Blood Operative
Creature — Vampire Assassin
Lifelink
When this creature enters, you may exile target card from a graveyard.
Whenever you surveil, if this card is in your graveyard, you may pay 3 life. If you do, return this card to your hand.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Guilds of Ravnica
- Price
- $0.20
- EDHREC rank
- #17437
Blood Operative enters as a 3/1 lifelinker that immediately strips a card from any graveyard, then refunds itself to your hand whenever you pay life for a surveil effect. The catch is that a 3/1 body dies to a stiff breeze, so its value comes almost entirely from the recursion loop, not the threat on board.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Blood Operative earns its slot exclusively in dedicated surveil or graveyard-hate builds — Lazav, the Multifarious and Dimir self-mill commanders get the most mileage, since repeated surveil triggers can bounce it back to hand turn after turn, letting you whittle down a single opponent's graveyard-based win condition. In Legacy and Vintage, the graveyard hate is real but redundant: Surgical Extraction and Leyline of the Void do the job faster and don't ask you to jump through surveil hoops. Modern and Pioneer are similarly uninterested — three mana for a fragile body is too slow when dedicated graveyard hate exists at lower costs. Blood Operative is a Commander card wearing competitive-format clothes.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.20 bulk tier
At $0.20, Blood Operative sits firmly in bulk territory and is unlikely to move — it's a narrow build-around with no competitive demand driving price upward. Pick it up freely; there's no financial risk, and trading-post copies are everywhere.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.