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Blood Artist

Creature — Vampire

Whenever this creature or another creature dies, target player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.

CMC
2
Mana cost
{1}{B}
Color identity
B
Rarity
uncommon
Set
Jumpstart 2022
Price
$5.09
EDHREC rank
#139
Buy on TCGplayer
Blood Artist card art
Blood Artist drains the table for every creature that dies — yours, theirs, tokens, anything — and at two mana it costs almost nothing to slot in. In Edgar Markov token swarms or Warren Soultrader sacrifice loops, it converts a single board wipe or combo cycle into a lethal life-total swing.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Edgar Markov

Edgar Markov

82.5% of decks · synergy 0.64

Edgar Markov floods the board with Vampire tokens that die constantly in combat, and Blood Artist turns every trade or wipe into a life-drain multiplied by the size of your army.

02
Toxrill, the Corrosive

Toxrill, the Corrosive

62.1% of decks · synergy 0.58

Toxrill, the Corrosive shrinks every non-Slug creature into a 0/0 each end step, and Blood Artist collects a trigger for each one that dies — turning Toxrill's slow-grind attrition into a consistent drain clock.

04
Ellie, Brick MasterJoel, Resolute Survivor

Ellie, Brick Master // Joel, Resolute Survivor

64.5% of decks · synergy 0.54

Ellie, Brick Master // Joel, Resolute Survivor generates creature tokens that are meant to be spent, and Blood Artist ensures every token leaving the battlefield chips away at life totals before it's gone.

05
Dina, Essence Brewer

Dina, Essence Brewer

73.2% of decks · synergy 0.53

Dina, Essence Brewer already punishes opponents for life gain, and Blood Artist stacks a drain trigger on every death so the two effects compound each other into a rapid life-total race the deck consistently wins.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Commander is where Blood Artist does its best work — 100-card decks are packed with creature-heavy strategies, board wipes resolve multiple times per game, and three opponents means three targets soaking drain triggers simultaneously. In Legacy and Vintage, it sees fringe play in dedicated sacrifice shells, but the two-mana body is too slow and too fragile to compete with the raw speed of those formats. Modern has supported it in Aristocrats-style builds, where it pairs with sacrifice payoffs, though it remains a roleplayer rather than a headliner. Pauper, Pioneer, and Standard are all off the table legality-wise, and Oathbreaker mirrors Commander closely enough that the same token and sacrifice synergies apply.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

Zulaport Cutthroat does nearly the same job — a two-mana creature that drains one life per creature death — but only triggers on your own creatures dying, which matters in board-wipe scenarios where opponents' creatures count. Vindictive Vampire is a three-mana option that hits harder when you control a full board but costs an extra mana and misses the opponent-creature trigger that makes Blood Artist uniquely reliable as a combo finisher.

Price Context

Current price

$5.09 mid tier

At $5.09, Blood Artist sits in the mid tier — not a snap-include on a tight budget, but reasonable for a card that appears in hundreds of thousands of Commander decks and closes games on its own. Reprint history has kept it from spiking dramatically, and demand from Aristocrats decks across every black-adjacent token strategy means the price is unlikely to crater.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.