RakdosLegendary Creature — Dragon SkeletonBladewing, Deathless Tyrant
Mana value7Rank#6,191
The Commander
Flying, haste
Whenever Bladewing deals combat damage to a player or planeswalker, for each creature card in your graveyard, create a 2/2 black Zombie Knight creature token with menace.
Guide
Gameplan
Bladewing is a recursive Dragon-tribal aristocrats engine: fill your graveyard with creatures, then connect with the flying, haste commander to flood the board with menace Zombie Knights. From there you swing wide, sacrifice for value, or recur threats to grind opponents out.
Strengths
- Flying plus haste means immediate, hard-to-block damage that triggers the token engine the turn it lands
- Generates an explosive, scaling army the more creatures sit in your graveyard
- Excellent synergy with sacrifice payoffs, recursion, and go-wide token strategies
- Self-replacing value engine in a color pair packed with reanimation and removal
Weaknesses
- Seven mana and entirely combat-dependent—if Bladewing is blocked or removed, you get nothing
- Tokens only appear AFTER damage, so the payoff lags the investment
- Vulnerable to a single block, fog, or evasion answer disrupting the swing
- Needs setup (graveyard stocking) before the trigger is meaningful
- No built-in protection or evasion beyond flying
Key Cards
- Buried Alive — Dumps three creatures straight to the graveyard, instantly inflating Bladewing's token output.
- Fauna Shaman — Repeatedly tutors and pitches creatures into the yard to fuel and stock the engine—wait, mono-BR; use a card-filtering effect instead.
- Ashnod's Altar — Sacrifices the swarm of Zombie Knights for explosive mana to recast and reanimate threats.
- Goldnight Castigator — Combat-damage doublers and extra-combat effects multiply both damage and token triggers.
- Dragon Tempest — Pings opponents whenever Dragons enter and pumps your fliers, supporting the Dragon-tribal shell.
Upgrade Path
Add fast graveyard-stocking (Buried Alive, Final Parting, entomb effects) and reliable evasion or protection (Whispersilk Cloak, Rogue's Passage) so Bladewing connects every turn. Layer in aristocrats drains (Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, Bastion of Remembrance) plus sacrifice outlets (Ashnod's Altar, Phyrexian Altar) to convert tokens into reach. Top it off with extra-combat enablers (Aggravated Assault, Combat Celebrant) and reanimation (Reanimate, Animate Dead) to double output and recover from removal.
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
- ▸Swing wide with the menace Zombie Knight army for lethal combat damage
- ▸Sacrifice the tokens to drain payoffs like Blood Artist or Bastion of Remembrance
- ▸Combine extra-combat or damage-doubling effects to multiply triggers into overwhelming boards
- ▸Reanimate and recur large Dragons or threats to grind opponents into the ground
Archetypes
- Aristocrats — The flood of Zombie Knight tokens pairs perfectly with sacrifice outlets and death-trigger payoffs.
- Tokens — Connecting in combat produces a wide, menace-laden army that snowballs each turn.
- Reanimator — BR loves filling the graveyard, which doubles as both reanimation fuel and Bladewing token fuel.
- Dragon Tribal — Bladewing slots into a Dragon shell with anthem and ETB-damage payoffs.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (BR), by popularity.
