Liliana, Waker of the Dead
Legendary Planeswalker — Liliana
+1: Each player discards a card. Each opponent who can't loses 3 life.
−3: Target creature gets -X/-X until end of turn, where X is the number of cards in your graveyard.
−7: You get an emblem with "At the beginning of combat on your turn, put target creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. It gains haste."
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- mythic
- Set
- Magic Online Promos
- Price
- —
- EDHREC rank
- #5604
Liliana, Waker of the Dead hits the table and immediately pressures every opponent's hand — her plus ticks up while forcing discards, and if anyone can't comply, she drains a life and reanimates your best threat from their graveyard or yours. The catch is the four-mana cost and the fact that she needs a stocked graveyard to reach her full potential; in a vacuum she's just a slow discard engine. Liliana, Heretical Healer does the graveyard setup work that makes Waker of the Dead genuinely threatening.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Liliana, Heretical Healer
Liliana, Heretical Healer is the canonical home for Liliana, Waker of the Dead — the Healer's flip condition and recursive gameplan fill the graveyard with creatures that Waker of the Dead then threatens to return as a finisher, while both Lilianas push the same discard-and-reanimate axis.
Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal
Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal rewards every discard effect, so Liliana, Waker of the Dead's plus ability turns into a two-for-one every activation — stripping an opponent's hand while generating card advantage off Aclazotz's trigger.
Tinybones, Trinket Thief
Tinybones, Trinket Thief drains opponents whenever they discard, which means Liliana, Waker of the Dead's plus ability isn't just pressure — it's a life total clock attached to every single activation.
Carth the Lion
Carth the Lion adds a loyalty counter to every planeswalker when another enters or dies, letting Liliana, Waker of the Dead tick up to her minus faster and cycle through more activations across a game.
Tergrid, God of Fright
Tergrid, God of Fright converts every forced discard into a stolen permanent, so Liliana, Waker of the Dead's plus ability stops being a tempo play and starts generating a board state directly from opponents' hands.
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, Waker of the Dead is a role-player rather than a staple — she earns her slot in dedicated discard or graveyard strategies but gets cut from general black goodstuff lists that would rather run a cheaper or more immediately impactful threat. In Pioneer and Modern, four mana for a planeswalker that doesn't immediately stabilize the board is a tough sell in competitive environments where the game is often decided by turn four; she sees essentially no constructed play in those formats. Legacy and Vintage have better discard engines and no need for her. Oathbreaker is her other genuine home — as a signature spell target she fits any black graveyard Oathbreaker, and as an Oathbreaker herself she generates value every turn in a singleton environment that struggles to answer repeated activations.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
unknown tier
Current pricing data for Liliana, Waker of the Dead isn't available in this page's dataset, so check Scryfall or TCGPlayer for the live number before buying. As a mythic planeswalker with a dedicated but niche Commander audience, she tends to sit in the $3–8 range depending on printing — worth picking up for the right deck, not a priority spec.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Liliana, Heretical Healer
- Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal
- Tinybones, Trinket Thief
- Carth the Lion
- Tergrid, God of Fright
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.