Lo and Li, Royal Advisors Mill

Commander Overview

Lo and Li, Royal Advisors are here to mill out your opponents and bring as many advisors with them as we can, we have a lot of advisors in the deck, from powerful ones to Bruvac the Grandiloquent to our most common creature in Persistent Petitioners to mill out our opponent, Lo and Li work really well with allowing us to gain a lot of counters on our advisors and swing out in combat if we need to, Lo and Li are very strong for the deck and not only allow us to be strong against decks that counter mill and allow us to compete with the combat decks.

How to Play the Deck

The deck is really straight forward, we try to mill our opponents as much as we can, it is quite easy to get the mill ball rolling since we have Persistent Petitioners and we can start taking out our opponents cards twelve at a time which adds up very quickly, if the mill plan doesn’t work because our opponents have Eldrazi Titans like Kozilek, Butcher of Truth or huge artifacts like Blightsteel Colossus because of our commander we can easily use our Petitioners being advisors to our advantage and buff them up from our commander which allows us to have a beatdown gameplan as a backup which is very strong when milling is not an option.

Synergy’s in the deck

Our whole deck is pretty much synergized with itself, but we do have two main focuses in the deck, which are our advisors and our mill. At the same time, both of these are pretty much hand in hand. We have a lot of strong advisors in the deck that give us a ton of benefits, like Danny Pink, which is an absolute card draw machine and keeps our hand full no matter how many petitioners we have out. Since we mill so much, having Syr Konrad, The Grim is very strong for us as well, since the cards we mill can turn into damage, super handy against decks that are very heavy on creatures, which is quite common within EDH.

Phases of the Game

Early-Game: This is when we drop our commander and start dropping as many Persistent Petitioners on the battlefield as we can; we typically also use these turns to commit some mana rocks like Arcane Signet or Sol Ring. It doesn’t matter when we drop our Petitioners, it’s great to mill our opponents at any stage of the game.

Mid-Game: In the mid-game, we have typically milled our opponents quite a bit and buffed up our creatures. We also typically have access to a lot more of our control elements since we have more mana. We typically use our limited control package to stop our commander from getting killed.

Late-Game: The late-game is when we truly kick it into overdrive. We don’t typically change our game plan that much, but by the time we hit the late-game, we typically have our opponents very close to being milled out. Thee late

Card Breakdowns

Ramp

We are a Dimir deck. If there is one thing we don’t do very well its ramp, we do have format staples like Arcane Signet and Sol Ring but ramp is certainly not our strong suit, granted it doesn’t typically end up mattering since thirty-one of our creatures only cost two-mana, it can be quite easy for us to drop a lot of Petitioners.

Card Draw/Card Advantage

Ponder and Preordain are both powerful and efficient draw spells for the deck and can allow us to sift through and hit cards that are not our petitioners. We also have Phyrexian Arena, which is very strong in this deck and is quite easy for us to get out on turn three and enjoy the benefits all game! Im also a huge fan of Dimir Infiltrator and Drift of Phantasms which provides a nice piece of card selection, being able to grab any two or three drop is powerful when we have cards in the deck like Bruvac the Grandiloquent or a piece of removal like Feed the Swarm or maybe even a Counterspell!

Removal

Being in Dimir allows us to have some excellent removal in the deck. While we don’t have a lot of it, we can make excellent use of it, especially Toxic Deluge, which can be really good if we fall behind and our opponents start to get out of control. We also have Feed the Swarm, which is really good if an opponent drops a problematic enchantment/commander or creature. We aren’t super heavy into removal and would much rather stop it from resolving with counters like An Offer You Can’t Refuse or the true classic Counterspell. Whether we remove them or stop our opponents from resolving them, we do have some ways to fight back.

Protection

Our protection package is solely our counterspells. It really depends on the game: whether we have to use them reactively or proactively. We typically want to use them to protect our cards/commander, but if an opponent drops a huge bomb, it is much better to counter that instead of protecting our stuff.

Utility / Support

One of my favorite support cards in the deck is No Mercy, which is really strong against aggressive and creature-heavy strategies and makes our opponents really not want to attack us unless they really have to. Being an undesirable target to our opponents is really good. Oppression is another card that works very well with the deck. Not only does it trigger our commander and buff all our advisors, but it also thins out our opponents’ hand, which is really good and can become devastating over time.

