Arbaaz Mir
Arbaaz Mir is a Boros historic-ETB pinger that turns a steady stream of nontoken artifacts, legendaries, and Sagas into incremental table drain and a life buffer.
Public decks: 2Bracket: Varies
Overview
- Game plan is to land Arbaaz early, then keep deploying nontoken historic permanents to chip each opponent and pad your life total.
- Plays like an incremental engine deck: lots of small permanents, repeated triggers, and pressure that doesn’t rely on combat.
- Typically wants a high density of cheap historic hits (mana rocks, utility artifacts, and legends) so each turn naturally advances your clock.
- Often closes by chaining multiple historic ETBs in a turn (rebuild turns after a wipe, or a big deployment turn) to finish the table through small drains.
- Because the damage is spread, you tend to avoid immediately painting a single-target bullseye, but you will become the inevitability if left alone.
Common lines
- Deploy Arbaaz, then follow with a couple low-cost historic permanents to start ticking everyone down while staying out of crack-back range.
- Use your turns to keep the historic count flowing: one or two triggers per turn early, then bigger multi-spell turns as your mana develops.
- After a board reset, rebuild by replaying a string of historic permanents to immediately recoup pressure without needing to attack.
- Leverage incidental lifegain to buy time, then pivot into a turn where you stack enough triggers to threaten lethal over one or two rotations.
Strengths
- Consistent, low-opportunity-cost pressure: you get damage for playing the kinds of permanents you already want.
- Noncombat win angle makes it resilient to stalled boards and pillowfort-style creature combat.
- Incidental lifegain can stabilize against chip damage and aggressive creature starts.
- Scales well in longer games as repeated small ETBs add up across multiple opponents.
- Pairs naturally with broad permanent-based utility (mana rocks and value legends) without needing narrow setup.
Weaknesses
- The trigger is only 1 per historic ETB, so you can struggle to race faster combo or explosive damage decks without a big engine turn.
- Relies heavily on keeping Arbaaz on the battlefield; repeated commander removal can slow your clock significantly.
- Requires nontoken historic permanents, so token-based plans won’t feed your primary engine.
- Can be vulnerable to sweepers or mass permanent interaction that resets your board of small permanents.
- Life gain helps you survive, but it doesn’t directly increase the speed of your kill unless you can multiply triggers.
Rule zero notes
- Call out whether your list leans into any chaos-style permanents (for example, effects like Confusion in the Ranks) or if it’s a straightforward historic value build.
- Mention how many sweepers/hard resets you’re on (for example, effects like Cataclysmic Gearhulk) since that can change table pacing a lot.
- Be clear if your plan includes heavy permanent-based hate (for example, Aura Shards-style pressure) versus a more interactive, one-for-one removal suite.
- Clarify your expected speed: are you aiming to win via slow inevitability, or do you have turns that can chain many historic ETBs at once?
Matchups
Best into
- Creature-heavy midrange pods that plan to win through combat over multiple turns
- Slower value piles where games go long and incremental inevitability matters
- Tables that lack consistent commander removal
Struggles against
- Fast combo pods that don’t care about incremental chip damage
- Decks packed with repeatable removal that can keep your commander off the board
- Dedicated lifegain strategies that can outpace 1-point drains
FAQ
What counts as “historic” for Arbaaz Mir?
Artifacts, legendary permanents, and Sagas are historic, and Arbaaz triggers when Arbaaz or another nontoken historic permanent enters under your control.
Do tokens trigger Arbaaz?
No. The permanent must be nontoken, so artifact creature tokens and other token copies won’t trigger Arbaaz’s ability.
How does the deck usually win if it’s only 1 damage at a time?
It typically wins by stacking lots of triggers over time, then having one or more turns where you deploy multiple historic permanents and finish the table through accumulated chip damage.
Is this a lifegain deck?
The life gain is usually a stabilizer and buffer rather than the primary win condition; the main plan is still to convert historic ETBs into table-wide damage.
What interaction do I need to keep Arbaaz relevant?
You generally want ways to protect or recast your commander and enough interaction to avoid getting raced, since your damage is incremental and your engine is commander-dependent.