The Commander
As an additional cost to cast this spell, you may sacrifice any number of creatures. This spell costs 
less to cast for each creature sacrificed this way.
When Torgaar enters, up to one target player's life total becomes half their starting life total, rounded down.
Guide
Gameplan
Flood the board with expendable creatures, then sacrifice them to cheaply deploy Torgaar and use his ETB to slam a player's life total down to 20 (or half their starting total). Repeatedly blink, recast, or reanimate Torgaar to hammer life totals while a sacrifice-fueled engine grinds value and closes the game with attacks or drains.
Strengths
- Powerful repeatable life-total reduction that ignores most damage prevention and resets opponents to a vulnerable 20
- Cost reduction lets you cheat out an 8-mana body extremely early off token chaff
- Mono-black gives access to the best tutors, reanimation, and recursion to abuse the ETB repeatedly
- Synergizes naturally with aristocrats and token strategies you'd already be running
Weaknesses
- The life-set is not damage and never kills on its own—it can even raise a low player's life total
- Mono-black struggles to remove problematic artifacts and enchantments
- Reliant on having creatures to sacrifice; vulnerable to board wipes that strip your fodder
- Eight mana value makes Torgaar a juicy counterspell or removal target before the ETB resolves
Key Cards
- Phyrexian Reclamation — Cheaply returns Torgaar from the graveyard to recast him for another life-halving ETB.
- Bastion of Remembrance — Turns your sacrifice fodder into incremental drain that converts halved life totals into actual kills.
- Blood Artist — Each sacrificed creature pings opponents, finishing players Torgaar has softened up.
- Bloodghast — A recurring sacrifice body that returns from the graveyard to fuel Torgaar's cost reduction repeatedly.
- Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder — Generates a swarm of Thrull tokens to bankroll Torgaar's casting cost and aristocrat payoffs.
- Gray Merchant of Asphodel — Closes games by draining for huge amounts once opponents are stuck near 20 life.
Upgrade Path
Add fast mana and rituals (Dark Ritual, Cabal Coffers, Nykthos) to cast Torgaar without needing fodder, plus reusable sac outlets like Viscera Seer and Goblin Bombardment. Tighten the aristocrat package (Zulaport Cutthroat, Pitiless Plunderer) and add reanimation (Reanimate, Animate Dead) and blink/recursion to abuse the ETB. Top-end tutors (Demonic Tutor, Diabolic Intent) consistently find your Gray Merchant or drain finishers to convert halved life totals into wins.
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
- ▸Aristocrat drain effects like Blood Artist and Bastion of Remembrance after halving life totals
- ▸Gray Merchant of Asphodel devotion drains finishing weakened players
- ▸Swinging wide with a token army into players reduced to 20 life
- ▸Repeatable Torgaar ETBs via blink/reanimation chipping all opponents to a deadly range
Archetypes
- Aristocrats — Sacrifice synergies double as Torgaar's casting cost and as drain payoffs that finish weakened players.
- Tokens — Wide boards provide cheap fodder to slash Torgaar's cost while serving as attackers.
- Reanimator — Cheating Torgaar back into play repeatedly turns his ETB into a recurring life-reduction engine.
- Combo — Blink and recursion loops can repeatedly halve totals and drain opponents to zero.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (B), by popularity.
