The Commander
As long as your life total is less than or equal to half your starting life total, Bane has indestructible.
Whenever another nontoken creature you control dies, target opponent may have you draw a card. If they don't, you may put a creature card with equal or lesser toughness from your hand onto the battlefield.
Guide
Gameplan
Bane is an Esper aristocrats engine that turns your dying nontoken creatures into free value: every death lets an opponent choose to give you a card or let you drop a creature from hand for free. You sacrifice creatures repeatedly, reuse death triggers, and grind opponents out while Bane stays online as an indestructible blocker when your life dips low. Close games through repeated reanimation/cheating fatties or a sacrifice loop drain.
Strengths
- Every nontoken creature death is pure value with no downside—you win the 'choice' either way
- Cheats large creatures into play for free, fueling a beefy board
- Built-in card advantage keeps you ahead in long grindy games
- Becomes a hard-to-remove indestructible blocker once your life is at or below half
- Three colors give access to the best removal, tutors, and sac outlets in the format
Weaknesses
- Effect only triggers off nontoken creatures dying, so you need a steady supply of fodder and sac outlets
- Cheated creatures are capped by toughness equal to the dead creature, limiting your biggest payoffs early
- Reliant on creatures on the battlefield—board wipes can strand you with an empty hand and no triggers
- Indestructibility requires being at low life, which is risky against aggressive or burn-heavy tables
- Opponents control the trigger choice, sometimes denying the line you want most
Key Cards
- Viscera Seer — Free sacrifice outlet that lets you trigger Bane at will and scry through your deck.
- Ashnod's Altar — Repeatable, mana-positive sac outlet that turns creatures into deaths and ramp simultaneously.
- Grave Pact — Forces opponents to sacrifice each time your creatures die, multiplying board impact.
- Reveillark — Returns creatures on death, creating recursion loops that feed Bane's trigger endlessly.
- Karmic Guide — Reanimates fodder and combos with Reveillark and a sac outlet for infinite death triggers.
- Pitiless Plunderer — Generates Treasure on every death, funding sac outlets and explosive cheating turns.
Upgrade Path
Add fast sac outlets (Viscera Seer, Carrion Feeder, Ashnod's Altar) and death payoffs (Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, Bastion of Remembrance) to convert Bane's triggers into reliable wins. Layer in recursion engines like Reveillark, Karmic Guide, and persist creatures to loop, plus tutors (Demonic Tutor, Diabolic Intent) and reanimation (Reanimate, Animate Dead) to find and abuse your biggest fatties. Tighten the manabase with fetches, duals, and fast mana to enable explosive cheating turns.
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
- ▸Aristocrats drain loops with Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, and a sacrifice outlet
- ▸Cheating an overwhelming board of large creatures into play and attacking
- ▸Infinite death-trigger combos (Reveillark + Karmic Guide + sac outlet) draining the table
- ▸Grinding card and board advantage until opponents run out of resources
Archetypes
- Aristocrats — Bane rewards creatures dying with card draw or free creatures, the core aristocrats payoff.
- Reanimator — The cheat-into-play half lets you drop big creatures from hand without paying mana.
- Control — Esper colors and constant card advantage let you grind opponents into the ground.
- Combo — Persist/undying and Reveillark-style loops with sac outlets create infinite death triggers.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (BUW), by popularity.
