Price$14.63 – $25.99
Buy on TCGplayerBloodchief Ascension
Enchantment
Legal Salt 1.14Rank #735
At the beginning of each end step, if an opponent lost 2 or more life this turn, you may put a quest counter on this enchantment. (Damage causes loss of life.)
Whenever a card is put into an opponent's graveyard from anywhere, if this enchantment has three or more quest counters on it, you may have that player lose 2 life. If you do, you gain 2 life.
Why is this card good?
Bloodchief Ascension is a slow-burn engine that flips into a game-ender, especially in mill decks. The hard part is the setup: you need three quest counters, meaning opponents lose 2+ life on three separate turns. In multiplayer that's usually trivial — any combat, fetchland, shock, or your own commander's pings gets you there.
Once active, every card hitting any opponent's graveyard drains them for 2 and gains you 2. That's the payoff: paired with Mindcrank, it's an infinite loop (life loss mills, milled cards trigger Ascension, repeat) that kills the whole table. Even without the combo, it's a brutal taxing effect in mill builds — every land, dredge, or self-mill they do punishes them.
Wants it: dedicated mill decks (Sygg, Phenax, Bruvac), and aristocrats/drain shells that already churn opponents' yards.
Skip it in decks with no mill or way to reliably fill enemy graveyards — without that, the second ability does almost nothing, and a vanilla enchantment that drains 2 occasionally isn't worth the slot.
Related cards
Mindcrank
Combos with Ascension for infinite mill/drain loop.
Duskmantle Guildmage
Same infinite drain combo via mill triggers.
Sanguine Bond
Lifegain-to-damage drain payoff in similar build.
Exquisite Blood
Lifegain/lifeloss engine pairing with Ascension's drain.
Mesmeric Orb
Constant graveyard fills triggering Ascension drain.
Painful Quandary
Punishing black enchantment forcing life loss.
Vicious Shadows
Death-triggered damage in similar drain strategy.
Megrim
Discard-based life loss payoff enchantment.
Printings (6)
Combos (4)
- Bloodchief Ascension + Mindcrank
→ Infinite mill, Near-infinite lifegain, Near-infinite lifegain triggers
- Zur's Weirding + Bloodchief Ascension
→ Your opponents mill cards instead of drawing them, Lock
- Hair-Strung Koto + Bloodchief Ascension + Famished Paladin
→ Infinite mill, Near-infinite lifegain, Near-infinite lifegain triggers
- Hair-Strung Koto + Bloodchief Ascension + Lurking Roper
→ Infinite mill, Near-infinite lifegain, Near-infinite lifegain triggers
Rulings (5)
- 2009-10-01
Bloodchief Ascension's first ability has an "intervening 'if' clause." It won't trigger at all unless an opponent has already lost 2 or more life by the time the end step begins.
- 2009-10-01
Bloodchief Ascension's second ability doesn't behave like a leaves-the-battlefield triggered ability, since the card put into an opponent's graveyard may come from anywhere. If a Bloodchief Ascension with three quest counters on it and a permanent an opponent owns are destroyed at the same time, for example, the game will not "look back in time" at the game state, and Bloodchief Ascension's second ability won't trigger.
- 2009-10-01
For the first ability to trigger, a single opponent must have lost 2 life. Two opponents each losing 1 life won't cause it to trigger. It will trigger a maximum of once per turn, no matter how many opponents have lost 2 or more life.
- 2009-10-01
Bloodchief Ascension's first ability checks how much life was lost by each opponent over the course of the entire turn, even if Bloodchief Ascension wasn't on the battlefield the whole time.
- 2009-10-01
Bloodchief Ascension's first ability checks only whether life was lost. It doesn't care whether life was also gained. For example, if an opponent lost 4 life and gained 6 life during the turn, that player will have a higher life total than they started the turn with — but Bloodchief Ascension's first ability will still trigger.