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Braids, Cabal Minion has had a long and storied history inMagic: 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.
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.
x25 Swamp
War Room
Witch’s Cottage
The decklistcontains 27 creatures, six sorceries, six instants, 14 artifacts, 12 enchantments,and34 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 alsowant to be prepared for Braid’s effect yourself. Its effect applies to all players, so you’ll generallywant 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
Yougenerally 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.
Theone time you may want to cast Tergrid’s Lantern insteadis 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, andallow 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.
Ritualsare 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’re able to 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 aton of creature token generatorsso that you’ll always have sacrifice fodder for Braids. Mirkwood Batshelps 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 thebest 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.
Youcan 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’re able to 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.
How To Play The Deck
A Braids, Cabal Minion deckis 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 alluseful in creating tokensto sacrifice. In addition, cards thatdeal damage when creatures die help to attack life totalslike Blood Artist and Bastion of Remembrance.
Theprimary 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 oftensince 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.
Thebiggest flaw of the deck is that it’s a Braids deck. Braids has an infamous reputation, so theinstant you start a game with Braids in your commander zone, you’ll immediately be targetedbecause, if left unchecked, you’ll force everyone else out of the game, outside the fastest of Commander decks. The other downside is thatBraids 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.
