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Shadow Alley Denizen

Creature — Vampire Rogue

Whenever another black creature you control enters, target creature gains intimidate until end of turn. (It can't be blocked except by artifact creatures and/or creatures that share a color with it.)

CMC
1
Mana cost
{B}
Color identity
B
Rarity
common
Set
Duel Decks: Jace vs. Vraska
Price
$0.20
EDHREC rank
#7157
Buy on TCGplayer
Shadow Alley Denizen card art
Shadow Alley Denizen turns every black creature you play into a repeatable intimidate trigger, which is a lot of evasion stapled to a one-drop. The cost is that the effect only matters when you're already attacking — it does nothing the turn you're behind. In Horobi, Death's Wail builds specifically, the Denizen earns its slot as both a cheap black creature that triggers Horobi and a way to push your threats through blockers.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Horobi, Death's Wail

Horobi, Death's Wail

63.7% of decks · synergy 0.62

Horobi, Death's Wail runs Shadow Alley Denizen in over 63% of lists because it's a one-mana black creature that comes down early, triggers Horobi's death-by-targeting engine, and incidentally grants your attackers intimidate to close out games where the board has stalled.

02
Rev, Tithe Extractor

Rev, Tithe Extractor

22.5% of decks · synergy 0.21

Rev, Tithe Extractor is a token-flooding black strategy, and Shadow Alley Denizen converts that flood into evasion — every new creature entering means another intimidate trigger on one of your attackers, letting Rev's army punch through whatever your opponents have assembled.

03
Edgar Markov

Edgar Markov

16.6% of decks · synergy 0.14

Edgar Markov generates an enormous number of black creatures through eminence alone, and Shadow Alley Denizen turns that constant token stream into a rolling intimidate factory, making the vampire swarm effectively unblockable by non-black, non-artifact creatures.

04
Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor

Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor

14.1% of decks · synergy 0.12

Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor needs creatures to connect with players to draw cards, and Shadow Alley Denizen supplies the evasion that makes those connections happen — a clean two-card synergy at a total cost of one mana.

05
Gonti, Night Minister

Gonti, Night Minister

13.1% of decks · synergy 0.11

Gonti, Night Minister wants black creatures entering repeatedly to generate extort-style value, and Shadow Alley Denizen doubles as both a trigger for that engine and an evasion enabler that helps Gonti's team get through to the players you need to drain.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

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

In Commander, Shadow Alley Denizen is a role-player, not a staple — it belongs in black creature-flood decks that need cheap, cumulative evasion and would rather not pay mana for it repeatedly. Pauper is where it sees the most competitive consideration, since one-mana creatures with repeatable evasion effects are genuinely scarce at common and black aggro shells can chain triggers off cheap creatures efficiently. In Legacy, Modern, and Pioneer, Shadow Alley Denizen is almost never played — those formats move too fast and demand more direct impact from a one-drop than a conditional evasion trigger provides. It's legal across all those formats, but legal and playable are different answers.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.20 bulk tier

At $0.20, Shadow Alley Denizen is a bulk common — you're not paying for scarcity, you're paying for cardboard. It holds that floor stably because demand is narrow and supply is wide, so don't expect movement in either direction.

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Sources

Mentioned

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