Braids, Cabal Minion has had a long and storied history in Magic: The Gathering. Back in the day, some cards were banned from Commander, but only as your commander. Braids was one of these cards, being banned as a commander in 2009. In 2014, the banned as commander clause was eliminated, and Braids was fully banned. In 2025, Braids was removed from the Commander banlist and added to the Game Changers list.

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Braids, Cabal Minion is a very powerful commander capable of locking your opponents out of the game early. It plays a Stax game plan meant to throw as many wrenches in your opponents' game plans as possible.

Decklist

Commander: Braids, Cabal Minion

Blood Artist

Bloodghast

Braids, Arisen Nightmare

Crypt Ghast

Dauthi Voidwalker

Gisa, Glorious Resurrector

Gravecrawler

Gray Merchant of Asphodel

Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia

K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth

Lord Skitter, Sewer King

Marionette Apprentice

Mirkwood Bats

Morbid Opportunist

Nether Traitor

Nine-Lives Familiar

Ophiomancer

Pawn of Ulamog

Phyrexian Obliterator

Pitiless Plunderer

Reassembling Skeleton

Sheoldred, Whispering One

Sinkhole Surveyor

Solemn Simulacrum

Tergrid, God of Fright // Tergrid's Lantern

Warren Soultrader

Zulaport Cutthroat

Feed the Swarm

Mutilate

Pox

Reanimate

Smallpox

Toxic Deluge

Cabal Ritual

Culling the Weak

Dark Ritual

Defile

Sacrifice

Saw in Half

Arcane Signet

Bontu's Monument

Charcoal Diamond

Cursed Totem

Everflowing Chalice

Fellwar Stone

Ichor Wellspring

Jet Medallion

Lotus Petal

Mephitic Draught

Mind Stone

Sol Ring

Thought Vessel

Winter Moon

Animate Dead

Bastion of Remembrance

Bitterblossom

Black Market

Black Market Connections

Dictate of Erebos

Dreadhorde Invasion

Grave Pact

Oppression

Painful Quandary

Phyrexian Arena

Revel in Riches

Cabal Coffers

Cabal Stronghold

Castle Locthwain

Crypt of Agadeem

Drownyard Temple

Gods' Eye, Gate to the Reikai

Phyrexian Tower

x25 Swamp

War Room

Witch's Cottage

The decklist contains 27 creatures, six sorceries, six instants, 14 artifacts, 12 enchantments, and 34 lands. Many permanents in the deck create tokens to sacrifice, or slow your opponents down through stax pieces.

Key Cards

Braids, Cabal Minion

Braids, Cabal Minion is infamous for how good it is when you turbo it out. As you may expect, you want to get Braids on the battlefield as quickly as possible. Once there, your opponents are essentially locked out of the game if you get it out early enough.

You also want to be prepared for Braid's effect yourself. Its effect applies to all players, so you'll generally want one of the permanents that generate tokens on the battlefield when you cast Braids, so you won't have to wind up sacrificing Braids or another important card to Braids' effect.

Tergrid, God Of Fright // Tergrid's Lantern

You generally always want to cast Tergrid, God of Fright as opposed to the backside, as Tergrid gives you all permanents your opponents sacrifice. This allows you to build up a battlefield without ever needing to actually cast anything yourself.

The one time you may want to cast Tergrid's Lantern instead is if your opponent managed to get multiple permanents down on the battlefield. This makes it easier to continue the Braids lock that you set up.

Tergrid, God of Fright is better in the late-game, while Tergrid's Lantern is more impactful during the earlier stages of it.

Rituals

A ritual is a card that creates more mana than it costs. Generally, these add at least three mana. They are black's main way to ramp quickly, and allow you to cast Braids, Cabal Minion very early in the game. It cuts off the need of mana rocks, and enables you to cast Braids as early as turn two.

Rituals are the main way you'll turbo out Braids. Even if you draw them late in the game, where you don't need them to cast your commander, you can use them to play more spells in a turn than normal. Black decks can be slow, so rituals help to give them a mana generation push.

Mirkwood Bats

The deck has a ton of creature token generators so that you'll always have sacrifice fodder for Braids. Mirkwood Bats helps to turn all that token generation and sacrificing into burn damage. You'll often have a ton of tokens being created throughout the game, letting Mirkwood Bat's burn damage add up.

Mirkwood Bats hits every opponent, so you won't have to single anyone out. This makes it easier to spread damage evenly so that you don't leave someone alone for too long and allow them to become a threat. Braids doesn't focus heavily on combat, so Mirkwood Bats is very helpful in dwindling down life totals.

Black Market

If you are in a game where a lot of creatures are going to be dying, Black Market is the best ramp card you can get on the battlefield. With at bare minimum one creature dying every turn, Black Market can start getting a ton of charge counters on it.

You can only use the mana from Black Market during your precombat main phase, but that's when you'll be playing most of your spells anyway. Notably, Black Market triggers whenever any creature dies, not just your own. It doesn't matter how a creature dies, so even dying in combat will net you charge counters.

Since you can only use Black Market's mana during the precombat main phase, you should use the mana created from it to cast any spells you know you're casting that turn, while saving the mana from your lands for utility cards and interaction.

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How To Play The Deck

A Braids, Cabal Minion deck is a stax deck that wants to turbo out Braids to lock your opponents out of the game. If you manage to get Braids out by turn two, odds are your opponents won't have much to sacrifice, forcing them to sacrifice a land and leaving them on one land for most of the game.

While Braids is great at locking out your opponents, it can also lock you out if you're not careful. You don't want to sacrifice Braids, but if you turbo it out without another permanent to sacrifice, you'll wind up having to. Make sure there's at least something else to sacrifice the turn you bring Braids out.

Since you'll need permanents to sacrifice, token generators are vital for the deck's strategy. Cards such as Black Market Connections, Bitterblossom, and Lord Skitter, Sewer King are all useful in creating tokens to sacrifice. In addition, cards that deal damage when creatures die help to attack life totals like Blood Artist and Bastion of Remembrance.

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The primary win condition is winning through burn and combat. Combat isn't the focus, but with how hard it'll be for your opponents to stick creatures on the battlefield, they'll likely be wide open for attackers. Burn damage will come up more often since there are a lot of cards that cause burn damage when creatures die, so you can drain life quicker. Your opponents will lose all their life from one of the two win conditions.

The biggest flaw of the deck is that it's a Braids deck. Braids has an infamous reputation, so the instant you start a game with Braids in your commander zone, you'll immediately be targeted because, if left unchecked, you'll force everyone else out of the game, outside the fastest of Commander decks. The other downside is that Braids is much weaker in the late game. If you fail to get an early-game lock on your opponents, Braids' effect is much less impactful.

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