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Embalmed Ascendant

Creature — Zombie

Start your engines! (If you have no speed, it starts at 1. It increases once on each of your turns when an opponent loses life. Max speed is 4.)
When this creature enters, create a 2/2 black Zombie creature token.
Max speed — Whenever a creature you control dies, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.

CMC
3
Mana cost
{1}{W}{B}
Color identity
BW
Rarity
uncommon
Set
Aetherdrift
Price
$0.09
EDHREC rank
#15983
Buy on TCGplayer
Embalmed Ascendant card art
Embalmed Ascendant turns a graveyard full of tokens into a steady stream of +1/+1 counters — and unlike most pay-to-pump effects, the cost is other creatures dying rather than mana, which means it operates entirely off the battlefield. Pair it with Warren Soultrader and the counter generation becomes a recursive engine that runs on sacrifice triggers alone.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

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

Embalmed Ascendant is legal across every major constructed format but finds its home in Commander, where sacrifice-matters and token strategies have the critical mass of dying creatures needed to make the counter accumulation meaningful. In 60-card formats it competes against more efficient payoffs and lacks the redundancy to make its triggered ability consistent enough to build around. Commander is the correct context: a single copy runs in any black-white aristocrats shell and asks almost nothing from your deckbuilding budget.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

43 decks
Tombstone StairwellEmbalmed Ascendant

Tombstone StairwellEmbalmed Ascendant

Near-infinite lifegain; Near-infinite lifeloss; Near-infinite lifegain triggers; Near-infinite ETB; Near-infinite LTB; Near-infinite death triggers

View on Commander Spellbook ↗

Price Context

Current price

$0.09 bulk tier

At $0.09, Embalmed Ascendant sits firmly in bulk territory — pick it out of a common box rather than paying shipping. Bulk rares rarely appreciate unless a combo or synergy breaks through into a popular format, and nothing currently pushes this one out of that tier.

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Sources

Mentioned

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