Best Budget Aristocrats Commander Deck Under $100 (Teysa)

Geeky Domain Crew
2026-05-04T02:26:22-07:00

The "Aristocrats" archetype completely subverts standard MTG combat by turning the death of your own creatures into an unstoppable math equation. Learn how to build a highly resilient, budget-friendly Orzhov (White/Black) engine around Teysa Karlov that drains the entire table without needing $50 combo pieces.

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Best Budget Aristocrats Deck Under $100: Teysa Karlov

Weaponize the graveyard. Learn how to turn the death of your own creatures into an unstoppable, table-draining math equation.

In Magic: The Gathering, the "Aristocrats" archetype completely subverts the standard rules of engagement. Instead of trying to keep your creatures alive to attack, your goal is to actively sacrifice them. By combining cheap "fodder" creatures, free sacrifice outlets, and passive enchantments that drain your opponents' life totals whenever a creature dies, you can burn out the entire table without ever declaring a combat step.

Because Aristocrats relies on a three-piece engine (Fodder + Outlet + Payoff), it is incredibly resilient to board wipes. In fact, if an opponent casts a board wipe to destroy your army, they will often inadvertently trigger enough death effects to kill themselves in the process.

While premium combo pieces like Phyrexian Altar are too expensive for a strict budget build, the core foundation of this archetype is built on incredibly cheap commons and uncommons. This guide breaks down how to construct a ruthless, highly synergistic Orzhov (White/Black) Aristocrats deck for under $100, commanded by the ultimate trigger-doubler: Teysa Karlov.

→ Master the Colors

Ensure your Orzhov engine is supported by the most efficient budget staples in the format.

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In This Guide

→ The Engine: Teysa Karlov

→ The Fodder: Two-for-One Creatures

→ The Outlets: Free Sacrifice Engines

→ The Payoffs: Blood Artists & Drainers

→ The Recursion: Mass Reanimation

→ The Vault: Premium Aristocrat Upgrades

The Engine: Teysa Karlov

To dominate on a budget, you need a Commander that mathematically breaks the standard rules of value. Teysa Karlov is a 4-cost (one White, one Black, two generic) Human Advisor. While she gives your creature tokens Vigilance and Lifelink, her primary text box is what makes her the most feared Aristocrats commander in the format.

The Death Doubler:
Her text explicitly states: "If a creature dying causes a triggered ability of a permanent you control to trigger, that ability triggers an additional time." This is the equivalent of having a Doubling Season for death. If a creature dies and was supposed to drain 1 life from an opponent, Teysa makes it drain 2 life. If a creature dies and was supposed to draw you 1 card, Teysa draws you 2.

Exponential Stacking:
This effect stacks across multiple permanents simultaneously. If you have three different enchantments on the board that trigger when a creature dies, Teysa doubles all three of those triggers every single time you sacrifice a 1/1 token. This allows a budget deck to output premium-level damage incredibly early in the game.

The Fodder: Two-for-One Creatures

You cannot sacrifice creatures if you don't have any on the board. The foundation of an Aristocrats deck relies on hyper-efficient "Fodder" creatures. These are cheap 1-cost and 2-cost creatures that replace themselves when they die, giving you multiple bodies to sacrifice for a single mana investment.

Doomed Traveler & Hunted Witness

These are the quintessential 1-mana White fodder cards. When they die, they create a 1/1 creature token. This means a single 1-mana investment gives you two separate death triggers to abuse. Even better, because Teysa Karlov doubles death triggers, sacrificing a Doomed Traveler while Teysa is on the board will actually generate two tokens, turning a 1-mana card into three separate bodies.

Hangarback Walker

This artifact creature enters the battlefield with X +1/+1 counters. When it dies, it creates a 1/1 Thopter token for each +1/+1 counter on it. If you cast this for 4 mana, it enters as a 2/2. When you sacrifice it, Teysa Karlov doubles the death trigger, netting you four 1/1 flying Thopters to fuel your engine further.

The Outlets: Free Sacrifice Engines

Having fodder is useless if you can't kill it on command. You must run "Sacrifice Outlets"—permanents that allow you to sacrifice a creature to activate an ability. The golden rule of Aristocrats is that your best sacrifice outlets must be free to activate and instant speed. If an outlet costs mana to use, it is too slow to combo off.

Viscera Seer & Bartolomé del Presidio

Viscera Seer is a 1-cost Black staple. You can sacrifice a creature for free at instant speed to Scry 1 (look at the top card of your deck and leave it or put it on the bottom). It protects your creatures from exile effects and perfectly sculpts your draws.

Bartolomé del Presidio is a 2-cost Orzhov vampire. You can sacrifice a creature for free to put a +1/+1 counter on him. Not only does this serve as an infinite, free sacrifice outlet, but it also rapidly turns a 2-cost budget creature into a massive, game-ending Voltron threat.

