Mairsil Activated Abilities Tribal EDH (EDH / Commander)

Game Plan: Combo. Wait wait, come back. These are fun, quirky combos that require 4+ cards and you'll never see in another deck.

The Bread

Mairsil, the Pretender has an amazing ability to enter the battlefield, exile an artifact or creature card from your hand or graveyard, and then permanently (and I mean permanently) gain the activated abilities of those cards. Since Mairsil doesn't reference a card exiled with the ability (instead just any cards exiled with a particular counter), he can leave the battlefield and come back with the same abilities as before. So the name of the game is: 1) Somehow have Mairsil enter the battlefield multiple times to exile multiple cards with activated abilities and 2) Use those abilities in ways that were never meant to be used. The best ways to do this are either use activated abilities that 1) come along with other non-activated abilities that hamper them, 2) reference some characteristic of the card they're attached to, which will be different when it's on Mairsil, or 3) weren't meant to be used multiple times in a turn cycle. Since Mairsil can only user each ability once per player's turn, infinites are off the table (for the most part - we'll get to that).

The Butter

Aetherling allows you to pay a single blue mana to blink Mairsil ("blink" for this guide means coming back at the next end step - "flicker" will instead be comes back instantly), causing him to enter the battlefield again, and allowing you to exile another activated ability. This can be done at instant speed, so it's also your primary source of removal protection. Since Mairsil will come back at the next end step, you can also use this to dodge non-targeted forms of removal (like boardwipes) - just make sure you use it on an opponent's main phase (not end step) if you're planning on having him around next turn. This card is always the first card you should be digging and tutoring for, and should always be the first card you aim to exile with Mairsil. Every other ability is also useful: being unblockable is a backup combo piece with Tree of Perdition, in case your Hateflayer got sniped, Giving +1/-1 makes your Tree of Perdition combo a bit more resistant to life gain, and Giving -1/+1 makes Mairsil more resistant to board wipes like Toxic Deluge.

Okay, what if you don't have Aetherling? Surely this isn't a hidden partner with commander deck? Here are your backups to Aetherling in order of usefulness:
1) Argent Sphinx has the most important ability of Atherling, but it doesn't have any of the others, and you must control three or more artifacts. This is important, as the deck isn't an artifact deck. I've filled up as many artifacts as can be reasonable to make sure this backup is viable, but it doesn't always happen that you have three artifacts by turn 4. Keep that in mind. As well, one of your combos with Nevinyrral's Disk won't work with Argent Sphinx, because it will destroy all of your artifacts.
2) Sakashima of a Thousand Faces, Spark Double, Quantum Misalignment, and Irenicus's Vile Duplication will give you a single-use ETB to add a single card to your ability list. Sometimes it makes sense to open up the game by exiling Oriq Loremage, Jace's Archivist, Asmodeus the Archfiend, or Arcanis the Omnipotent to dig for your Aetherling, then use a clone spell to lock it in.
3) If you really don't have anything else, then Riptide Laboratory or Arcanis the Omnipotent can bounce Mairsil back to hand. I really only thing of these as protection, but it once again might make sense to exile Oriq Loremage or Arcanis the Omnipotent to dig for your pieces and then spend an absorbitant amount of mana to recast Mairsil later. This really is only for emergencies.

Haste Enablers
Before we talk about combos, it's important to talk about haste. Since Mairsil isn't really about infinite combos, most of the value you get from Mairsil and the combos require blinking him each turn and using all of your abilities on all of your opponents' turns. Since most of the abilities require tapping in some way, this means we need hast enablers. After Aetherling, this is the second most important thing to tutor for. Here are your haste enablers in order of how good they are (what you'd want to tutor for first).

