Silverquill, the Disputant Commander Deck Guide

Silverquill, the Disputant | Illustrartion by Antonio José Manzanedo

While Secrets of Strixhaven introduced many interesting commanders, none have captured my imagination quite like the elder dragons that give your instants and sorceries old mechanics to supercharge your spellslinger deck.

Silverquill, the Disputant offers casualty, which lets you copy instants and sorceries by sacrificing creatures. It’s the perfect commander for a grindy, token-based deck, which is what I have for you today!

The Deck

Shadrix Silverquill | Illustration by Raymond Swanland

This is a Bracket 3 Orzhov () token deck, though it’s chill enough to hang with Bracket 2 decks. The goal is pretty simple: Jam token-making instants and sorceries while the commander is in play. The first spell makes tokens to sacrifice to double subsequent spells.

The deck puts that wide board to use with top-end that includes cards that make a board of tokens lethal plus a few big instants and sorceries that really benefit from casualty.

The Commander: Silverquill, the Disputant

Basically everything in the deck exists to enable Silverquill, the Disputant. You have token makers to feed into casualty, spells to double, and sacrifice outlets, all to make the commander shine.

Silverquill takes “decent” cards and pushes them to “above average” by doubling up on powerful effects that were already strong. Secure the Wastes making five tokens for 6 mana was always powerful; how about 10?

Token Makers

The token makers are the core of the deck. They produce tokens to feed to Silverquill and enable most wins. Most of these cards are instants and sorceries or trigger off instants and sorceries.

Raise the Alarm, Shadow Summoning, and Lingering Souls made the cut on efficiency. The low costs make them perfect to play before Silverquill or in the same turn as a more impactful spell.

Monastery Mentor and Sedgemoor Witch pump out tokens as you cast instants and sorceries, plus, if worst comes to worse, they’re sacrifice fodder themselves. The Witch works particularly well with Silverquill since magecraft makes a token from the copies as well as the original spell you cast.

Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia and Ophiomancer interact with instants or sorceries, but they consistently make a piece of fodder each turn, so I’m happy to see them in any sacrifice deck.

Finale of Glory, Grand Crescendo, and Secure the Wastes bridge the early and late game. These can be one of your last spells cast to win the game or an early play that snowballs into something more meaningful.

Dark Salvation isn’t as flexible as the other X-spells since is more demanding, but the combination of removal and token production is too good to pass up.

Storm Herd and Army of the Damned wrap this section up as token-based finishers; these each make enough tokens hopefully to seal a game, especially when doubled.

Finishers

The deck has a variety of finishers, including cards that use your wide board of tokens to end things and a couple of big instants and sorceries to copy.

The first batch of finishers are the death trigger drainers that peck away at opposing life totals as you sacrifice cards to Silverquill, plus they leave your opponent in a tight spot later in the game since blocking hurts them. Blood Artist is the classic, Zulaport Cutthroat is the standard. Marionette Apprentice works well because it comes with sacrifice fodder and Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim sneaks lifegain into the deck for longevity.

Gruesome Fate might be ambitious, but think about it: Late in the game, you double a Storm Herd or Secure the Wastes for a huge sum of tokens, then double this to drain your opponents for 2 life for each creature you control!

Moonshaker Cavalry gives the deck great inevitability.

Moving towards big instants and sorceries, From the Catacombs consistently delivers threats, and copying spells that give you the initiative runs through a dungeon quickly. As a token deck, you’ll have plenty of blockers to protect the Undercity.

Worst Fears borders on cute rather than good, but isn’t that what Commander’s about?

I enjoy Afterlife from the Loam as a high-impact but theoretically low-cost card. Even if you start from nothing, you can sequence this with another token producer to double it.

Exsanguinate is a classic black staple for a reason. With enough mana, one copy wins the game, so two should make victory a breeze.

The last finisher, Breach the Multiverse, gives you an instant board state. It’s one of the best cards to rebuild after a wrath and generically powerful.

Tutors & Card Draw

Every Commander deck needs card draw, and some of them want tutors. This deck doesn’t go wild on tutors, but there are two that work particularly well with this deck.

Emeritus of Woe looks at Silverquill’s need for you to sacrifice tokens and smiles with glee; you’ll have no trouble to prepare this after the first Demonic Tutor, assuming it lives that long. Also, since the prepared copy of the spell is cast, you can copy it with casualty to sacrifice one of the two creatures you need to re-prepare it!

Dark Petition is another fantastic tutor with Silverquill. When copied, you make more mana than it costs to cast the original copy, so it’s a double tutor and a ritual.

Much of the card draw hinges on sacrificing creatures. Corrupted Conviction is basically Ancestral Recall, Deadly Dispute goes mana-neutral when you copy it. Undead Augur works since you make a lot of zombies, and Morbid Opportunist can draw multiple cards a turn cycle if you sequence your instants properly.

The card draw that doesn’t rely on sacrifice is some of the best in these colors. Trouble in Pairs and Skullclamp are two of the best draw engines in the format, Night's Whisper and Sign in Blood have great rates, and Decorum Dissertation has potential to be a great staple.

Interaction & Protection

The interaction and protection spells give you the ability to grind out a long game. This deck isn’t super fast, so it needs to keep its opponents in check and protect the board state.

Swords to Plowshares is just so efficient, especially when it becomes a two-for-one. Erode is similarly cheap, though it can’t handle commanders effectively.