The Payoffs: Blood Artists & Drainers

This is how the deck actually wins the game. "Payoffs" are permanents that sit on the battlefield and trigger whenever a creature dies, usually by draining life from your opponents. When combined with Teysa Karlov's doubling effect, a single sacrificed 1/1 token can easily drain 4 to 6 life from the entire table.

Zulaport Cutthroat & Cruel Celebrant
These two creatures are the absolute gold standard for Aristocrats. Whenever a creature you control dies, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life. Because Teysa doubles this trigger, every time you sacrifice a creature, each opponent loses 2 life and you gain 2. If you sacrifice five 1/1 tokens in a single turn, the entire table loses 10 life and you gain 10 life. The math becomes unsurvivable in a matter of turns.

Bastion of Remembrance
This 3-cost enchantment provides the exact same drain effect as the creatures above, but it is infinitely harder for opponents to remove because it dodges standard creature board wipes. Furthermore, when it enters the battlefield, it creates a 1/1 Human Soldier token, immediately replacing itself with fresh fodder for your sacrifice outlets.

The Fuel: Exponential Card Draw

An Aristocrats deck burns through cards incredibly quickly. If you run out of fodder to sacrifice, the engine stalls. To prevent this, you must run permanents that draw you cards whenever your creatures die. Because Teysa doubles these triggers, your card advantage will quickly outpace the rest of the table.

Moldervine Reclamation & Morbid Opportunist

Moldervine Reclamation is a 5-cost uncommon enchantment. Whenever a creature you control dies, you gain 1 life and draw a card. With Teysa on the board, sacrificing a single creature draws you two cards and gains you 2 life. It ensures you will draw your entire deck and find your win conditions if it stays on the board for even a single rotation.

Morbid Opportunist is a 3-cost creature that draws a card whenever any creature dies, but it only triggers once per turn. However, because you use instant-speed sacrifice outlets, you can sacrifice one creature on your turn, one on opponent A's turn, one on opponent B's turn, and one on opponent C's turn, drawing four cards per rotation for free.

The Recursion: Weaponizing the Graveyard

The beauty of Aristocrats is that your creatures do their best work when they are dying. But why kill them only once? By utilizing cheap Black and White reanimation spells, you can pull your entire graveyard back onto the battlefield, essentially giving yourself a second life total and doubling your total damage output.

Victimize

For 3 mana, you choose two target creature cards in your graveyard. You then sacrifice a creature on the board and return those two chosen targets directly to the battlefield tapped. You trigger all your death effects on the sacrificed creature, while immediately cheating two massive combo pieces back into play. It is the best budget reanimation spell in the format.

Return to the Ranks

This spell has Convoke, meaning you can tap your creatures to help pay for its mana cost. You pay X and return X target creature cards with mana value 2 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. In the late game, after you have sacrificed all your 1-cost and 2-cost fodder, you tap out to cast this and return 6 or 7 creatures at once, instantly rebuilding your entire board state.

The Vault: Premium Aristocrat Upgrades

The Orzhov Aristocrats engine is perfectly functional and highly lethal on a $100 budget. However, if you want to push this strategy into cEDH (Competitive Commander) territory, the ceiling relies on a few notoriously expensive combo pieces that generate infinite mana and infinite death triggers.

If you are ready to invest capital into your collection, these are the premium, format-defining staples you should target for your Vault.

Phyrexian Altar

The single most important card for competitive Aristocrats. This 3-cost artifact allows you to sacrifice a creature to add one mana of any color to your mana pool. It serves as an instant-speed, free sacrifice outlet that simultaneously pays for your next spell. When combined with creatures that create tokens when they die (which Teysa doubles), it generates infinite mana and infinite death triggers seamlessly.

Pitiless Plunderer

Whenever another creature you control dies, this pirate creates a Treasure token. Teysa Karlov explicitly doubles this triggered ability. This means every single time you sacrifice a basic 1/1 token, you create two Treasure tokens. It turns your disposable fodder into a hyper-accelerated mana engine that allows you to out-resource the entire table.

The Geeky Domain Verdict

Embrace the Inevitable.

The Aristocrats archetype is one of the most frustrating strategies to play against because it completely invalidates traditional combat math and creature removal. By putting Teysa Karlov in the Command Zone, you don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on infinite combo pieces. You simply rely on cheap, highly efficient death triggers to drain the table faster than they can respond.

The key to mastering this deck is timing. Do not play your Blood Artists or crucial sacrifice outlets until you have the fodder ready to abuse them. Build your board state quietly with cheap tokens, drop Teysa and your payoffs in a single explosive turn, and sacrifice your entire army at instant speed to secure the win.

Master the Orzhov Arsenal:

→ Optimize Your Graveyard: Best Black Staples Under $5

→ Fortify Your Board: Best White Staples Under $5

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