The 41 Best Orzhov Cards in Magic Ranked

Last updated on March 4, 2026

Lurrus of the Dream-Den | Illustration by Slawomir Maniak

You know that phrase “well, it’s not all just black and white”? Orzhov would like a word. This enemy color pair takes black’s “greatness, at any cost” mantra and stirs it together with white’s sense of order and nobility. It usually bears out in Magic as organized wrong-doing, evidenced by the Orzhov Syndicate on Ravnica taxing the dead, or the School of Silverquill’s strict and dominant demeanor on Strixhaven.

In gameplay, this translates to gain-and-drain type effects, abilities that bleed players out slowly, and versatile catch-all removal. There’s also a fair amount of reanimation in black-white, given that both individual colors excel at recursion on their own. There are hundreds of Orzhov cards, but how many break into the highest tiers?

Let’s take a look!

What Are Orzhov Cards in MTG?

Vizkopa Guildmage | Illustration by Tyler Jacobson

Simply put, Orzhov cards have an exact WB color identity, and no other colors added. That means they either include some combination of black and/or white in their mana costs, or have black/white symbols represented in their rules text somewhere. Damn is an Orzhov card for the purposes of Commander deckbuilding, even though it’s considered a mono-colored card by the rules of the game.

With a few hundred cards to choose from, I had to be a bit strict with the cards that made this list. I evaluate cards from the lens of how likely they are to be meaningful inclusions in your WB+ Commander decks, with a few nods to Constructed when appropriate. This means I judge cards based on how they perform today, not how they’ve performed historically. You won’t see Vindicate or Mortify here because they’re just average at best in today’s deckbuilding climate.

Also, no lands or universal Commander staples on the list like Marsh Flats or Orzhov Signet. Those are obviously auto-includes in most WB decks, but you don’t need me to rank them to tell you that you should play them.

#41. Liesa, Shroud of Dusk

I actually didn’t include Liesa, Shroud of Dusk on my original list, but after digging deep and researching the most popular Orzhov commanders, it became apparent that Liesa version 1.0 is nearing the top. And it’s not hard to see why. You can build this as a stax commander, a lifegain deck, or even an angel typal deck, and commanders that cheat on commander tax tend to be quite popular.

#40. Lingering Souls

Lingering Souls is great value on one card, though the Commander decks that want this are limited. King of the Oathbreakers or any WB deck that cares about tokens can make good use of it. It’s fallen out of favor in Constructed, where it used to be a key part of Modern, both combating against and synergizing with Liliana of the Veil, another card past its prime.

#39. Merciless Eviction

Merciless Eviction is a solid board wipe in the unfortunate position of co-existing with Farewell, a card that accomplishes most of the same goals in a more effective manner while slotting into more decks. I still want to show Eviction some love, because sometimes you just want the next best thing. It’s a small fraction of Farewell’s price tag, and it has functionality against planeswalkers that Farewell doesn’t.

#38. Vizkopa Guildmage

I feel like Vizkopa Guildmage used to be a bread-and-butter combo card in Commander, but I haven’t seen it in quite some time. Exquisite Blood and Revival // Revenge were some of its most obvious friends, though I always considered it a solid playable at minimum when it wasn’t outright winning games.

#37. Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos

I tried not to include too many hyper-specific commanders, which is why you won’t see creatures like Eriette of the Charmed Apple and Commissar Severina Raine despite those being fairly strong in their respective decks. Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos looks like it fits in the same category, though it’s more of a self-contained engine in an artifact-heavy deck than a full-on Phyrexian commander.

This cat commander is quite powerful, creating its own army of Incubators and proliferating to grow them and your other threats. You can push for more Phyrexian interaction here, but the artifact route is better supported and more generically powerful.

#36. Despark

Despark is one of Orzhov’s most useful single-target removal spells. It’s conditional, but the subset of targets it hits are usually the ones you care about most, and it’ll always trade up on mana when you cast it. 1-for-1 removal can only be so good, and this loses value in metas where players are optimizing towards cheaper, more efficient permanents.

#35. Unburial Rites + Rite of the Moth

White’s great at small-creature recursion, and black’s the king of reanimation, so it makes sense that you’d see some powerful reanimation effects when you combine the two. Unburial Rites is your run-of-the-mill expensive reanimation effect, but flashback is a game-changer. That gives you a second bite at the apple and gives you access to a reanimation spell if it happens to be discarded or milled over.