Will of the Mardu and Will of the Abzan do much more than just remove threats; they provide flexibility and resilience.

Thraben Charm and Get Lost are great removal spells for Commander because they handle multiple types of threats.

Lethal Scheme plays well with all the tokens and adds card filtration. Note that a copy made with casualty won’t connive because no creatures were convoked to cast it.

Soul Shatter always makes my black decks because it handles three threats for one card. I love to copy it to eliminate six things.

Sothera, the Supervoid provides additional sacrifice synergy, plus it kind of stores a threat to help rebuild after a board wipe.

Protection spells are necessary in a format with so many board wipes. Grand Crescendo and Dawn's Truce are extremely cheap, while Clever Concealment and Akroma's Will are best-in-class.

The Mana Base

The mana base has a bunch of ramp to get to the big spells, some value lands, and a bunch of fixing to ensure everything goes smoothly.

Starting with the ramp, the usual suspects made it in—Arcane Signet, Talisman of Hierarchy, etc. The more interesting cards are a handful of ramp spells that only made it because of Silverquill.

Gold Myr and Leaden Myr are almost unplayable, but a mana dork that sets you up early then becomes sacrifice fodder late does everything this deck could want.

Dark Ritual makes 6 mana when you double it, and Culling the Weak makes a whopping 8. Even if you don’t casualty Culling the Weak, it’s a fantastic ritual when your deck has the sacrifice fodder to support it.

Moving to value lands, the deck makes ample use of modal-double faced cards, especially since they increase the number of instants and sorceries you can double. Emeria's Call is another token producer, Agadeem's Awakening rebuilds, and Fell the Profane offers more interaction.

Takenuma, Abandoned Mire and Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire sneak effective spells into the land base while Midgar, City of Mako literally does with its card-draw adventure.

Fountainport provides various effects, including emergency sacrifice fodder and more card draw. Phyrexian Tower profits from your consistent access to tokens.

The Strategy

This deck spends the early game setting up for a strong midgame. You want a hand with ramp and token producers, and a spell to copy once you play Silverquill is a bonus but not necessary. The deck wants to play a fairly long game so you can get your expensive spells online to double up with Silverquill.

Look for turns when you can sequence multiple spells at once. With some of the cheaper token producers and ramp, it’s easy to set up a turn where you play Shadow Summoning into something like From the Catacombs, especially with the rituals.

Be mindful of what your opponents are playing; lots of white and black means you should be ready for board wipes and dig for protection. Don’t be afraid to leverage your high life total, either; while the deck produces plenty of chump blockers, those weenies are necessary to fuel later turns. Try to think a turn or two ahead before chump blocking.

Combos and Interactions

The most important interaction concerns Silverquill and how its casualty ability works. In short, while you can sacrifice Silverquill to pay for the casualty cost, you should not do this. Because Silverquill says your instants and sorceries have casualty 1, the spell having casualty is dependent on Silverquill being in play. If you sacrifice Silverquill to pay for casualty, you won’t get the copy because Silverquill is no longer in play to give the spell casualty. It’s a strange rules quirk that highlights the difference between “has” and “gains” in a textbox.

Rule 0 Violations Check

This deck should pass every Rule 0 check. There are no Game Changers, no infinites, and nothing busted in the scope of Commander. The only card I could see annoying people is Worst Fears, but it’s hardly necessary and you could swap it out for pretty much any big instant or sorcery.

Budget Options

The first and best place to make budget cuts will always be the mana base. You don’t need value lands or expensive fixers. Budget lands are plenty to make the deck work. If you swap out the MDFCs, make sure to replace them with lands instead of spells—the deck was built with them as lands first, and the spells a bonus.

Charismatic Conqueror and Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia are fairly pricey as token makers go. You can replace them with cheap token makers like Release the Dogs and Invasion Reinforcements.

Culling the Weak, Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff, and Dark Ritual can all go in favor of more budget-friendly ramp like Marble Diamond and Séance Board.

Trouble in Pairs is extremely expensive, but black has plenty of cheaper card draw to replace it, like Read the Bones.

White has plenty of budget protection spells to replace Akroma's Will, Clever Concealment, and Dawn's Truce, like Make a Stand, Unbreakable Formation, and Ainok Strike Leader.

Other Builds

Silverquill, the Disputant is pretty locked into spellslinger-sacrifice, but it doesn’t need to be so token-centric. It’s easy to see a storm brew that sets up explosive turns on the back of copying tutors and rituals like Dark Petition and Cabal Ritual to build towards an explosive finish.

It could also lead a reanimator deck that focuses on making cheap spells like Reanimate and Shallow Grave even stronger with casualty. You could probably whip up something extremely funny that reanimates creatures with strong enters abilities like Gray Merchant of Asphodel only to sacrifice them to copy more reanimation spells.

Commanding Conclusion

Shadrix Silverquill | Illustration by Kekai Kotaki

Silverquill, the Disputant might be my favorite commander from Secrets of Strixhaven. It just offers so many exciting possibilities and cute synergies without slacking on the power. You could do almost anything and have a good time.

Are you excited to play with Silverquill, or did another elder dragon catch your eye? How would you build the deck? Let me know in the comments below! For more Secrets of Strixhaven coverage, check out Draftsim’s YouTube channel, The Daily Upkeep!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!