Derevi, Empyrial Tactician Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on January 30, 2024

Derevi, Empyrial Tactician | Illustration by Michael Komarck

Let’s take a walk into the past together. The year is 2013, Vine is popping, there’s a new FroYo shop on every corner, and your co-worker just showed you the latest Harlem Shake video. More importantly, I’m starting my career as a Magic player, furiously hitting the “random card” feature on Gatherer and trying to figure out how regeneration works.

A friendly face at my LGS introduces me to the concept of “Commander” and points me in the direction of that year’s precons. On the shelves I see what would become my first Commander deck, the glorious and basically uncounterable Derevi, Empyrial Tactician.

The Deck

Niambi, Esteemed Speaker | Illustration by Eric Deschamps

The Commander

Derevi, Empyrial Tactician has a pedigree as a “scary” card. It’s notorious for its role in lock-out decks containing cards like Winter Orb and Stasis. If you came here for the hyper-focused stax version of this deck, I’m sorry to disappoint. This deck has combo potential, but it’s more about long-game value than locking opponents out of the game.

I’ve put Derevi through the ringer on countless different deck themes over the last 10 years, and I’ve come to realize that it’s a versatile commander that fits many strategies. I currently run Derevi as a blink/flicker deck, and I’ll be using my personal list of 99 cards that I’ve settled on.

Let’s break down the bird wizard’s abilities. First we have the Twiddle effect whenever Derevi enters the battlefield or whenever a creature hits an opponent. This is the ability that blacklists Derevi as a threat when combined with the aforementioned lock-pieces. You can use this ability proactively to untap your own permanents, giving your creatures pseudo-vigilance, or untapping lands that you tapped before combat.

The tap effect also works defensively thanks to Derevi’s activated ability. Each of the Commander 2013 precons included a face commander that profited from being tied to the command zone, usually by turning commander tax into a benefit. Derevi’s advantage was the ability to pay to put it directly onto the battlefield.

This is an activated ability with no timing restrictions, which means it can be used during an opponent’s turn to tap down one of their permanents. More importantly, since this doesn’t count as casting your commander, using this ability doesn’t add to your commander tax, which means Derevi essentially always costs four mana to put into play.

All-in-all you have a well-rounded commander that can play offense and defense and serves as a strong lead for any creature-based deck. It helps push damage, staves off opposing attacks, provides extra mana when it untaps lands, and outgrinds other commanders once they’ve become too expensive to cast.

It might not be the first commander to come to mind when you think of a blink deck, but I find it much more versatile than cards like Brago, King Eternal or Roon of the Hidden Realms, and Derevi’s good at adapting to different gameplans depending on the trajectory of the game.

The Value Pile

You’re playing a Bant () deck, which usually means a stack of value ETB creatures. This ranges from creatures that ramp on ETB to card advantage engines and token generators.

Starting with your ramp creatures, you have Solemn Simulacrum, Coiling Oracle, and Wood Elves, all two-for-ones that can put you ahead on mana. These are usually the go-to blink targets early in the game.

Your pure card-draw creatures consist of Mulldrifter, Cloudblazer, Jadelight Ranger, and Sea Gate Oracle, which all stack your hand with extra cards. Watcher for Tomorrow is a bit trickier to use but falls into this category, as does Welcoming Vampire, despite not having an ETB itself.

Our other main source of card advantage comes in the form of graveyard recursion handled by Sun Titan, Eternal Witness, Reveillark, and Karmic Guide. These help bring back your other flicker pieces to start some of your card advantage chains.

Thragtusk deserves mention here for its ability to bolster your life total and flood the board with 3/3 Beast tokens.

Aside from creatures, you have Panharmonicon, a flicker-themed staple that doubles up your ETBs, and Verity Circle, which is a nod to Derevi being your commander.

The Disruption

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have your disruptive ETBs to throw your opponents off balance while you’re loading up on extra cards.

Reflector Mage, Lagrella, the Magpie, and Venser, Shaper Savant can get critical creatures off the board, if only temporarily. The same goes for Agent of Treachery, which has a habit of instantly making you the problem player at the table.

I love to sneak in at least one monarch card in my decks when I can, and that card here is Palace Jailer. It can remove a creature from play for a while and provide a steady stream of extra cards, but you should only play it when you’re certain you can protect yourself from attacks. Turns out, Derevi’s good at doing that.

My version of this deck is not as counterspell-heavy as it could be, instead relying on Mystic Snake and Venser to do most of our stack interaction.

Glen Elendra Archmage is present to deal with non-creature spells, and its -1/-1 counters can be “reset” with a blink effect.

Bant Charm is here as well, but only counters instants.