Rite of the Moth deserves a mention, being an interesting variation on Unburial Rites, although slightly worse because the reanimated creature comes with a finality counter.

#34. Pest Control

Pest Control is almost the Orzhov version of Pyroclasm. Remember to spend any treasures first, since those also get cleaned up by Pest Control. Cycling is a nice ability if you read the table and see no good use for the cheap board wipe mode.

#33. Assault Intercessor

Half a Massacre Wurm for half the price. Assault Intercessor can take huge chunks out of opposing life totals when combined with the right cards, whether that’s dedicated board wipes, a flurry of targeted removal, or just straight-up actual Massacre Wurm.

#32. Blot Out the Sky

Blot Out the Sky is a nice way to put a bunch of pressure on board via flying token creatures and a fine place to sink 8+ mana to mass-disenchant the board. It even takes out planeswalkers when X is 6 or more. The tokens it generates are tapped, so it’s not the best defensive option, but a sky full of 2/1 fliers can do some damage when you untap.

#31. Rite of Oblivion

Rite of Oblivion gives instants like Despark, Anguished Unmaking, and Utter End a run for their money. Commander’s a lot leaner, faster, and more efficient than it used to be. A 3-4 mana 1-for-1 removal spell just isn’t that exciting, whether it’s unconditional, instant, or whatever. I want my answers to be cheap, and Rite fits the bill, while having flashback to do it again. You obviously need some fodder, but what deck doesn’t have a spare Clue or Treasure floating around these days?

#30. Ravos, Soultender

I consider Ravos, Soultender slow by today’s standards, but I’m rarely leaving one of the original partner creatures off a list like this. Partner just opens up so many deckbuilding opportunities and combinations, and simply having two commanders gives you various edges, even if the individual card isn’t anything amazing. An unopposed Ravos is a fine value creature, but it’s miles behind the other partner commander occupying the same colors.

#29. Breena, the Demagogue

Breena, the Demagogue is an innocuous threat that promises card draw to the table then suddenly becomes an 11/13 flier after a few combat steps. It’s usually best as the commander or in the 99 of a political-style deck, but the card plays out unexpectedly well in my experience. It gets a huge knock for essentially losing its ability in any 1v1 situation.

#28. Drana and Linvala

Linvala, Keeper of Silence as a great stax creature, so adding a color and some extra abilities makes it better, or at least comparable. Drana and Linvala will affect some opponents more than others, but it'll be fun to see what activated abilities you can pick up along the way.

#27. Athreos, God of Passage

Athreos, God of Passage can make its way into almost any WB creature deck without much justification. It’s a way to get extra damage out of your creatures or simply keep looping them, and it severely punishes anyone who was foolish enough to let their life total drop too low. It embodies the spirit of Orzhov perfectly, making personal gains out of your opponents’ suffering.

#26. Ethereal Absolution

This is a pet card of mine that I’ve found usually overperforms my expectations. Think of Ethereal Absolution like a mini Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite anthem effect that creates bodies, chews up graveyards, and doesn’t die to creature removal. You can’t throw too many 6-drops in your average deck, but I urge you to try this one out if you haven’t already.

#25. Ashen Rider

Ashen Rider was a riff on Angel of Despair, which was itself a relevant Constructed card many moons ago. Ashen Rider improved on its inspiration, removing a permanent on the way in and out. It’s a tier-2 reanimator card and sees healthy play in reanimator Commander decks. Hilariously, it used to see play in the sideboards of mono-red Legacy goblin decks as a “gotcha!” card against Show and Tells trying to cheat in Emrakul, the Aeons Torn.

#24. Emptiness

It’s an Unearth? It’s a removal spell? Well, Emptiness can be both actually, while tied to a 3/5 elemental body. I like that both modes are pretty useful in different circumstances, as you’re most likely to use the black evoke in the early game and the white evoke in the midgame. However, the black removal doesn’t lose its utility, since it shrinks and ignores indestructible. Regardless, for 6 mana, you get a pretty beefed up Skinrender.

