Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on February 28, 2023

Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch | Illustration by Simon Dominic

Returning to New Phyrexia, formerly Mirrodin, Phyrexia: All Will Be One brought back several popular creature types from our last visit to the plane. Among them are the cute local artifact folk, the Myr. All Will Be One even gave us a great myr commander that could play all the best Myr cards, Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch.

Urtet is a myr scavenger, still devoted to the now-deceased Memnarch who dutifully goes about his duty collecting useful artifacts and tools he finds in the mostly barren Mirrex. This serves to support the other myr still present on the plane, which is represented in Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch’s abilities that buff and support his fellow myr.

There’s no card you have to leave out of this deck thanks to being five colors, making Urtet the perfect commander for a myr-themed deck. Though myr themselves are typically colorless, they have support across various colors and there are myr that tap for every color in the pie. You just need a 5-color commander to include them all.

I decided to build this as a myr tribal deck, but there are a few other ways that you can build Urtet that may even be more powerful. Let's get into it!

The Deck

Myr Battlesphere | Illustration by Franz Vohwinkel

When it came to choosing creatures for this deck, I tried to include a lot of myr cards. This deck doesn’t include every myr, but I’ve included a lot of them. I made sure to prioritize the ones that tap for mana because they can take full advantage of Urtet’s ability to untap each myr at the start of combat. This is also why I included cards like Cryptolith Rite that allow you to tap your Myr tokens for mana and then untap them for combat or a second main phase with all that mana back.

I also included a good number of token doubling cards to help increase your output of Myr tokens. This adds even more value to each myr you cast and gives you more bodies to buff up with Urtet’s activated ability.

There’s also some good artifact support and payoffs like Thoughtcast and Urza, Lord High Artificer. And you also have a lot of artifacts to play around with since you have plenty of myr on the field. I didn’t go too heavy into the artifact theme, but it’s definitely one you can develop if you want to mess with this build.

The Commander

Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch isn’t just a tongue twister, it’s also a very fun commander. Like any good commander, Urtet has a lot of meaningful text, giving you lots of ways to interact with the cards in your deck.

It’s also cheap, especially by 5-color commander standards. The fact that you can cast Urtet with colorless mana makes it much easier to cast than 5-color commanders like Jodah, the Unifier.

This deck seeks to make the best use of Urtet’s untap ability, and its ability to distribute counters. I prefer to win with this deck through combat damage or commander damage, but Urtet’s counter ability can also help you win using Simic Ascendancy.

Myr Creatures

A very important part of this deck is the myr chosen for it. I made sure to prioritize mana-producing myr like Silver Myr and Copper Myr that help with fixing and can serve as a nice form of ramp thanks to Urtet’s untap ability.

I also tried to choose myr creatures with helpful utilities like Shimmer Myr, that allows you to cast most of the cards in your deck with flash.

Myr Retriever helps you to get back any more powerful myr that are destroyed, and gets you extra triggers off Urtet when you recast your previously destroyed myr cards.

Since Urtet significantly buffs your myr, Plague Myr and Ichorclaw Myr can become very dangerous creatures. They can also both be buffed further by Myr Galvanizer, which serves to untap Urtet for multiple activations.

Token Doublers

The more Myr you have on the field, the better. Token doublers like Anointed Procession and Parallel Lives allow you to quickly create a large Myr army.

The best token doubler in this deck is Doubling Season because it doubles up the number of +1/+1 counters Urtet distributes with its activated ability. It also doubles the counters that go on Simic Ascendancy, which can accelerate your victory.

While not technically a token doubler, Mirrodin Besieged can make you an extra Myr every time you cast a myr or other artifact if you choose the Mirran mode. It can also act as a form of player removal if you choose its Phyrexian mode, giving it some added utility.

Card Draw and Recursion

You want to make sure you have myr spells to cast to get the most out of Urtet. One way to do this is by drawing extra cards.

Thoughtcast is a no-brainer for an artifact-heavy deck like this one because you likely get to cast it at a heavy cost reduction.

Draw engines like Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain and Vedalken Archmage are also great options for an artifact deck like this.

Similarly, Kindred Discovery also draws you extra cards whenever you cast a myr. As a bonus it draws you cards when myr attack, which is a big part of the plan for this deck.

Apart from drawing into cards, you may also need ways to get myr out of your graveyard. Emry, Lurker of the Loch and Academy Ruins are both great repeatable ways to get back myr that have been milled, discarded, or destroyed.

Wake the Past can be an explosive card to play if your graveyard is full of artifact creatures, allowing you to refill your board in an instant. You can also launch an attack or start activating their abilities right away thanks to Wake giving your creatures haste.

Urtet Payoffs

This deck also includes several ways to get extra value out of Urtet’s abilities. One such payoff is Simic Ascendancy, which can serve as an alternate win condition. It can easily be accelerated with Doubling Season or The Ozolith. This card also serves as a mana sink, allowing you to buff creatures with any extra mana you have floating around.

Another way to get some extra value out of Urtet is with Lux Artillery and All Will Be One. These cards both allow you to deal damage to your opponents as an added bonus to having or distributing +1/+1 counters.

Removal

There isn’t too much removal in this deck because you’re hopefully forcing your opponents to lose their creatures when blocking yours.

I included a couple one-sided board wipes in Their Name Is Death and Organic Extinction. These can heavily swing a game in your favor, even help you close one out depending on your board state.

While it isn’t in the deck, I strongly considered putting Steel Hellkite in this deck if you’re looking to make changes to my current build. I still think it would be a strong choice.

