Liliana, the Necromancer
Legendary Planeswalker — Liliana
+1: Target player loses 2 life.
−1: Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
−7: Destroy up to two target creatures. Put up to two creature cards from graveyards onto the battlefield under your control.
- CMC
- 5
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- mythic
- Set
- Core Set 2019
- Price
- —
- EDHREC rank
- #15570
Liliana, the Necromancer enters at three mana and immediately threatens reanimation, discard pressure, or direct damage — she does real work the turn she lands. The cost is loyalty fragility and a passive that only fires when an opponent loses a creature, which makes her dependent on board context in a way that Liliana, Heretical Healer simply isn't.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Liliana, Heretical Healer
Liliana, Heretical Healer runs Liliana, the Necromancer as a Planeswalker-tribal piece and a backup reanimation engine — the two share a name, so any Liliana-centric synergies stack, and the Necromancer's minus ability lets Heretical Healer decks rebuy creatures that were already pitched to the hand attack gameplan.
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, Liliana, the Necromancer slots into black midrange and reanimator shells as a redundant value piece — she's not a build-around, but she pulls weight in any deck that wants incremental hand disruption and occasional creature recursion. Competitive constructed formats largely ignore her; at three mana with conditional upside, she falls behind more efficient planeswalkers in Modern and Legacy. Pioneer is the format where she's most plausible outside of Commander, given the shallower card pool, though she still struggles to justify a slot over cheaper threats. Oathbreaker is the one format where Liliana, the Necromancer becomes genuinely interesting as a commander, since her ability suite maps cleanly to a discard-and-reanimate game plan at a reduced starting life total.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
unknown tier
Current pricing data isn't available for Liliana, the Necromancer, so check Scryfall or TCGPlayer for the live number before buying. Given her narrow competitive footprint and Commander-specific niche, she typically sits in the budget-to-mid range — pick her up if you're building the deck, but don't race to acquire her speculatively.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Liliana, Heretical Healer
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.