RakdosLegendary Creature — Symbiote VillainCarnage, Crimson Chaos
Mana value4Rank#9,032
The Commander
Trample
When Carnage enters, return target creature card with mana value 3 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. It gains "This creature attacks each combat if able" and "When this creature deals combat damage to a player, sacrifice it."
Mayhem
Guide
Gameplan
Carnage is a recurring reanimation engine: every time he enters he drags back a cheap creature that's forced to attack and then sacrifice itself, fueling an aristocrats/sacrifice engine in BR. You grind value through repeated death and combat triggers, recast Carnage from the graveyard with Mayhem after discarding him, and close with trample beats and death-payoff drains.
Strengths
- Built-in reanimation that triggers every time Carnage enters, rewarding blink/bounce and recasting
- Mayhem lets you rebuy him from the graveyard cheaply, making him hard to keep down
- Forced attack + auto-sacrifice fuels aristocrats death triggers and combat-damage payoffs for free
- Trample plus the reanimated attacker pressures life totals immediately
Weaknesses
- The reanimation is capped at mana value 3 or less, so no big bombs off the ETB
- Heavy reliance on the commander; repeated removal slows the whole engine
- BR lacks card-draw and ramp depth, so it can run out of gas
- The sacrificed attacker can be chump-blocked or removed before its death trigger pays off
Key Cards
- Blood Artist — Turns every forced sacrifice and combat death into incremental life drain across the table.
- Zulaport Cutthroat — Stacks with Blood Artist to make each recurring sacrifice a guaranteed drain.
- Mayhem Devil — Pings opponents on every sacrifice the engine produces, converting Carnage's loop into damage.
- Mahadi, Emporium Master — Produces Treasure off each end-step death, refueling mana for recasting Carnage.
- Faithless Looting — Discards Carnage to enable Mayhem and bins reanimation targets cheaply.
- Goldnight Castigator-style aggressive attackers — Cheap evasive bodies make ideal repeated reanimation fodder that attacks and dies on cue.
Upgrade Path
Add reliable discard outlets (Faithless Looting, Putrid Imp) and sacrifice outlets so you control timing and trigger Mayhem on demand. Lean into a tight aristocrats payoff package plus blink/bounce (Conjurer's Closet, Brokers/Cloudstone-style effects) to re-fire Carnage's ETB, and improve ramp with Treasure producers and rituals to recast him every turn. Tutors like Diabolic Intent and recursion such as Phyrexian Reclamation make the engine far more consistent.
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
- ▸Drain the table with Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, and Mayhem Devil off repeated sacrifices
- ▸Beat down with trample damage from Carnage and recurring evasive attackers
- ▸Loop ETB/death triggers (e.g., bounce Carnage with reanimation targets that have strong death triggers)
- ▸Burn finish via sacrifice pingers combined with a graveyard recursion engine
Archetypes
- Aristocrats — The forced sacrifice each turn is a built-in death engine that pairs with Blood Artist effects.
- Reanimator — Carnage's ETB recursion plus Mayhem self-recursion forms a low-cost reanimation loop.
- Sacrifice/Value — ETB and death triggers on the reanimated creature can be looped with bounce and blink.
- Aggro — Trample plus an extra forced attacker each turn applies steady combat pressure.
Combos
- Carnage, Crimson Chaos + Glasspool Mimic // Glasspool Shore
→ Infinite LTB, Infinite ETB, Infinite death triggers
- Carnage, Crimson Chaos + Phantasmal Image
→ Infinite LTB, Infinite ETB, Infinite death triggers
- Carnage, Crimson Chaos + Flesh Duplicate
→ Infinite LTB, Infinite ETB, Infinite death triggers
- Carnage, Crimson Chaos + Saw in Half + Activated Sleeper
→ Infinite LTB, Infinite ETB, Infinite death triggers
- Carnage, Crimson Chaos + Deceptive Frostkite
→ Infinite LTB, Infinite ETB, Infinite death triggers
Combos via Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (BR), by popularity.