Acidic Slime and Knight of Autumn are dedicated to keeping artifacts and enchantments in check, with Slime taking down problematic lands on occasion.

I also run a few non-creature spells to deal with artifacts and enchantments, since a stray Torpor Orb can shut this deck down completely. Aura Shards, Crush Contraband, and Krosan Grip should have you covered.

Endurance is here for graveyard interaction, and we have a few board wipes with Cyclonic Rift and Time Wipe. The commander can always threaten to swoop into play and tap down an attacker or chump block and head right back to the command zone.

The Enablers

Now that you’ve seen what you’ll be flickering, let’s take a look at how you’re doing it.

To start, you have a few mass flicker effects for larger boards. Eerie Interlude and Disorder in the Court can selectively exile creatures and return them on the next end step, making them a great defensive measure against board wipes.

Glorious Protector can also scoop up your other creatures, but has to leave the battlefield before they return. This basically lets the Protector take the brunt of a sweeper while also retriggering your other ETBs. Yorion, Sky Nomad is the most proactive of the bunch, blinking just about anything, but only during your turn.

Restoration Angel, Phantom Steed, and Niambi, Esteemed Speaker all double as flash bodies that can protect another creature and give you another crack at its ETB.

Ghostly Flicker, Ephemerate, and Touch the Spirit Realm give you additional instant-speed flicker effects. The enchantment dodges most counterspells thanks to channel and serves as removal when needed. Ephemerate is probably the most powerful card in the deck in terms of pure efficiency.

Flickerwisp and Charming Prince give you one-shot flicker effects tied to their ETBs. Remember that Flickerwisp can interact with your opponents’ permanents, making it that much more flexible. Flyers like this also lend themselves well to triggering Derevi’s combat damage ability.

Oji, the Exquisite Blade and Displacer Kitten have repeatable blink effects linked to casting spells. Both of these benefit from having cheap spells in your hand, so I’d wait until you can hold up a card like Brainstorm before trying to stick them. Displacer Kitten is an especially heinous card that can protect itself from single-target removal by just casting a noncreature spell.

Thassa, Deep-Dwelling and Soulherder are the two main once-per-turn blink effects. These are some of the best engine pieces in the deck, and I’d protect them at all costs.

Finally, you have Sword of Hearth and Home and Cloudstone Curio as artifacts that enable extra ETBs. The Sword provides extra mana and additional ETBs while Curio can create powerful late-game loops once you have enough mana.

The Mana Base

You have a fairly standard Bant mana base to work with, including a trio of fetch lands and shock lands, as well as the full set of Commander Legends and MID/VOW dual lands.

There are twelve basics in total, leaving you plenty of room in the late game to keep finding lands with Solemn Simulacrum, Farhaven Elf, or Sword of Hearth and Home.

I usually cut back on bounce lands like Azorius Chancery and Simic Growth Chamber, but they’re useful to have with Derevi. Your commander can untap lands when a creature connects in combat, and bounce lands are the ideal target.

The Strategy

Like most blink decks, your main plan is to get far ahead enough on resources that you can just outvalue the rest of the table. Nearly every creature in your deck is a natural two-for-one, and most of your spells allow you to recycle those creatures, so card advantage is usually not an issue.

You want to focus on developing your mana early. Prioritize hitting your land drops and resolving creatures like Coiling Oracle and Farhaven Elf to ramp ahead. Once you’re at a point where you’re steadily hitting land drops, you can start deploying your value ETBs and racing ahead.

You can shift between a proactive and defensive gameplan on the dime thanks to your commander. Derevi’s great when you’re ahead because it can untap lands to help cast more spells, but it’s also great at soaking up an attack each combat. You have plenty of flash threats at your disposal, so when your opponent plays around a Derevi activation, you might actually be planning to ambush them with Restoration Angel or remove their threat with Venser, Shaper Savant.

This deck lacks a hard “I win the game” finisher like Craterhoof Behemoth or Legion Loyalty. None of your creatures are that large, and there aren’t many ways to pump them since flicker effects don’t play well with +1/+1 counters. You really do win through sheer card advantage.

If you can manage to whittle the game down to just yourself and one other player, you can shift gears and start attacking their mana. In a 1v1 situation, I like to start aiming triggers from Acidic Slime, Venser, Shaper Savant, and Agent of Treachery at my opponents’ lands. I’m not usually one to attack mana bases, but it’s a viable late-game win con.

Combos and Interactions

There are some convoluted infinite combos you can achieve in this deck. They usually involve Panharmonicon or Cloudstone Curio and enough other cards that most people won’t be too upset if you pull it off.

Your cards all interact with one another very well, so I’ll go through some rapid-fire interactions to be on the lookout for.

