The Commander
Minion creatures get +1/+1.
, Exile Balthor: Each player returns all black and all red creature cards from their graveyard to the battlefield.
Guide
Gameplan
Balthor is a mono-black reanimator/aristocrats commander who fills graveyards, then uses his sacrifice ability to mass-reanimate every black creature you've stockpiled (and watch out for opponents' red/black creatures too). You durdle with self-mill and recursion early, then explode with a one-sided board wipe in reverse, capitalizing with a sac outlet and a payoff to convert that army into a kill.
Strengths
- One-time mass reanimation can flood the board with your best creatures in a single activation
- Mono-black gives access to the deepest tutor and reanimation suite in the format
- Self-mill and discard make 'overloading' the graveyard a feature, not a downside
- Works as a value engine even without combos via repeatable recursion
Weaknesses
- Balthor's ability exiles himself and is one-shot, so you must set it up perfectly or rebuild
- His activation also returns opponents' black/red creatures, which can backfire badly
- Mono-black struggles with non-creature permanent removal and graveyard hate shuts the deck off
- Triple-black plus the BBB activation cost is color-intensive and slow
Key Cards
- Gravecrawler — A recurring sacrifice fodder Zombie that also benefits as a Minion-adjacent body and fuels aristocrats loops.
- Buried Alive — Stacks your graveyard with exactly the black creatures you want to reanimate before activating Balthor.
- Bojuka Bog — Lets you exile an opponent's graveyard in response to denying them creatures from your mass-reanimation.
- Victimize — Cheap repeatable two-for-one reanimation that doesn't rely on Balthor's one-shot ability.
- Bloodghast — Self-recurring creature that returns on landfall, making it perfect sac fodder and graveyard filler.
- Gray Merchant of Asphodel — Turns a wide reanimated board into a massive life-swing kill in mono-black.
Upgrade Path
Add fast mana (Dark Ritual, Cabal Coffers, Nykthos) to power out Balthor and his BBB activation ahead of curve, and lean into a dedicated combo finish like Mikaeus/Triskelion or a Gravecrawler-Phyrexian Altar-Blood Artist loop. Tighten the tutor package (Demonic/Vampiric Tutor, Buried Alive, Entomb) so you control exactly what comes back, and include graveyard hate like Bojuka Bog and Agent of Erebos to neutralize the downside of returning opponents' creatures.
Core Cards
The most-played cards for this commander, built from aggregated deck data (the Mythic Graph). Build public decks to seed it.
Win Conditions
- ▸Gary (Gray Merchant of Asphodel) loops or big devotion drains for lethal
- ▸Aristocrats engine draining the table via Blood Artist/Zulaport Cutthroat sac loops
- ▸Beating down with a mass-reanimated board buffed by Balthor and anthem effects
Archetypes
- Reanimator — His ability and color identity reward dumping fat creatures into the yard and bringing them all back at once.
- Aristocrats — A sacrifice outlet plus recursive bodies turns reanimated creatures into repeatable death triggers and drain.
- Zombies/Tribal — Mono-black Zombie commander synergizes with Zombie payoffs and Gravecrawler-style recursion.
- Combo — Reanimation loops and sac outlets enable persist/sacrifice and Gravecrawler engines for infinite drain.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (B), by popularity.
