Ezio Auditore da Firenze Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on August 8, 2024

Ezio Auditore da Firenze | Illustrated by Fajareka Setiawan

While Universes Beyond has been a continuous product line, I’ve found that UB Magic sets bring many interesting card designs and players to the game. Increasing the player count and introducing people with new interests to Magic seems pretty good.

Sometimes, they can also add great mechanical ideas to the game and bolster existing strategies. The Assassin’s Creed crossover does just that with the influx of assassins adding a surge of support to what’s always been a niche typal archetype.

Let’s see what all these new toys do for assassins in Commander!

The Deck

Ezio, Blade of Vengeance | Illustration by Jake Murray

Let’s keep things simple with a 5-color assassin typal deck! Like most typal decks, it’s perfect for casual EDH play. I’d also recommend it to newer players, as the strategy is straightforward.

While the assassin archetype has largely been regulated to Dimir () with an emphasis on black cards, the Assassin’s Creed set has cracked the archetype wide open with assassins in a variety of other colors.

Having access to all five colors also lets the deck use the best typal synergies as it chooses, like Realmwalker and Olivia, Opulent Outlaw. You also get loads of powerful changelings like Mirror Entity and Masked Vandal to stretch the deck’s power further.

The deck also has a minor historic theme that’s primarily fueled and enabled by new Assassin’s Creed cards; many of them care about historic permanents and a significant portion are legendary, making them historic permanents themselves.

The Commander: Ezio Auditore da Firenze

While a typal deck can be five colors with the likes of Morophon, the Boundless, Ezio Auditore da Firenze gives assassins a personal 5-color commander suited to their needs that also utilizes the new freerunning mechanic from the Assassin's Creed crossover. Ezio is among the best commanders from Assassin's Creed, and and thus a natural fit for this typal deck.

Assassin decks are known for their alternate win conditions; the current most popular assassin commander, Ramses, Assassin Lord, utilizes a powerful one. Ezio continues the tradition with a 5-color activated ability that finishes off players early. It’ll be good later in the game when everybody’s clinging to a few life points.

The freerunning ability essentially acts as ramp or cost reduction, letting you cast assassins like Thraximundar and Vein Ripper for a fraction of their mana cost. It can also serve as mana fixing since you only need black mana to cast spells if you can enable freerunning.

I imagine Ezio will give Ramses a run for its money as the best assassin commander, so I leaned into that for the deck.

Typal Payoffs

The number one reason to stuff your deck full of creatures that share a creature type is that you love that creature type. The second reason is to utilize all the typal support cards Magic has created over the years. This section includes cards that support assassins specifically and those that any typal deck runs.

Desmond Miles grows into a significant threat during the game. Counting assassins in the graveyard makes this quite flexible since you don’t have to worry about board wipes turning it into a 1/3 (unless it’s that damned Farewell…).

Scarblade Elite has long been one of the best assassin support cards and that’s unlikely to change any time soon. Free removal is astounding, and the threat of activation will have the table buddying up to you.

Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad turns assassins in the graveyard into threats. I appreciate how this ability offers some semblance of wrath insulation. It doesn’t save your creatures, but their deaths aren’t wasted.

Jacob Frye similarly “protects” your assassins, this time allowing you to cast copies from the graveyard. It also draws you a card on ETB thanks to the “partner with” mechanic.

Etrata, Deadly Fugitive might be my favorite assassin. Both Etrata cards have stellar designs as far as I’m concerned. This one gives you card advantage through board presence and another payoff for dealing combat damage to a player besides Ezio.

Mari, the Killing Quill ensures your assassins are fairly compensated for their work. It’s a dangerous business, so it makes sense you’d get cards and Treasure. It’s also an important source of hit counters for Etrata, the Silencer’s alternative win condition.

Realmwalker provides a steady stream of card draw as a typal Future Sight. It’s one of the strongest typal cards, so I’m excited Ezio lets you play it.

Achilles Davenport and Ramses, Assassin Lord both buff the team with a basic anthem effect, plus Ramses offers a way to eliminate the entire pod at once. Arno Dorian provides an aggressive buff.

Olivia, Opulent Outlaw shares its glory with Treasure whenever your assassins—which are outlaws—deal damage. It also provides another team-wide buff.

Ezio, Blade of Vengeance adds a burst of card draw. Virtually all of the 38 creatures are assassins, so this can take over a game if your opponents aren’t careful.

Kindred Dominance provides the deck with a powerful finisher. One benefit to supporting a creature type as niche as assassins is that this spell is likely just Plague Wind, a trick that’s harder to pull off with more common creature types like human or elf.

Hidden Blade is a removal spell that leaves behind equipment. Deathtouch and first strike is a lethal enough combination of keyword abilities your opponents won’t want to block whatever’s hiding this up its sleeve.

The Revelations of Ezio might be a 3-mana spell, but you want to draw it later in the game. The combination of removal, often buffing your team with +1/+1 counters, and a reanimation spell in one package can turn a game completely in your favor.

