commander's ability, and you can zap every opponent for fifteen or twenty life.

There are a few other payoffs for forcing discards. If you've got plenty of options to force your opponents to toss cards, Tergrid, God of Fright can force them to be picky, since any permanent they discard will come into play under your control.

If you need more ways to force them to discard cards, Tergrid's Lantern on the reverse side forces them to choose between losing three life, sacrificing a permanent, or discarding a card. Plus, it provides a handy mana sink in case you're flush on Swamps.

Dauthi Voidwalker also gives you tons of options while limiting your opponents' ability to retrieve discarded cards from the graveyard. Anything they discard a card (or send something to their graveyard any other way), that card will instead be exiled. Then you can sacrifice your Voidwalker to play any of those exiled spells for free, making it the most versatile card in the deck.

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