The Mana Base

I prioritized fetchable 2- and 3-color lands for this deck because of the importance of activating Urtet’s ability to your overall strategy. Pairing up shock lands like Blood Crypt with fetch lands like Polluted Delta gives you some flexibility in the type of lands you’re fetching. This is an even more effective form of fixing when using tri-lands like Zagoth Triome, though these are slower mana sources so it’s nice to have both options.

I also included a few basic lands of each type for use with your ramp spells. Since there isn’t a lot of ramp in this deck, it could be retooled not to need them. I also included 5-color auto-includes like Command Tower and Mana Confluence for lands, and Arcane Signet for a mana rock.

As far as mana rocks go, I went with a mixture of colorless ones, and ones that can help with mana fixing. Sol Ring and Thran Dynamo allow you to cast more myr in a turn and help pay for Urtet if commander tax increases too much.

Chromatic Lantern, Timeless Lotus, and Chromatic Orrery help you to activate Urtet’s ability more easily.

These mana sources coupled with your mana dorks like Silver Myr and Gold Myr help provide a good number of ways to get all five colors. That said, this deck has enough colorless cards that you can still set up a strong board state while looking for your mana fixing.

The Strategy

Casting Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch is always an early priority in this deck because it increases the value of any myr creature you play afterwards. The earlier your commander is out the more tokens you’re able to produce, and the more you can cash in on its other abilities. Other early priorities should be mana fixing or ramping to ensure that you can activate Urtet’s ability and get your tokens out of easy removal range through damage.

Once you have Urtet and some myr on the battlefield, you want to switch your focus to using Urtet’s ability to buff them up. Cryptolith Rite is a very helpful card for activating Urtet multiple times, as is Urza, Lord High Artificer if paired with Chromatic Orrery. You can also buff your myr with cards like Tempered Steel and Urza, Prince of Kroog.

When it comes to attacking your opponents I typically like to swing out with a couple of my stronger myr while also keeping blockers up. If things are going according to plan then you’re generating a good number of token creatures thanks to token doublers like Parallel Lives, giving you enough creatures to both attack and defend. You can also chip away at your opponents’ life with All Will Be One or Lux Artillery once you’re able to activate Urtet somewhat regularly.

Eldrazi Monument and Akroma's Memorial can also help you close out the game by giving your creatures a way to evade blockers. You can do a ton of damage at once, or swing out with a buffed-up Urtet to finish off a player with commander damage. The Ozolith can be another effective means of getting Urtet strong enough to start eliminating your opponents.

Combos and Interactions

This deck wasn’t built to create infinite combos, but there are some interactions to keep an eye out for. You have a few ways to cast larger artifacts than you normally would when you have Shimmer Myr on the board. If you have mana-producing myr like Palladium Myr or if Cryptolith Rite is allowing you to tap myr for mana, you can sequence the beginning of your combat step to cast high-cost artifacts. Just tap all your myr for mana in response to Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch’s triggered ability.

After your myr have untapped, you can tap them all again to help cast artifact spells at instant speed before your mana pool empties.

Another fun interaction I’ve enjoyed this deck is to use Mondrak, Glory Dominus with Mirrodin Besieged to sneak in a player elimination at the end of my turn. This deck runs lots of artifacts, so it’s pretty easy to meet the requirements for Mirrodin Besieged.

If you just need an extra few, you can easily use Mondrak to sacrifice some of the artifacts on your board just before Mirrodin Besieged’s effect resolves. You can also use Strionic Resonator and/or Lithoform Engine to copy the trigger, allowing you to take out multiple opponents in one turn.

Budget Options

One of the most expensive parts of this deck is its token doublers. These cards are very powerful, and therefore pretty expensive. But there are some budget options if you want to replace them.

To start, Doubling Season costs about $85. You can run Primal Vigor for $25 instead, along with Branching Evolution for $20, which basically creates the same effect for your deck at about half the price. You can also lean more into counter doublers for extra value as opposed to extra tokens with cards like Hardened Scales.

A couple of fetch lands like Windswept Heath and Polluted Delta are getting up there in price, so you can swap them for cheaper options like Arid Mesa, or just rely on other forms of fixing.

Steam Vents, Blood Crypt, and Breeding Pool are similarly some of the more expensive shock lands. You can swap them for more affordable dual lands like Training Center or Luxury Suite.

Other Builds

Most Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch builds include a lot of myr. Otherwise there are simply better commanders for its other archetypes.

That said, if you want to lean harder into artifact support than I did, you definitely can. You can include classic artifact support like Fabricate, Tezzeret the Seeker, and Daretti, Scrap Savant, and add some artifact deck bombs like All Is Dust and Blightsteel Colossus.

With a 5-color deck like this you’re also pretty free to choose whatever type of win condition you want. For example, you can take out cards like Mirrodin Besieged and Simic Ascendancy to put in subtler wincons like Triumph of the Hordes and Venser, the Sojourner, which allow you swing out unblocked.

There are a lot of different directions you can take to win with this deck using the mana- and token-producing engine that I’ve set up.

Commanding Conclusion

Shimmer Myr | Illustration by Jana Schirmer & Johannes Voss

If you’re a fan of myr or want to make a deck themed around New Phyrexia and the current story arc, Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch is a great choice for your commander. I see this deck as a good starting point, but there are several ways you can choose to mess with it and make it your own.

How would you build a wincon into an Urtet deck? Are there any myr you'd choose to include that I didn’t? Let me know in the comments below or on Draftsim’s Twitter.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one!