The Commander
Flying
Whenever a creature card is put into an opponent's graveyard from anywhere, you may pay life equal to its mana value. If you do, put it onto the battlefield under your control. It's a Warlock in addition to its other types.
If a Warlock you control would die, exile it instead.
Guide
Gameplan
Lorcan steals creature cards that hit opponents' graveyards by paying their mana value in life, building a board of your opponents' best threats while protecting them from death by exile. You want to force opponents to discard, mill, or sacrifice their creatures (or just kill them) so Lorcan can scoop them up, then convert your stolen army and high life payments into a lethal swing or drain.
Strengths
- Turns every removal spell, board wipe, edict, and mill effect into card advantage by pawning opponents' creatures onto your board
- Mono-black gives access to elite tutors, recursion, and life-gain to fuel the life payments
- Lorcan's last ability makes your Warlocks (everything you steal) immune to death, dodging wraths and sacrifice
- Steals creatures from any graveyard zone, including ones milled or discarded, not just ones that die
Weaknesses
- Seven mana and easily removed; without Lorcan on the battlefield the deck stalls
- Paying life equal to mana value is dangerous against aggro and burn
- Reliant on opponents having good creatures dying or milling—does little against spell-heavy or creatureless decks
- Mono-black struggles with enchantment/artifact removal and flying defense
Key Cards
- Bojuka Bog — Graveyard hate doubles as a threat against you, so you instead want your own forced-death effects—but cards like this remind you opponents can exile creatures before Lorcan grabs them.
- Dictate of Erebos — Forces opponents to sacrifice creatures whenever yours die, feeding Lorcan a steady stream of fresh creatures to reanimate.
- Grave Pact — Same engine as Dictate, turning your sacrifice loops into mass creature-kills that you immediately steal back.
- Damnation — A one-sided-feeling wrath: your Warlocks get exiled (kept safe) only if you choose, but it kills opponents' creatures right into Lorcan's reach.
- Whip of Erebos — Lifelink on your whole team offsets the heavy life payments Lorcan demands and provides extra reanimation.
- Toxic Deluge — A board wipe whose life cost you can afford and that dumps a pile of opposing creatures into graveyards for Lorcan.
- Bolas's Citadel — Pays life for spells, synergizing with a high-life-payment theme and providing explosive advantage.
- Cabal Coffers — Generates the massive mana mono-black needs to recast Lorcan and pay for its haymakers.
Upgrade Path
Add fast mana and reliable forced-death engines (Grave Pact, Dictate of Erebos, edict effects) so opponents' creatures keep dying into Lorcan's reach, and load up on lifegain (Whip of Erebos, Sanguine Bond) to make the life payments trivial. Prioritize tutors (Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor) and protection for Lorcan himself, then build an aristocrats payoff package (Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat) and a sacrifice outlet to convert stolen creatures into a closing drain combo.
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
- ▸Beating down with a stolen army of opponents' best creatures, including Lorcan's evasive flying body
- ▸Aristocrats drain via Blood Artist effects as stolen and sacrificed creatures die
- ▸Comboing with a sacrifice outlet and recursion to loop drains
- ▸Reanimating an opponent's bomb (Eldrazi, dragons) and swinging for lethal
Archetypes
- Theft / Reanimator — Lorcan steals opponents' dead creatures directly to your battlefield, the core of the deck.
- Aristocrats — Edict and sacrifice effects kill opponents' creatures into graveyards that Lorcan immediately claims.
- Control — Board wipes and removal both clear the table and feed Lorcan a board of stolen threats.
- Mill — Self-mill on opponents fills their graveyards with creatures for Lorcan to harvest.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (B), by popularity.