With Panharmonicon on board, Venser, Shaper Savant can bounce a spell or permanent with one trigger and bounce itself with the second, creating a soft-lock in some situations.

When choosing a creature to reanimate with Karmic Guide or Sun Titan, grab your blink creatures first. Reanimating something like Flickerwisp lets you blink Karmic Guide and repeat the trigger, essentially getting the Flickerwisp for free.

Charming Prince can blink a creature you own, whether you control it or not. If someone stole one of your creatures, Prince can blink it back into play under your control.

You can blink Mulldrifter and Reveillark with their evoke triggers on the stack. They’ll re-enter play and stick around permanently.

Sometimes when you blink Derevi it’s correct to just put it back in the command zone, where you’ll be able to use it more defensively.

If multiple creatures trigger Derevi’s ability multiple times, you can target the same land with each trigger and tap it for mana in between each resolution. This is especially useful with a land like Simic Growth Chamber, provided you have something useful to do with that mana before you move to the next phase.

Sensei's Divining Top can stack your deck for effects like Coiling Oracle or Jadelight Ranger.

Rule 0 Violations Check

While the decklist I presented here isn’t tier one by any stretch, it’s worth noting that some players have a certain expectation when you show Derevi, Empyrial Tactician as your commander. I would explicitly state to a new set of players that this is not a stax version of the deck, and doesn’t contain lock pieces like Winter Orb or Stasis, which many people associate with Derevi.

As part of a pre-game Rule 0 conversation, it might be worth mentioning that this deck can technically produce infinite combos, but that it’s not a major focus of the deck and usually requires 3+ cards to work. The same goes for land destruction, which this deck is capable of.

Budget Options

If you’re looking to cut down on the price of the deck, I would start with the mana base. As always, casual Commander decks don’t need fetch lands or shock lands; they’re just great additions if you already own them. The Pathways are much cheaper and do a great job at fixing in Commander. Cutting Windswept Heath for Branchloft Pathway doesn’t change your win percentage that much.

Sensei's Divining Top can be trimmed from the list, since it’s more of a “good stuff” include than a pivotal part of your strategy. The same goes for any individual creature that might not fit your budget. Creatures like Endurance and Noble Hierarch can just be swapped for your favorite cheap ETB creatures. Cards like Wood Elves and Oreskos Explorer do well for budget versions of this deck.

Of course, you can always upgrade the deck as well. Solitude is the first card I’d aim for, which was excluded from my deck simply because I don’t own one. You can add all the usual Mana Crypts and Ancient Tombs you want, but at that point you’re pushing the deck into a different weight class altogether.

Other Builds

The build that most people associate with Derevi, Empyrial Tactician is a stax version that looks to keep your opponents’ permanents tapped down while circumventing this problem with Derevi’s tap/untap ability.

Cards like Stasis, Winter Orb, Back to Basics, and Hokori, Dust Drinker make up the core of this strategy by bringing the game to a complete crawl. From there, Derevi and a few evasive creatures can peck in for damage while breaking the symmetry of the stax pieces.

You can also shift towards an infinite-turns build, which is equally unexciting, but more competitive if that’s what you’re looking for. The idea is to include Time Warp and friends, use cards like Eternal Witness and Archaeomancer to get the extra turn spells back, and blink those creatures with Soulherder or Conjurer's Closet to keep the cycle going.

It’s also pretty easy to take the existing list here, add Altar of Dementia or some other free sac outlets, and have access to the Karmic Guide and Reveillark loops you find in other combo decks.

I do want to acknowledge the existence of Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines. It’s a natural fit for the deck since it’s essentially an extra copy of Panharmonicon with additional upside. While this complements the gameplan well, it’s backbreaking if an opponent gains control of it or reanimates it, since the Torpor Orb effect almost completely shuts this deck down.

Be careful if you intend to include Norn, and remove your bounce lands like Azorious Chancery if you do.

Felidar Guardian is another blink creature that creates infinite loops with little to no effort. I excluded it here, but it’s available if you want it. The same goes for some other casual blink tech like Teleportation Circle and Lae'zel's Acrobatics.

Wrap Up

Crush Contraband | Illustration by Jason A. Engle

A flicker strategy might seem like a weird direction for Derevi, Empyrial Tactician, but the commander is versatile and lends itself well to many different strategies. I find that its ability to play offense and defense fits the blink strategy of switching back and forth between card advantage and disruption.

I imagine many others have their own personal takes on how to build around this commander, so let me know how you’re using Derevi. Did you join the dark side and build a stax deck, or are you doing something entirely unique? Let me know in the comments below, or over in the Draftsim Discord.

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