#23. Kambal, Profiteering Mayor

Kambal, Profiteering Mayor of Thunder Junction is great at catching those spurts of tokens making your opponents do without a second thought. Kambal gives everyone a painful reminder of the tax on tokens with cards like Forbidden Orchard, Dowsing Dagger, and Clackbridge Troll.

#22. Priest of Fell Rites

Telegraphed reanimation, but sometimes your opponents can’t do much about it even with your plan face-up on the table. Priest of Fell Rites double-dips on reanimation like Unburial Rites, but it has all the benefits (and drawbacks) of being a creature itself. It’s not 100% reliable, but also provides an early reanimation effect for a potentially explosive start to a game.

#21. Cecil, Dark Knight / Cecil, Redeemed Paladin

Cecil, Dark Knight is a card that sees play in many formats due to being an under-costed 2/3 deathtouch creature, and it’s useful on the offense, defense, and if you’re planning on losing life for the purposes of Death's Shadow. Once you reach a life threshold, it even transforms into Cecil, Redeemed Paladin, a strong 4/4 lifelinker that gives other attacking creatures indestructible. It’s harder to use in formats like Commander, but at the same time, the tools to lose 20+ life are there, and some decks are keen on lowering their life totals and exchanging them with another player (victim).

#20. Kambal, Consul of Allocation

I’ve always admired just how effective Kambal, Consul of Allocation is relative to just how simple of a textbox it has. It sits in that tier just ever-so-slightly below “kill-on-sight” where it gets to fade being a priority removal target, and yet constantly triggers throughout the game. It’s also a definitive stop sign against anyone sitting at low life or spellslinger decks looking to storm off.

#19. Elenda, the Dusk Rose

Elenda, the Dusk Rose is a potent legend, whether as one of the best vampire commanders or in the 99 of an aristocrats or vampire shell. It builds up counters quickly, provide a substantial lifelinking threat on board, then punish opponents for dealing with them by splitting off into an army of lifelinking 1/1s. It’s like trying to crush a spider with an egg sac. You might take out the target, but those baby spiders are coming to getcha. Is the visual necessary? No, but I was thinking about it and now so are you.

#18. Abigale, Eloquent First-Year

Abigale, Eloquent First-Year has good enough stats and abilities to wear auras and equipment like a boss, but that’s not why this card is on the list. Its ability to ignore another creature’s abilities is a true build-around effect, and there are plenty of black creatures in MTG with strong downsides.

Suddenly, creatures don’t have to attack each turn, Rotting Regisaur is just a 7/6 creature for 3 mana, and Rot-Curse Rakshasa doesn’t have decayed anymore. Not only that, but Abigale will give these creatures flying and lifelink, so say hello to super flying lifelink Rotting Regisaur, or Yargle, Glutton of Urborg.

#17. Debt to the Deathless

Debt to the Deathless might be the WB card that’s actually ended games the most when cast. It takes a hit from the existence of Torment of Hailfire and Exsanguinate, cards with the same potential ceiling but only requiring one color. Still, Debt’s an exceptional place to sink your Cabal Coffers mana, and even if you don’t win on the spot, you’ve probably got a life buffer to keep you safe for turns to come.

#16. Kaya’s Guile

It’s not the best, but in my opinion Kaya's Guile is the quintessential Orzhov card. It has beneficial modes for you and detrimental effects for your opponents, it plays to different aspects of the game, messing with the battlefield, graveyards, and life totals, and it does all of this at instant speed. It’s a personal favorite that’s basically never bad, and it’s sometimes absolutely game-warping.

#15. Greasefang, Okiba Boss

Here’s the odd entry on a mostly Commander-focused list going to Pioneer mega-hit, Greasefang, Okiba Boss. Greasefang has been piloting its own Constructed combo decks since its printing, using Parhelion II as its primary ride. Maybe we’ll look back in a few years and Greasefang’s either banned or non-competitive, but here and now it’s still got plenty of fuel in the tank.

#14. Zoraline, Cosmos Caller

Zoraline, Cosmos Caller is a very efficient flying bat that bridges many themes, from lifegain to bat typal to light reanimator. This card is a 3-mana Sun Titan, sort of. It’s got a nice Unearth kicker built into it, and it works very well on its own, but it’s best in a deck built around bat synergies so you can trigger more lifegain. I find it interesting that it works very well with previous bat-related cards in MTG, like Desecrated Tomb or Basilica Screecher. You can build a bat-typal deck around Zoraline, or add it to a generic Orzhov lifegain deck, and it’ll do fine.

