Fear the Foot | Building Your Super Shredder Commander Deck

There are commanders who control.

Some commanders storm off.

And then there's Super Shredder, a man who looked at a perfectly good human body and said, "Not enough."

Super Shredder doesn't want a handful of counterspells or an elaborate combo chain. He wants things to die. He wants permanents leaving the battlefield on a schedule. He wants to sit at 1/1 on turn one and be an unsolvable problem by turn six, while your opponents argue about who should have dealt with him earlier.

Spoiler: it was all of them. None of them did it.

If you enjoy watching a 1/1 snowball into something deeply unreasonable while your opponents frantically search for answers, this is one of the most satisfying mono-black commanders you can build.

Let's talk about how to build your Super Shredder Commander Deck the right way.

What Super Shredder Does

Super Shredder grows.

Not slowly. Not conditionally. Not "only on your turn if you've sacrificed a creature and said please."

Whenever any permanent leaves the battlefield, yours, theirs, anyone's, he gets a +1/+1 counter. Every sacrifice. Every removal spell. Every creature that trades in combat. Every land someone pops for value. All of it feeds him.

He has Menace, which means he's already awkward to block. And as the counters stack up, "awkward" quickly becomes "why is that thing a 14/14?"

He costs 1B. Two mana. He can be on the battlefield before most people have finished shuffling their opening hand back in.

Super Shredder turns your opponent's removal and your own sacrifice engines into a personal growth plan. The card is basically a gym membership that actually works.

Why Super Shredder is Awesome

Super Shredder rewards you for doing things mono-black already loves to do.

Sacrifice a token? He grows. Wrath the board? He grows. Your opponent removes their own permanent? Somehow, still his win.

The beauty of his design is that he benefits from everything. You don't have to warp your deck around him. You build a normal, powerful mono-black deck, and he quietly becomes enormous in the background while everyone else is busy worrying about the guy with dragons.

He especially thrives at chaotic tables. Every piece of interaction that gets thrown around, every trade in combat, every fetchland that gets cracked? Free counters. At a table full of removal spells, Super Shredder is having the time of his life.

And because he's only two mana, recasting him after removal barely stings. He's back down by turn four, looking at your opponent like nothing happened.

Early Game Strategy: Land the Threat Early

Your early turns are simple: get Shredder on the battlefield and do almost nothing else.

At two mana, he lands before most commanders have even been cast. But that doesn't mean you skip the setup entirely.

Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, and Jet Medallion help you develop your board while you deploy sacrifice fodder. You want cheap creatures and token makers already sitting in play the moment Shredder arrives, so he can start eating immediately.

Pawn of Ulamog and Doomed Dissenter are perfect early drops. They exist to die and create more things that also exist to die. It's not glamorous, but it's honest work.

Right now, you're a 1/1 with Menace. Nobody is scared of you. That is exactly the position you want to be in. Let your opponents spend their early turns developing their own plans and assume you're the least dangerous person at the table.

You are not. But they'll figure that out around turn five.

Mid Game Strategy: Feed the Machine

This is where Super Shredder stops being a curiosity and starts raising a bit of concern.

Once he's on the battlefield and the counters are flowing, your goal is simple: keep the sacrifice engine running every single turn without interruption.

Viscera Seer lets you sacrifice freely and scry your way to the good stuff. Carrion Feeder grows right alongside Shredder. Skullclamp turns every 1/1 token into two cards and a counter on your commander, which means you're simultaneously drawing gas and making him bigger. It's almost rude how good that is.

Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos are where the midgame gets truly unpleasant for everyone else. When your creatures die, theirs die too. Their permanents leaving? More counters for Shredder. It creates a feedback loop that opponents really struggle to escape once it's running.

Protect Shredder here. A Swiftfoot Boots or a well-timed Imp's Mischief can save your entire game plan from the one person at the table who remembered to pack exile effects.

By the end of the midgame, a healthy Shredder should be sitting at six, seven, maybe eight counters. Still has Menace. Still costs two mana to recast if something goes wrong. Everything is fine. Things are great, actually.