By far one of the craziest cards we have in the deck is Intruder Alarm which is true dream come true when it comes to our Persistent Petitioners and allows us to mill a ridiculous amount of cards in a turn, the one thing to note about intruder alarm is that we rarely drop it until its time to go crazy because thiss card effects the whole table and can be really bad for us against specific strategies like elves. Since we have so many Petitioners in the deck, we had to include Thrumming Stone, which gives us the ability to chain Petitioners at an alarming rate and really take over the game.

We, of course, can’t talk about our mill deck without talking about two of the best mill cards in the format in both Bruvac the Grandiloquent and Zellix, Sanity Flayer. Bruvac is self-explanatory, but it is just ridiculous. Being able to mill an opponent twenty-four off of one Petitioner activation is just crazy and is a true game changer. This is one of the cards that will draw a lot of attention to you, so that is something to be aware of. Zellix is also really strong against aggressive strategies since we will have a legion of chump blockers, so we don’t take any damage. The tokens that Zellix creates can also be very useful as a combat backup plan. Even without the buff from our commander, they are still extra attackers for the deck if we need them. The Mindskinner is also very strong in this deck since we can deal quite a bit of damage with our Petitioners when they get buffed up and turn that into even more mill.

Mana Base

Our mana base overall is straightforward, mostly consisting of Islands and Swamps. Still, we do have a couple of pretty awesome utility lands, like Agna Qel’a, which triggers our commander, and the loot effect we get from it can be nice if we need to dig for more creatures. We also have Jidoor, Aristocratic Capital, which is a little pricey, but being able to mill half an opponent’s deck can be very deadly.

Win Conditions

As we discussed previously in this article, our win conditions are two separate ways.

Our primary game plan is the mill game plan, which is what our entire deck is built around. We typically do this with the help of our commander and ourPersistent Petitioners. This is always option one; our commander is designed to work very well with it.

Our secondary game plan is combat. This does work hand in hand with our mill game plan since we get the triggers off our commander when we make opponents mill or discard, but if we have opponents that have shuffle effects like Eldrazi Titans, this is absolutely the way to go. Cards like The Mindskinner are also very good with the combat game plan, since we can turn the counters our commander gives our creatures into even more mill.

Strengths of the Deck

We can be powerful against more mid-range decks. We can take advantage of them in the early game and start milling a lot of their key pieces.

Since we have both the combat and mill game plan, we can adapt to the situation. It is also quite convenient that we can execute those game plans simultaneously.

Weaknesses of the Deck

We are quite limited on removal/protection, we do have some but we can struggle against control strategies.

Mass removal decks or really any deck that has a ton of board wipes can be tough for us.

Deck Testing/Matchups

I tested this deck against three different decks

Game 1: Vs Duke Ulder Ravengard. Matchup Record: 3-0

This was a perfect matchup for our deck. While they can be quite scary when they have the duke out, they are a lot slower than we are, since we can develop our game plan much quicker. This is a pretty easy matchup for the deck.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
No Mercy, Oppression and Darkness

Game 2: Vs Brigone, Soldier of Meletis. Matchup Record: 3-2

This was a fine matchup for the deck, we did win three out of five but this is certainly not an auto-win matchup, it can be quite tough for the deck if Brigone gets going really early, this is another matchup where No Mercy shines but that isn’t something we can always rely, our counterspells are also very good since mono-white has very few ways to stop us from countering their stuff.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
An Offer You Can’t Refuse, Pongify and Didn’t Say Please

Game 3: Vs Hermes, Overseer of Elpis. Matchup Record: 1-4

This was a rough one; they have so many control elements, and we oftentimes can’t deal with them. I had a lot of trouble with this matchup. If they are able to stick with our commander and consistently bounce our stuff, it can be quite hard for us to execute our game plan. Control decks are never really great matchups for us.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Toxic Deluge, Feed the Swarm and Oppression

Conclusion

Thanks so much for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed Lo and Li. They are an exciting and different take on a Petitioners deck. It’s really cool to have a combat option for the deck that allows us to be more adaptive to the format and not have to rely on only winning through mill.