Terminator Commander Deck · 100 Proxy Cards · MTG EDH · Judgment Day

A fully custom Terminator Magic proxy Commander deck, ready to play straight out of the envelope: 100 proxy cards with original artworks, built around a machine sent back to kill somebody before they matter and a loop that gets tighter every time anybody tries to break it. Single commander: The T-800, Cyberdyne Model 101.

Why Grixis? Blue is Skynet — the network, the time displacement equipment, the arm and the chip left in the press. Black is the body count and the graveyard this deck refuses to respect, because dying is a step in the plan rather than the end of one. Red is the chase: the truck, the shotgun, the Kyle Reese half of the story, which is made entirely of people running out of time. There is no white, because no institution in this world helps anybody — the police station is a set piece with a casualty figure attached.

Targeted power level: Bracket 4 — unconditional free recursion, a commitment mechanic that turns your whole board on one player, a visible clock that ends the game on its own, and two all-custom combos.

Deck Strategy

The whole deck is one sentence: it does not stop, it just gets smaller, and you have to spend it before it runs out.

Relentless is the original mechanic and it is written the same way on every card that has it: "At the beginning of your upkeep, if this card is in your graveyard, return it to the battlefield with a damage counter on it. It gets -1/-1 for each damage counter on it." No sacrifice outlet, no cost, no limit — the only limit is arithmetic. A 6/6 comes back as a 5/5, then a 4/4, then a 2/2, and chump-blocking a T-800 is the correct play for exactly as long as you can afford it. The T-800 itself is a 6/6 with relentless that draws you a card and drains every other opponent for 1 whenever it connects with the Target, and the deck runs the whole chassis line beside it: the unblockable copying T-1000, the artifact-stealing T-X, Hunter-Killer Aerials and Tanks, and plain 4/3 Endoskeletons.

Target is the second mechanic and it is a promise, not a bonus: "Choose a player. Creatures you control attack that player each combat if able." You give up your own choice about where to swing, out loud, at the table, and in exchange every payoff in the deck switches on — Sarah Connor grows and gains first strike when she attacks the Target, Hunter-Killer Aerials get bigger, the T-X destroys an artifact on the way in, Terminate the Objective draws a card and drains 2 when it kills something belonging to the Target. The hardest decision in the deck is who you name on turn three, because the payoffs all die with them.

• The Judgment Day Clock — the third pillar and the only card of its kind in the line. {2}{B}, legendary enchantment, one countdown counter at each of your upkeeps; when the tenth counter goes on, every player who doesn't control the most creatures loses the game (a tie for most creatures wipes the counters instead). Any player may pay {2} to remove a counter, so the whole table can read the clock from turn one and has to decide, out loud, who spends mana slowing it down. Nuclear Fire, Los Angeles and Judgment Day, August 29th put counters on it; No Fate But What We Make and Miles Dyson take them off.
• The cast — Sarah Connor, John Connor, Kyle Reese, Miles Dyson, Tarissa Dyson, Enrique Salceda, Lieutenant Traxler, Blair Williams, Marcus Wright, Doctor Silberman and the dog that knows, against the T-800, the T-1000, the T-X, Skynet itself (which makes a 2/2 relentless Endoskeleton token every end step) and an infiltration unit in rubber skin.
• Removal that actually works on machines — Sever the Timeline exiles a creature and costs its controller 4 life and you a card draw if it had relentless, because exile is the only method the films ever confirm. Hasta La Vista, Baby deals 5 and exiles instead if the creature already carries a damage counter. The Steel Mill Crucible exiles for a sacrifice. The Tanker Fire sweeps for 4 but leaves your relentless creatures alive on 1 toughness with an extra counter.
• The Closed Loop — {3}{U}{B} enchantment that lets you pay {1} to remove a damage counter each time a relentless creature returns, and makes them all impossible for opponents to exile. It is the card that stops the arithmetic from ending the game for you, and Time Displacement Equipment, The Arm and the Chip, Reprogrammed and There Is No Fate all hand relentless to things that were never built with it.
• Two combos, both entirely custom. The T-800 + The Hydraulic Press: the press is "{2}, {T}: Exile target creature with three or more damage counters on it. If it was a creature you controlled, draw two cards." Relentless feeds it a fresh body every upkeep, and each of those bodies is three counters deep by the time it stops being a threat — so the recursion converts into cards at exactly the point where it stops converting into damage, one loop per turn, for as long as the game lasts. Target + Kyle Reese: Reese gives every creature attacking the Target +2/+0 and menace, so a board of small, counter-laden relentless bodies that nobody bothered to block becomes lethal a full turn earlier than the Target was defending against — and Skynet is replacing those bodies at every end step.

Thirty-five lands, and they are locations rather than a mana base: Cyberdyne Systems in Sunnyvale, the Steel Mill at midnight, Pescadero State Hospital, the Salceda camp, the Skull Fields of 2029, the Tech-Com bunker, the Time Displacement Chamber, the Tech Noir club, the Los Angeles freeway, the storm drain, the Galleria, the West Highland police station, the Dyson house, the nuclear playground, the desert highway, Los Angeles 1984, the vault at Cyberdyne, the helicopter pursuit, the motel room and the bridge under the freeway, plus five Islands, five Swamps and five Mountains. Four tokens — Endoskeleton, Soldier, Treasure and the Damage Counter marker that relentless runs on — come in the box.

Average mana value 3.26, built to have a body dying and returning by turn four and the clock in double figures around turn eleven.