The Commander
Menace
When God-Eternal Bontu enters, sacrifice any number of other permanents, then draw that many cards.
When God-Eternal Bontu dies or is put into exile from the battlefield, you may put it into its owner's library third from the top.
Guide
Gameplan
God-Eternal Bontu is a mono-black sacrifice/aristocrats payoff that turns expendable permanents into raw card advantage and recurring value. Flood the board with tokens and cheap fodder, then sacrifice them on Bontu's ETB to refill your hand. Loop death triggers, grind the table down, and close with a big drain or a single lethal attack.
Strengths
- Refills your hand instantly on ETB, fueling explosive card advantage in mono-black
- Hard to kill permanently thanks to the library-tuck death trigger
- Menace makes it a real threat that's tough to chump-block
- Mono-black gives access to the best tutors, ramp, and recursion in the format
Weaknesses
- Bontu itself doesn't generate fodder—the deck must build that engine separately
- Color identity locked into black means no countermagic and weak enchantment/artifact removal
- Exile, bounce, and -X/-X effects sidestep the death trigger's resilience
- Sacrifice ETB only triggers when Bontu re-enters, so flicker/recast loops are needed for repeated value
Key Cards
- Ashnod's Altar — Free sacrifice outlet that converts your fodder into mana to recast Bontu or fuel drains.
- Phyrexian Altar — Sacrifices creatures for any color of mana and lets you loop Bontu casts cheaply.
- Bastion of Remembrance — Turns every sacrifice into a Blood Artist drain, providing a non-combat win condition.
- Pitiless Plunderer — Generates Treasure off creature deaths, ramping you to recast Bontu repeatedly.
- Grave Pact — Forces opponents to sacrifice each time your creatures die, devastating their boards.
- Victimize — Reanimation and sac value that pairs perfectly with Bontu's fodder-hungry engine.
Upgrade Path
Add fast mana (Dark Ritual, Jet Medallion, Bubbling Muck) and efficient tutors (Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor) to find your altars and drain payoffs faster. Build a tight loop—Phyrexian Altar plus a free recursion engine and a Blood Artist effect—to convert Bontu into an instant kill. Round out with strong mono-black removal and a Torment of Hailfire or Exsanguinate as a mana-dump finisher.
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 via Blood Artist effects like Bastion of Remembrance and Zulaport Cutthroat
- ▸Beating down with a menace 5/6 backed by sacrifice synergies
- ▸Assembling a sacrifice-and-recast loop with altars plus a death-trigger drain for infinite damage
- ▸Out-carding the table with Bontu's draw and closing via a big finisher like Torment of Hailfire
Archetypes
- Aristocrats — Bontu rewards sacrificing permanents en masse and pairs with death-trigger drain payoffs.
- Tokens — Token generators produce the fodder Bontu sacrifices for cards each time it enters.
- Reanimator — Cheap recursion lets you sacrifice big creatures to Bontu and bring them back for value.
- Control — Mono-black removal and the library-tuck trigger let Bontu grind out long, attrition-heavy games.
Combos
- Colossal Grave-Reaver + Altar of Dementia + God-Eternal Bontu
→ Infinite LTB, Infinite ETB, Infinite sacrifice triggers
- God-Eternal Bontu + Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder + Carnival of Souls + Deathgreeter + Phyrexian Altar
→ Infinite card draw, Infinite colored mana, Infinite death triggers
- Disa the Restless + Altar of Dementia + God-Eternal Bontu + Maskwood Nexus
→ Infinite death triggers, Infinite sacrifice triggers, Infinite self-mill
- Disa the Restless + Altar of Dementia + God-Eternal Bontu + Conspiracy
→ Infinite ETB, Infinite LTB, Infinite death triggers
- Disa the Restless + Altar of Dementia + God-Eternal Bontu + Leyline of Transformation
→ Infinite ETB, Infinite LTB, Infinite death triggers
Combos via Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (B), by popularity.
