Blood Scrivener

Creature — Zombie Wizard

If you would draw a card while you have no cards in hand, instead you draw two cards and you lose 1 life.

CMC
2
Mana cost
{1}{B}
Color identity
B
Rarity
uncommon
Set
Pioneer Masters
Price
EDHREC rank
#16753
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Blood Scrivener card art
Blood Scrivener replaces itself every turn you're hellbent — draw a card and deal a damage, free, as long as your hand is empty. The catch is that an empty hand means you're either winning or losing, so Blood Scrivener rewards the decks disciplined enough to exploit that state rather than stumble into it.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander
legacy
modern
pioneer
standard
vintage
pauper
oathbreaker

Blood Scrivener is a Commander card through and through — the format's slower pace and larger hand sizes mean hellbent is a deliberate build-around rather than an accident, and black commanders like Ob Nixilis, the Hate-Twisted or Waste Not archetypes can engineer the empty-hand state consistently. In Legacy and Vintage it competes with draw engines that don't require you to be in an already-precarious position, so it rarely makes the cut outside of specific hellbent shells. Modern and Pioneer offer even less support for the archetype, where the card is technically legal but practically irrelevant. Stick to Commander, where the politics of a longer game let Blood Scrivener do real work.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

unknown tier

Pricing data isn't available for Blood Scrivener at the moment, so check Scryfall or TCGPlayer for a current figure. Given its narrow application and low reprint profile, it tends to sit in the bulk-to-moderate range — worth picking up if you're building around the hellbent mechanic, not a priority otherwise.

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Mentioned

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