BlackLegendary Creature — Scorpion Human VillainScorpion, Seething Striker
Mana value4Rank#12,315
The Commander
Deathtouch
At the beginning of your end step, if a creature died this turn, target creature you control connives. (Draw a card, then discard a card. If you discarded a nonland card, put a +1/+1 counter on that creature.)
Guide
Gameplan
Scorpion is a mono-black aristocrats/sacrifice value engine: you ensure a creature dies each turn so that at your end step a creature connives, filtering your draws, dumping reanimation/discard payoffs, and stacking +1/+1 counters. You grind incremental advantage off death triggers and aggressive deathtouch combat, then convert that value into a lethal swing or a sacrifice-fueled drain.
Strengths
- Repeatable card filtering and counter growth every turn that creature death is trivially easy to enable
- Deathtouch makes the commander a strong attacker and a deterrent that trades up with anything
- Plays into mono-black's deep sacrifice, recursion, and removal package
- Connive discarding nonland cards synergizes with reanimation and madness/discard payoffs
Weaknesses
- Mono-black has limited card advantage outside this engine and no real way to interact with artifacts/enchantments
- Connive only triggers if a creature died this turn, so a clean board or no fodder shuts it off
- Effect targets only one creature per turn, so it's slow value rather than explosive
- Relies on the commander surviving to grind, and it's a juicy removal target
Key Cards
- Bastion of Remembrance — Turns every creature death into guaranteed drain, punishing the fodder you sacrifice to fuel Scorpion.
- Viscera Seer — A free sacrifice outlet that reliably guarantees a creature died each turn to enable the connive trigger.
- Pitiless Plunderer — Generates treasure on each death, ramping you while you sacrifice fodder for value.
- Grave Pact — Each of your sacrifices forces opponents to lose creatures, controlling the board while triggering Scorpion.
- Reassembling Skeleton — Recurring sacrifice fodder that endlessly feeds the death requirement turn after turn.
- Midnight Reaper — Doubles down on death triggers by drawing cards whenever your nontoken creatures die.
Upgrade Path
Add efficient free sacrifice outlets (Carrion Feeder, Ashnod's Altar) and death payoffs (Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat) to guarantee triggers and a combo finish. Improve mana with fast rocks and rituals, and include reanimation (Reanimate, Animate Dead) to abuse big creatures pitched to connive. Tighten removal with Toxic Deluge and Damnation, and add protection like Lightning Greaves to keep Scorpion online.
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, Bastion of Remembrance, and Zulaport Cutthroat
- ▸Beating down with a deathtouch board grown by connive counters
- ▸Reanimating a large finisher discarded to connive and swinging for lethal
Archetypes
- Aristocrats — Sacrificing creatures to enable the connive trigger pairs perfectly with death-payoff drains and pacts.
- Reanimator — Conniving away big creatures sets up cheap reanimation off the discard.
- Counters/Midrange — The +1/+1 counters from discarding nonlands let you build a threatening deathtouch board.
- Control — Mono-black removal plus deathtouch combat and grindy card filtering can play a long attrition game.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (B), by popularity.
