Mathas, Fiend Seeker
Legendary Creature — Vampire
Menace
At the beginning of your end step, put a bounty counter on target creature an opponent controls. For as long as that creature has a bounty counter on it, it has "When this creature dies, each opponent draws a card and gains 2 life."
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- BRW
- Rarity
- mythic
- Set
- Treasure Chest
- Price
- —
- EDHREC rank
- #10003
Mathas, Fiend Seeker puts a bounty counter on an opponent's creature every upkeep — threatening cards draw a removal target on themselves and reward whoever kills them with cards and life, all for three mana in a Mardu body with menace. The cost is that Mathas, Fiend Seeker hands the payoff to whoever pulls the trigger, which makes him better as a political piece than a personal engine, and decks that can't exploit that dynamic will find him underwhelming.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Kelsien, the Plague
Kelsien, the Plague kills creatures for sport and gains experience counters for doing so — Mathas, Fiend Seeker staples a bounty counter onto the most threatening target each turn, turning Kelsien's pings into card draw and life gain on top of the counter, which means the two commanders together generate compounding value every time Kelsien untaps.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Mathas, Fiend Seeker is a Commander card through and through — the bounty mechanic is built around the political dynamics and slower clock of multiplayer, where threatening your opponents' best creatures and incentivizing the table to answer them is genuinely powerful. In Legacy and Vintage, where he's technically legal, a three-mana 1/4 with a delayed, conditional payoff is nowhere near the power threshold required, and he'll never see competitive play in those formats. Oathbreaker gives him a plausible home as a signature-spell enabler in aggressive Mardu builds, but the real reason to own Mathas, Fiend Seeker is Commander and nothing else.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
unknown tier
Pricing data isn't currently available for Mathas, Fiend Seeker, so check Scryfall or TCGPlayer for the live number before buying. As a legendary creature with a narrow but dedicated Commander following, he tends to sit in the budget-to-mid range — worth picking up if you're building the archetype, but not a card that demands urgency.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.