#13. Corpse Knight

Am I crazy for ranking Corpse Knight so high? I don’t think so, but I could see a case for bumping it down the ladder a few steps. My experience is that Corpse Knight just eats through so much of my opponents’ life totals on a regular basis while having two highly relevant creature types. Raw simplicity and efficiency on a 2-drop; that’s hard for me to rank too low. Sorry, I’m not awarding any extra points to the misprinted 2/3 version.

#12. Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim

Blood Artist in the command zone. That’s all I’ve got to say on Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim.

#11. Sorin of House Markov / Sorin, Ravenous Neonate

You know you have a strong ability when a card transforms and still has the same one. Extort comes with Sorin of House Markov and Sorin, Ravenous Neonate, and it is just a fantastic way to make enemies in Commander. That said, the transformed side of flipwalker Sorin has one of the most threatening uses of lifegain that isn't an infinite combo in the -1 ability.

#10. Damn

Excuse my language. Damn cleverly uses the overload mechanic to construct a strictly better Wrath of God, though one with more color restriction on the decks it can be included in. Allowing your wrath effect to double up as a single-target removal spell is great design, making this a damn fine piece of interaction.

#9. Inkshield

This one’s for you, Mr. Menery. Inkshield is a purely defensive card, but one that can take you from the cusp of dying to actually winning the game in the next turn cycle. It’s the type of trick that catches players off guard and doesn’t give them much time to adjust, though if you’re part of a regular playgroup they’ll start to suspect you have this any time you pass the turn with 5+ mana up.

#8. Teysa Karlov

One of the best aristocrat commanders, Teysa Karlov doubles up on any of your death triggers, no matter which player caused them to trigger. That makes this human advisor one of the best sacrifice commanders, though the extra token text comes in handy as well. This ability made a second appearance on Drivnod, Carnage Dominus, which is a great addition to a Teysa deck but a worse stand-alone commander.

#7. Ratadrabik of Urborg

Ratadrabik of Urborg is Wizards going off the deep end of token creation. The tokens it produces lose legendary status and change their types and stat lines altogether, which can make tracking this ability in paper a pain. The logistics are annoying, but the power output is high, and there are plenty of well-known infinite combos that feed off Ratadrabik’s legend-copying ability.

#6. Ketramose, the New Dawn

Ketramose, the New Dawn is the white-black member of the indestructible Amonkhet gods, and a solid one at that. Each time you exile something, you can draw a card and lose 1 life. It’s strong as a 3-mana commander that’s also an indestructible engine, and exiling stuff in black and white is trivial. Your Swords to Plowshares is a lot better when it draws you a card, and that can also work with blink or just regular graveyard hate. And cards like Banisher Priest now cantrip!

Ketramose allows you to use something as weak as Scrabbling Claws to draw a card every turn. And I’m not even considering that this card can attack as a 4/4 lifelinker.

#5. Eirdu, Carrier of Dawn / Isilu, Carrier of Twilight

This card has two distinct sides, but they're both base Baneslayer Angel. Eirdu, Carrier of Dawn is the white one, and it rewards you for going wide by giving your creature spells convoke. Once you have creatures in play, Isilu, Carrier of Twilight gives them persist, and that paves the way for many sick combos. Sacrificing small creatures like Helpful Hunter draws you another card and counts as another death trigger, while you don’t mind trading cards like Phyrexian Rager or Gravedigger. White cards like Archangel of Thune reset your persist creatures that just died, and so on. Look for cards like Cathars' Crusade that work wonders with your persist creatures dying and entering the battlefield with +1/+1 counters.

#4. Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff

Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff‘s biggest claim to fame is with the cEDH crowd. People hyped up Monologue Tax when it came out, and that card’s a bit of a dud. Still, there’s a big difference between a 2-drop legend with that effect versus a 3-drop enchantment.

Lotho’s what I like to consider a “Mom” card, a reference to Mother of Runes. This is the type of card that might look like it’s not doing anything because it’s not triggering, but it might not be triggering because it’s actively disincentivizing opponents from doing something else. In a sense, it might be preventing opponents from curving out or double-spelling, which is a huge advantage, just not a tangible one you can always track.

