OrzhovLegendary Creature — Elder DemonShilgengar, Sire of Famine
Mana value5Rank#6,845
The Commander
Flying
Sacrifice another creature: Create a Blood token. If you sacrificed an Angel this way, create a number of Blood tokens equal to its toughness instead.
, Sacrifice six Blood tokens: Return each creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield with a finality counter on it. Those creatures are Vampires in addition to their other types.
Guide
Gameplan
Shilgengar turns dead creatures into Blood tokens, fueling card draw, sacrifice value, and eventually a massive one-sided reanimation of your entire graveyard. You play a sacrifice-heavy aristocrats game in the early turns, then dump fat creatures into the yard and use Shilgengar's activated ability to mass-reanimate them with finality counters for an explosive board. Win by overwhelming the table with reanimated bombs or draining life through aristocrats payoffs.
Strengths
- Free, repeatable Blood token generation that doubles as card filtering and sacrifice fodder
- Mass reanimation that ignores mana value and can return your whole graveyard at once
- Angel synergy lets you generate huge Blood counts off a single sacrifice
- Built-in evasion (flying) and resilience via re-castable command zone reanimation
Weaknesses
- The reanimation ability is mana- and Blood-intensive, requiring real setup before it pays off
- Finality counters mean reanimated creatures exile on their next death, limiting recursion loops
- Heavily reliant on getting fat creatures into the graveyard, so graveyard hate hurts badly
- Wants creatures to sacrifice, leaving it vulnerable to board wipes that strip your fodder
Key Cards
- Serra's Emissary — A premier reanimation target that protects your whole board from a chosen card type once returned.
- Sun Titan — Recurs Blood-token enablers and cheap permanents, and is great reanimation value.
- Reckoner Bankbuster — Blood-token payoff is moot, but treasure/token engines like this and Blood-matters cards fuel the sacrifice loop—pair with cards that crack Blood for value.
- Bloodthirsty Conqueror — Turns every opponent's life loss from aristocrats drains into life gain and a snowballing engine.
- Liesa, Forgotten Archangel — An Angel with high toughness that makes huge Blood counts and recurs your dying creatures.
Upgrade Path
Add fast mana and reanimation tutors (Entomb, Buried Alive, Victimize) to set up the graveyard quickly, and prioritize self-mill or rummaging to dump fatties fast. Include a dedicated aristocrats combo line—Blood Artist plus a recursive sacrifice creature like Gravecrawler or a persist creature—to convert Blood/sac value into a deterministic kill. Round out with strong protection (Teferi's Protection, Boromir) and graveyard-hate insurance like Bojuka Bog effects to defend your 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 death via Blood Artist / Zulaport Cutthroat / Bloodthirsty Conqueror triggers off mass sacrifice
- ▸Reanimate a board of evasive bombs and swing for lethal
- ▸Sacrifice loops with a persist/undying creature plus a death payoff for infinite drain
- ▸Beat down with flying Shilgengar plus a wide reanimated army
Archetypes
- Aristocrats — Free sacrifice outlet plus Blood generation pairs perfectly with death-trigger payoffs like Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat.
- Reanimator — The activated ability is a board-wide reanimation spell stapled to your command zone, rewarding stocking the yard with bombs.
- Angel Tribal — Sacrificing high-toughness Angels generates explosive Blood totals, accelerating into early mass reanimation.
- Combo — Blood-token engines and recursive creatures enable loops that drain the table with aristocrats effects.
Combos
- Solemnity + Shilgengar, Sire of Famine
→ Infinite LTB, Infinite ETB, Infinite sacrifice triggers
- Shilgengar, Sire of Famine + Solemnity + Phyrexian Altar
→ Infinite Blood tokens, Infinite colored mana, Infinite death triggers
- Bishop of Wings + Divine Visitation + Shilgengar, Sire of Famine
→ Infinite Blood tokens, Infinite ETB, Infinite LTB
- Luminous Broodmoth + Shilgengar, Sire of Famine
→ Infinite LTB, Infinite ETB, Infinite sacrifice triggers
- Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward + Karmic Guide + Shilgengar, Sire of Famine
→ Infinite LTB, Infinite ETB, Infinite sacrifice triggers
Combos via Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (BW), by popularity.