1) Anger - I've included as many mountains as possible to have Anger work out. It also works great with most of your tutor effects, since they put it directly into the battlefield. Be careful with tutoring for Anger with Intuition, since it'll end up in your hand, and casting Anger, since your opponents will try to keep it alive as long as possible (and there really aren't any sac outlets).
2) Thousand-Year Elixir - Effectively haste for what you need it for (activated abilities) and also doubles as an untapper. You need this on the battlefield, not on Mairsil
3) Rising of the Day
4) Goro-Goro, Disciple of Ryusei - This is cheap enough to cast early if you want a blocker or something, and you don't get stuck if your opponents leave it on the field. Putting it on Mairsil is also good - you just lose an extra mana per turn you want to do your stuff on. Note you can't use any mana abilities on mairsil that require tapping to pay for this cost.
5) Flamekin Village - this is just emergency backup. Note it will only give haste once per untap, and blinking or flickering Mairsil will cause it to go away.

Combos
Okay finally. You've got a blinker, you've got a haste enabler. Now how do you win?

• Tree of Perdition + Hateflayer: This is your #1 combo. For 3 mana, take a player out of the game. From untapped: activate tree, resolve, then activate hateflayer. From tapped: activate hateflayer and hold priority, then activate tree of perdition on top. Some notes:
  1) Works really nicely with Gilded Lotus, since it will pay for hateflayer's activation. From untapped: activate lotus (make 3 red), then proceed with normal tapped route.
  2) This only kills one person per turn normally. If you have enough mana (Gilded Lotus, Training Grounds really helps), you can blink Mairsil each turn and kill everyone, though. Make sure to kill them on their upkeep.
  3) I don't have enough mana to kill everyone. Who do I kill? Kill the last players in turn rotation, keeping your threat of killing the others players up. If someone tries to interrupt your win, kill them at instant speed. Otherwise, kill on the upkeep of the person you're killing.
  4) When do I kill someone? This is actually rather important, because Mairsil cares a lot about how many turns there are in a rotation - killing someone too early actually cuts down on not only your value, but how many people you can probably kill. So in general, if you're worried about instant speed interaction, it's best to kill them on your turn. Otherwise, it's better to kill them on their upkeep because their entire turn will finish even if they're dead as long as they were alive when it started. This means you can kill someone on their upkeep and blink Mairsil, having him come back on their end step, before anyone else has had time to untap. If you kill them on someone else's turn, you don't get this chance and you may have to face extra interaction.
  5) Note that the tree's ability permanently swaps Mairsil's toughness, so the combo can only kill multiple people if you blink/flicker Mairsil to reset his toughness, or use the Aetherling's +1/-1 ability with infinite mana
  6) Consider adding Spikeshot Elder if you want as backup for Hateflayer

• Nevinyrral's Disk: Not truly game-winning, but will definitely lock your opponents out of the game. You need Aetherling for this combo, since the disk will destroy your artifacts, causing Ardent Sphinx to not work. If you want it to be a true lock, then you'll also probably want Anger or Goro-Goro, Disciple of Ryusei and some extra lands to activate it on opponents' turns. Simply activate the disk and hold priority, then activate Aetherling's Blink.

• Quicksilver Elemental: This card can combo in two separate ways:
  1) Play it as a creature, then activate its ability to copy Mairsil's abilities. Quicksilver has all of Mairsil's abilities without the restriction of being able to use them once per turn. Generate infinite mana with Gilded Lotus and any untapper, then use your abilities infinite times.
  2) Exile with Mairsil, then activate to copy Mairsil's abilities. Mairsil gets a fresh copy of all of his abilities, which are all distinct from the earlier versions, so these ones haven't been used yet this turn. This includes the Quicksilver Elemental ability, which can be immediately used again. Strategy is much the same as above except you need to tap Gilded Lotus for blue -> activate quicksilver -> use any blue or generic untapper. You can use Pili-Pala as your untapper to help filter this mana.

• Deadeye Navigator: This adds a flicker to Mairsil, which together with a haste enabler and Gilded Lotus allows you to generate infinite mana and use your abilities infinitely

That's really it. The rest of the deck is focused on digging for pieces, protecting Mairsil (since you're essentially playing Voltron combo), and removing threats.