Kindred Discovery is, in my opinion, the best typal support card in the game. It represents a disgusting amount of card advantage, especially considering your opponents only have the time between your main phase and the declare attackers step to prevent you from drawing.

Value Assassins

Having all those typal cards is well and good, but any decent typal deck needs creatures of its creature type that are just good, solid playables. This includes a couple of shapeshifters, which go a long way in fleshing out niche typal strategies.

Changeling Outcast and Mothdust Changeling are primarily freerunning enablers, but a handful of your other cards benefit from assassins dealing combat damage. Evasive creatures also become problematic for your opponents once you start stacking buffs on your team. Evie Frye enables similar shenanigans.

Kiku, Night's Flower kills creatures for a nominal fee. It won’t make much headway against Arcades, the Strategist, but it’s rarely a completely dead card. Dark Impostor fills a similar role, though you need to pay much more for the unconditional removal.

Masked Vandal is an assassin and it kills things on ETB. Exiling artifacts and enchantments can be useful against cards like The One Ring and Anikthea, Hand of Erebos.

Unsettled Mariner effectively gives your creatures Ward . It’s not the best protection but better than nothing and just annoying enough that your opponents may point their removal elsewhere—if they won’t pay the for Rhystic Study, why would they kill your stuff?

Big Game Hunter and Nekrataal work very well with Jacob Frye and Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad to kill multiple things. Look, removal attached to an assassin-shaped stick is great in this deck. Callidus Assassin pulls double duty by destroying and copying the biggest threat in play.

When playing with a bunch of creatures, ways to pump them are important. While assassins have several typal lords, Mirror Entity gives you one more that doubles as a mana sink.

Every player has a couple of cards they saw when they started playing that blew their minds and seemed like the strongest thing they had ever seen, even though reality was rarely as kind. Royal Assassin was one of those cards for me. I’m happy to play it in this deck, even if it isn’t the utterly broken card I once thought.

Vraska, the Silencer has a really cool ability. Stealing opposing creatures and making them into Treasure can give you all kinds of powerful ETB and static abilities, not to mention ramp and fixing.

I love Etrata, the Silencer. You won’t often pull off a win with the ability, but those wins you do achieve feel special because of it. Look to Mari, the Killing Quill and Ravenloft Adventurer to build up hit counters, or simply enjoy Etrata as a card that removes a threat while enabling freerunning.

The monarch and the initiative are two of my favorite mechanics in Commander, even if they’ve damaged
Eternal formats. They just add so much spice and interesting decisions to the game. For this reason, Queen Marchesa, Thorn of the Black Rose, and Ravenloft Adventurer made the cut as enablers.

Vein Ripper punishes opposing wraths by threatening to eliminate the player who wiped the board. I always appreciate these Blood Artist effects in the late game since your opponents are put in a rough spot between dying to your creatures attacking and dying when they wipe your board.

Thraximundar kind of just makes me laugh. It’s a big, silly card with a relevant creature type, so I’m happy to cast it for , even if it means missing out on the first attack trigger.

Historic Payoffs

The historic subtheme came together quite naturally. I knew I wanted to showcase the cards from Assassin’s Creed; many of the assassins were legendary creatures since they represented characters from the video games, and they cared about historic permanents. Since over half your creatures are legends, including much of the established assassin support, it seemed like a natural fit.

EDH decks can never have too much incidental card draw, so I slammed Basim Ibn Ishaq. It’s a great source of card advantage and enables freerunning while becoming a large threat. I love all that text.

Arbaaz Mir provides the deck with a little reach. This is another card that looks impressive in the late game, stepping on your opponents' fingers as they desperately cling to a windowsill with what little life they have left.

Aya of Alexandria gives the deck a lot of board presence to benefit from all the lords you have running around.

Bayek of Siwa kind of counts as an honorary lord since some of your creatures get to deal extra damage. Disguising this and flipping it can be a great way to remove a player from the game without them realizing it.

Interaction

While many of your assassins provide interaction on a stick, the deck has a little more just to ensure nobody pulls any funny business.

Assassin's Trophy had to go into my assassin-typal deck. I’m just glad it’s also an effective removal spell. If you reanimate the card you kill with Vraska, the Silencer, you get all the flavor points.

I like Winds of Abandon as a finisher. Blowing away your opponents’ boards often lets you finish things with a combat phase or two (maybe in the same turn with Overpowering Attack giving you an extra combat!).

Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares are two of the best removal spells ever printed. That’s all.

You also need to worry about your opponents’ interaction, namely board wipes. Teferi's Protection and Clever Concealment protect you from all manner of board wipes, even Farewell and Toxic Deluge. Flawless Maneuver’s protection isn’t as ubiquitous, but it’s free, which has its value.