Late Game Strategy: Become Perfection

Super Shredder is not here to grind forever. He came too close.

By the late game, your sacrifice engines are fully online, and the counter pile has become genuinely embarrassing. Now you turn all that work into wins.

Hatred is one of the most explosive finishers in mono-black. Pay life, pump Shredder's power by that amount, and swing for the kill. With Menace already forcing your opponent to need two blockers, Hatred turns a combat step into a sudden death sentence. One swing, one payment, one very unhappy opponent.

Lashwrithe and Nightmare Lash scale with your swamp count and can push Shredder into one-shot territory almost entirely on their own. Nothing says "I have molded myself into perfection" quite like a commander with a sword made out of your own lands.

Gravecrawler loops are the late-game engine that gets out of hand fast. With a zombie on the field and a free sacrifice outlet, Gravecrawler dies, comes back, dies again, and comes back again — each loop dropping another counter on Shredder while everyone at the table stares in increasingly horrified silence.

Read the table. The moment someone looks vulnerable, go for it. Shredder decks punish hesitation almost as much as they punish combat.

5 Must-Include Cards for Super Shredder

Skullclamp

Skullclamp is the engine that keeps this deck from running out of gas. Equip it to any 1/1 token, let it die in the completely natural and planned way, and draw two cards. In a deck built around sacrifice, this is not a value card — it is load-bearing infrastructure.

With Shredder on the battlefield, every Skullclamp kill also puts a counter on him. You are drawing cards and growing your commander simultaneously. For a one mana equip cost, you'd be hard pressed to find a better deal in all of Commander.

Grave Pact

Grave Pact is what turns your sacrifice engine from a personal hobby into everyone else's problem. Whenever one of your creatures dies, each opponent must sacrifice a creature. In a four-player pod where you're killing two or three creatures a turn, your opponents are constantly hemorrhaging their boards.

More of their permanents leaving means more counters on Shredder. Grave Pact doesn't just protect you. It actively grows your commander while systematically dismantling every strategy across the table. The look on someone's face when they realize they have to sacrifice again is worth the price of the card alone.

Gravecrawler

Gravecrawler is the infinite fuel source this deck fantasizes about at night. As long as you control a zombie, you can cast it straight from your graveyard. Pair it with any free sacrifice outlet, Viscera Seer, Carrion Feeder, Phyrexian Altar, and it dies and comes back as many times as you have patience or mana.

Each loop puts another counter on Super Shredder. One well-set-up turn can take him from a six-counter nuisance to a twenty-counter endgame in the time it takes your opponents to realize what's happening. By the time they figure it out, it's too late to do anything about it.

Dictate of Erebos

Dictate of Erebos is Grave Pact's faster, sneakier cousin. It does the same job but comes with Flash, which means you can hold it up on someone else's turn and drop it at exactly the worst possible moment for them.

Having both Grave Pact and Dictate active at the same time creates a sacrifice loop so oppressive that opponents legitimately have to choose between attacking into you and keeping any board presence at all. Most people cannot manage both. Most people make the wrong choice.

Bolas's Citadel

Bolas's Citadel is one of the most dangerous late-game cards in mono-black Commander, and it fits this deck like a glove. You can play cards from the top of your library by paying life instead of mana, which means you can dump your entire deck onto the battlefield for nothing but hit points.

In a deck already draining life and running Shredder as a constant threat, the life payment is manageable. And every creature you drop and immediately sacrifice off the top? Another counter. Bolas's Citadel turns your life total into a second resource and your library into a sacrifice engine. It is, in the most respectful way possible, completely unhinged.

Is Super Shredder the Commander for You?

Super Shredder is one of the most naturally rewarding commanders in mono-black.

He scales with everything your deck already wants to do. He costs two mana. He punishes passive tables. He turns the most interactive games into a feast.

Build around sacrifice.

Keep the engine running every turn.

And when Shredder is staring across the table with fourteen counters, Menace, and a Hatred in hand?

Your opponents will know fear just like Hamato did.