The Commander
Flying
At the beginning of each end step, if a creature died this turn, create a Food token. (It's an artifact with "
, 
, Sacrifice this token: You gain 3 life.")
, Sacrifice another creature or artifact: Old Flitterfang gets +2/+2 until end of turn.
Guide
Gameplan
Old Flitterfang turns every creature death into Food, fueling a mono-black aristocrats/sacrifice engine that grinds value while building toward lethal damage or drain. You sacrifice cheap creatures and the Food it makes to trigger death payoffs, then pump Flitterfang to swing in the air or close with mass drain. The deck snowballs in long games as Food piles up and your sacrifice loops generate inevitability.
Strengths
- Generates incremental value every turn just by creatures dying anywhere on the board
- Mono-black gives access to elite tutors, recursion, and removal
- Food synergizes with lifegain and artifact payoffs for engine flexibility
- Built-in evasive threat that can grow into a real clock
Weaknesses
- Flitterfang's own pump ability is mana-hungry and not a fast win on its own
- Single-color means no access to blue counters or red/green ramp diversity
- Relies on a steady stream of dying creatures—gets choked by graveyard hate
- Vulnerable to creature removal stalling the death triggers
Key Cards
- Blood Artist — Turns every death your sacrifice engine causes into incremental drain across the table.
- Zulaport Cutthroat — A second Blood Artist effect that converts your sacrifices into a reliable win condition.
- Bastion of Remembrance — Enchantment redundancy for drain payoffs that's hard to remove with creature hate.
- Pitiless Plunderer — Each death also makes Treasure, generating explosive mana to fuel sacrifice loops.
- Gravecrawler — Recurs from the graveyard repeatedly as free sacrifice fodder for the engine.
- Phyrexian Altar — Free sacrifice outlet plus mana, enabling combo loops with recursive creatures.
- Ashnod's Altar — Sac outlet that ramps and pumps Flitterfang while triggering death payoffs.
- Witch's Oven — Repeatedly bakes creatures into Food, fitting Flitterfang's theme and feeding loops.
Upgrade Path
Add fast mana (Dark Ritual, Jet Medallion, Bubbling Muck) and free sacrifice outlets (Viscera Seer, Carrion Feeder) to enable explosive turns. Build toward a dedicated loop—Gravecrawler + Phyrexian Altar + a Blood Artist effect, or Pitiless Plunderer engines—and add tutors like Demonic Tutor, Diabolic Intent, and Vampiric Tutor to assemble pieces reliably. Round out with graveyard recursion (Reassembling Skeleton) and strong interaction (Toxic Deluge, Damnation) to protect the engine.
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 to zero with Blood Artist / Zulaport Cutthroat plus a sacrifice loop
- ▸Swing for evasive lethal with a pumped-up flying Flitterfang
- ▸Combo loop with Phyrexian Altar, a recursive creature, and a death payoff
- ▸Grind out incremental advantage until opponents run out of resources
Archetypes
- Aristocrats — Death triggers from sacrificing creatures plus Blood Artist effects form the core engine.
- Food/Lifegain — Flitterfang's Food production pairs with lifegain payoffs and Food matters cards.
- Reanimator — Mono-black recursion lets you sacrifice big bodies and bring them back for repeated value.
- Combo — Free sacrifice altars plus recursive creatures and drain enable loop kills.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (B), by popularity.