The Mana Base

The mana base has no room for frills given it needs to fix for five colors. For ramp, you have the all-time classic mana rocks Sol Ring and Arcane Signet. Chromatic Lantern provides perfect fixing. The mana base skews heavily black, so I added all four Talismans that touch it, plus Fellwar Stone.

Also considering the bias towards black, black Triomes and fetch lands hold things down. I found room for a couple value lands, namely the channel lands from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty: Boseiju, Who Endures, Takenuma, Abandoned Mire, Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire, and Otawara, Soaring City (we don’t talk about Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance).

Cavern of Souls makes an appearance. Freerunning is an alternative cost, not an activated ability or anything, so you can cast creature spells for their freerunning cost with Cavern’s colored, uncounterable mana.

The Strategy

Play assassins, remove players and profit. The deck might not be flashy, but it’s honest. That straightforward nature makes typal decks perfect for new players, and I’ve honestly been coming around to them recently myself. Sometimes it’s nice to play with your favorite creatures and swing.

One element to look out for is all the alternative win conditions in the deck. Ezio Auditore da Firenze is a prominent example, but Ramses, Assassin Lord and Etrata, the Silencer both rip through your opponents. Setting these up can steal games from the shadows.

Be mindful of how much power you add to the board. Commander players love their board wipes, so you need to walk the tightrope between adding enough creatures that you’re applying pressure without committing so much to the board that you lose everything once somebody drops Wrath of God. Sometimes players simply talk about their plans to wrath, especially if the table has a prominent threat, but another warning sign would be making strange attacks or blocks that don’t make sense unless that player knows they won’t have access to those creatures in a turn or two.

Combos and Interactions

This deck only has one meaningful combo to look out for: the combination of Ramses, Assassin Lord and Etrata, the Silencer.

It’s pretty simple: Deal combat damage to a player with two or more cards with hit counters in exile with Etrata to trigger its alternative win condition, which triggers Ramses’s alternative win condition.

While this works with Ramses and Ezio’s alternative win condition, this combination wins much sooner. You can take out an entire pod of players at 40+ health with this trick. You can exile creatures with hit counters with Ravenloft Adventurer and Mari, the Killing Quill. It takes some setup, but who doesn’t love a sweet win like this?

Rule 0 Violations Check

This deck comfortably fits the requirements of almost any Rule 0 conversation. Some players might not like the alternative win conditions, but that shouldn’t be much of an issue; they’re well-telegraphed and expensive, unlike pretty much any nonsense with Thassa's Oracle.

Budget Options

If you want to make budget cuts, begin with the mana base. Those channel lands? Basic lands. Triomes and shock lands? If you plan on keeping fetch lands around, I suggest running some of the tap lands with land types from Dominaria United or Kaldheim. Or you could cut fetches as well and lean on gates, gain lands, and the like. The deck’s power decreases since it slows down, but it’ll still be playable.

All three of the wrath protection spells are expensive. You have lots of budget options like Make a Stand, Unbreakable Formation, and Eerie Interlude that can protect your team, though they’ll all cost more mana to cast or be less effective.

Vein Ripper has earned a prominent spot among Pioneer’s best decks, so you could check out the classic Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat as alternatives.

Delighted Halfling does a lot of work in a deck with so many legendary permanents, but you can cut it for pretty much any mana dork or mana accelerant that fixes for multiple colors; perhaps a Farseek to fetch a Triome? This works for Birds of Paradise, too.

Ezio, Blade of Vengeance has a high pre-order price, but you can get similar effects with Bident of Thassa or Toski, Bearer of Secrets; they just won’t be assassins.

Black Market Connections does amazing work in this deck, like any deck, but you could play Maskwood Nexus if you care about tokens or Phyrexian Arena to keep up the card draw.

Other Builds

You might look at Ezio Auditore da Firenze and think it has to be an assassin commander given its narrow scope. But I think it can go in another direction. Cards like Conspiracy, Arcane Denial, and Maskwood Nexus make all your creatures into assassins, letting you cast all kinds of spells for that you shouldn’t be—like Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, Archon of Cruelty, and Terastodon.

That might seem inconsistent, but you’re in all five colors! You have access to every tutor in Magic and your commander encourages you to build a black-centric deck, so you can play the likes of Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor, and Imperial Seal. Plus you can use Satoru Umezawa as a backup since anything that enables freerunning enables ninjutsu.

This would be some world-class jank but a fascinating application of the commander. In all honesty, I tried to put it together but couldn’t find a list I had enough confidence in to share. It’s pretty much the only way I can imagine building Ezio without relying on assassin typal.

Commanding Conclusion

Achilles Davenport | Illustration by Josu Solano

Universes Beyond Magic sets aren’t everybody’s cup of tea, and I doubt the community will ever wholly agree on whether they belong. But I appreciate what they’ve added to the game thus far: new players and interesting commanders like Ezio.

What do you think of Universes Beyond sets? Are you looking forward to 5-color assassin typal decks, or do you wish the archetype had remained smaller? Let me know in the comments below or in the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe and keep to the shadows!