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Basim Ibn Ishaq is one of the main villains of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Mirage and one of the many legendary creatures included inMagic: The Gathering’sAssassin’s Creed set. Assassin’s Creed is a part of Magic’s Universes Beyond product line, which converts characters and items from outside franchises and brings them into the world of Magic by converting them into cards.
Basim Ibn Ishaq is a Dimir (blue/black) commander that has useful effects that encourage the usage of historic spells to get the most out of his abilities. The deck works best with multiple Equipment spells to put on Basim while it does all the attacking.
Blade of the Oni
Sword of the Animist
x8 Island
Seat of the Synod
x6 Swamp
Underground River
Vault of Whispers
The decklist consists of 17 creatures, six sorceries, ten instants, 28 artifacts, four enchantments, and 34 lands. Since thedeck is a Voltron deck(a deck that focuses on putting multiple Equipment cards on a single creature), artifacts make up a majority of the deck since yourcommander is the only creature you need.
Key Cards
Basim Ibn Ishaq
The commander of the deck,Basim Ibn Ishaq,is the most important card since it’s themain creature you’ll be attacking with. By casting any historic spell, which half of your deck is, you can have Basim attack without having to worry about it being blocked.
Basimslowly grows with +1/+1 counterseach time it deals combat damage. This makes each attack you do with Basim get larger, and sinceit’s your commander, this is commander damagethat once someonetakes 21 or more damage from Basim, they’ll be out of the game.
Basim is the creature that you will attach all your Equipment to. Since you want to take people out of the game with commander damage as quickly as possible, stacking up Basim with +1/+1 counters and stat-boosting Equipment is the best way to accomplish that.
Fireshrieker
Fireshriekeris themost important Equipmentfor the deck. This is because of how useful double strike is for what the deck wants to do.
Double strike causes your creature to deal first strike damage and regular combat damage. This means that it willtrigger Basim’s effect two separate times,giving it two +1/+1 counters in total instead of just one.
Fireshrieker is useful for getting two Basim effect triggers and dealing large amounts of commander damage later in the game with double strike, making it possible totake someone out of the game with just one attack if Basim’s power is 11or greater.
Fireshriker is a bit expensive to attach and Equip, but more than worth the price of admission. Since Basim can hit the battlefield early, you’ll havea lot of excess mana quicklyso you may get Fireshrieker onto the battlefield with the mana to utilize it.
Phyresis
Since Basim Ibn Ishaq is easily made unblockable,Phyresis means with the card having ten power, it can now take someone out of the game. Phyresis has no downside and simplygives the enchantment creature infect.
While you shut down the ability to deal commander damage, Phyresis lets you win the game even faster since theamount of damage you have to do is cut in halfto have someone lose the game.
Basim will slowly grow its own stats without outside help, so by the time you enchant it with Phyresis, if you’re in the game for three total turn cycles, you can take everyone out and win the game.
Silent Arbiter
Silent Arbiter won’t affect you very muchsince you’ll primarily be attacking with just one creature. Itshuts down your opponent’s ability to attackwith more than one creature. There is a low amount of creatures in the deck, so you won’t have a lot of creatures to block with.
Silent Arbiter gives you protection from being attacked by a wide board of creatures. Outside of a large creature going your way, you’ll not have to worry about taking a lot of damage, letting you swing Basim without worrying about holding it back for a blocker.
Ramses, Assassin Lord
In most Voltron decks, you need to focus on one player at a time since you can only take people out of the game slowly.Ramses, Assassin Lordhelps to counteract this downside. Whenever a player loses the game, you win the game automaticallyso long as an Assassin attacked them.
Basim Ibn Ishaq is an Assassin, meaningonce a swing makes someone lose the game, if Ramses is on the battlefield, everyone else losesas well. In addition, any of your other Assassin cards will get a minor stat boost, including Basim itself.
How To Play The Deck
The deck focuses onstacking one creature, in this case Basim Ibn Ishaq, with a ton of Equipment.This lets you quickly raise its stats to high amounts and swing out for massive damage to slowly take your opponents out of the game with commander damage.
To make Basim unblockable you’ll need to cast a historic spell, so sometimes it’s better towait to cast an Equipment spelltomake sure you can make Basim unblockableevery turn.
As with most Voltron decks, there are various support cards that make it easier to win the game quickly.PhyresisandTainted Strikeboth help to win through infect, andRamses, Assassin Lord,takes more than one player out of the game.
SinceBasim is integralto the strategy,protecting it is the most important part of the deck.
That’s why the deck plays a lot of low-mana counterspells likeAn Offer You Can’t RefuseandArcane Denialto ensure you cancounter any card that would remove Basim from the battlefield.
You can’t always rely on counterspells, so having protection on permanents is important to keep Basim safe from targeted removal spells.
Cards likeChampion’s Helm, Mithril Coat,andSwiftfoot Bootsall make the equipped creature hexproof or indestructible, andplenty of Equipment also provides wardfor an extra layer of protection.
Since there are so many artifacts in a Basim deck, ways to discount them and take advantage of having a lot on the battlefield are included.Foundry InspectorandEtherium Sculptorboth make artifact spells one mana less, and cards with affinity likeThought Monitorhelp to get a creature on the battlefield and draw cards for you.
The most important thing to note when playing Basim is thatyou will make yourself a targetsince if you’re not checked, you’ll run away with the game.
You will need to determine who is the most dangerous to your game plan and target them first before they can swing at you.Threat assessment is keyand is the difference between winning or losing.
Basim can hit the battlefield very early, butsometimes it’s better to wait until you can give it some form of protectionto prevent it from getting removed and forcing you to start from square one.
Once Basim is protected, you can start swinging outand growing in +1/+1 counters to start snowballing from there.
