The Commander
Crovax enters with four +1/+1 counters on it.
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may sacrifice a creature. If you do, put a +1/+1 counter on Crovax. If you don't, remove a +1/+1 counter from Crovax.
: Crovax gains flying until end of turn.
Guide
Gameplan
Crovax is a mono-black aristocrats commander that wants a steady stream of expendable creatures to feed his upkeep trigger, growing into an evasive 8/8+ flyer while your sacrifice outlets and death triggers grind the table out. You play a value-driven attrition game: deploy token generators, sacrifice them for triggers, drain life, and recur threats until you can swing for lethal or assemble a kill combo.
Strengths
- Self-contained evasive threat that only needs a single black mana to attack in the air
- Sacrifice trigger has natural synergy with aristocrats payoffs and token engines
- Mono-black gives access to the format's best tutors, recursion, and removal
- Cheap to recast and hard to keep down without exile removal
Weaknesses
- Forced to shrink (or sacrifice a creature) every upkeep if you run out of fodder
- No card advantage or protection stapled to the commander itself
- Mono-black struggles with enchantment/artifact removal and lacks instant-speed interaction breadth
- Telegraphed Voltron threat that invites chump blocks and removal; needs evasion or trample backup
Key Cards
- Bitterblossom — Generates a free token each turn to feed Crovax's upkeep without losing board presence.
- Blood Artist — Turns every sacrificed creature into incremental table-wide drain that closes games.
- Phyrexian Altar — Free sacrifice outlet that turns creatures into mana and fuels combos and triggers.
- Pawn of Ulamog — Replaces each sacrificed creature with an Eldrazi Spawn, giving endless fodder and ramp.
- Skullclamp — Converts your 1-toughness sac fodder into a relentless card-draw engine.
- Gray Merchant of Asphodel — Massive devotion-based life swing that punctuates the mono-black drain plan.
Upgrade Path
Add fast mana (Dark Ritual, Jet Medallion, Nykthos) and tutors (Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor) to find your engines faster, and prioritize free recurring fodder like Bitterblossom, Pawn of Ulamog, and Ophiomancer so you never shrink Crovax. To push toward higher power, build toward a compact infinite combo such as a persist creature with a free sac outlet plus a Blood Artist payoff, backed by reanimation like Reanimate and Animate Dead to rebuild after 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
- ▸Commander damage from a giant flying Crovax
- ▸Aristocrats drain via Blood Artist effects sacrificing creatures
- ▸Gray Merchant of Asphodel devotion drain
- ▸Infinite sacrifice combos (e.g. persist creature + Pawn of Ulamog/Phyrexian Altar + Blood Artist)
Archetypes
- Aristocrats — His upkeep sacrifice trigger pairs perfectly with death-trigger payoffs like Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat.
- Tokens — Token producers give you endless creatures to feed Crovax and your sac outlets every turn.
- Voltron — Crovax naturally grows huge and gains flying for one black mana, making commander damage a real plan.
- Reanimator — Black's recursion lets you sacrifice and rebuy fatties for repeated value and combo loops.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (B), by popularity.