#3. Primevals’ Glorious Rebirth

Primevals' Glorious Rebirth is a potent mass reanimation effect that fits many different deck styles based solely on the sheer number of legendary cards that exist in Magic now. It picks up all your legendary creatures and planeswalkers, but even random artifacts, lands, and anything else with legendary tacked onto its type line. This is what I prefer a big splashy 7-mana spell to look like, and I’ve seen it end enough games to comfortably slot it in the top 3 here.

#2. Tymna the Weaver

This might take the top spot if I were strictly talking about cEDH, but I believe the #1 pick has more wide-reaching application. Tymna the Weaver is one of the original partners, the original “mistakes”, if you will. It adds two colors to your deck while giving you a completely generic, easy-to-trigger form of card advantage in the command zone. And that’s something that any deck can get behind, not just cEDH decks. It’s excellent and simple, though maybe a bit too flexible, as we’ve seen with the 2-color partners.

#1. Lurrus of the Dream-Den

Oh companion, what went wrong? Now to be fair, I actually find companions like Lurrus of the Dream-Den extremely fun in Limited, Cube, and even Commander, but their impact on Constructed formats is one for the history books. This nightmare is one of the biggest offenders, taking a streamlined deck full of good cards and giving the deck an eighth card in its starting hand that lets you replay the others from the graveyard. The extremes include everything from Black Lotus to Mishra's Bauble, and even in Commander Lurrus can recur some highly effective, cheap permanents.

Best Orzhov Card Payoffs

Level-1 Orzhov payoffs include cards that specifically call out black and/or white cards, things like Deathbringer Liege and Teysa, Orzhov Scion or devotion cards like Athreos, God of Passage, Athreos, Shroud-Veiled, March of the Canonized, and Gray Merchant of Asphodel.

The next step is to think about where black and white overlap with one another, and capitalize on that. For example, black and white are both recursion colors, so reanimator is an inevitable strategy to encounter. You end up with great recursion like Primevals' Glorious Rebirth, Unburial Rites, and Priest of Fell Rites, plus the best reanimation targets mana can buy.

Black and white often come together in a “drain and gain” package, where your life total increases as your opponents’ decrease. You can lean into this with a lifegain commander like Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim, Sorin of House Markov, or Karlov of the Ghost Council, and you can amplify your opponents’ life loss with effects like Wound Reflection and Warlock Class.

These are also heavy removal colors, whether that’s in the form of single-target removal like Vanishing Verse and Vindicate, or full-on wraths like Damnation, Wrath of God, or gold sweepers like Kaya's Wrath and Exterminatus. It’s very possible to build wrath-centric decks full of resilient threats, though it’s not exactly the most fun or well-received strategy out there.

Aristocrats is at its best in the RWB color spectrum, with black providing the best sacrifice effects and payoffs, and white providing the token generation and creature fodder needed for the strategy. Commanders like Teysa Karlov, Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim, and Elenda, the Dusk Rose thrive in this archetype.

What Is Orzhov Good At in MTG?

White and black actually complement each other quite well considering they’re supposed to be enemy colors. Black doesn’t typically get the ability to destroy enchantments or artifacts, but white does. White doesn’t get many mana-generation effects, but black has plenty. Black frequently pays life for its best effects, while white gains life.

Here are some of the areas where Orzhov excels:

• Gain-and-drain effects: Gaining life while lowering opposing life totals.
• Sacrifice archetypes: Combining black sacrifice effects/payoffs with white token generation.
• Board control: Black and white are both wrath colors, and there are numerous potent 1-for-1 removal spells in the color combo.
• Recursion/Mass reanimation: Both colors can recur permanents from the graveyard, either one at a time or all at once.
• Group slug strategies: Black and white have plenty of light stax effects to tax your opponents’ actions. Cards like Kambal, Consul of Allocation and Liesa, Shroud of Dusk.
• Typal decks: WB is one of the more common homes for clerics, vampires, spirits, angels, and knights.

Fade to Black (and White)

Tymna the Weaver | Illustration by Winona Nelson

Orzhov’s a complex color with plenty of flexibility in the cards it provides and the strategies it makes possible. It’s not nearly as binary as something like Gruul but not quite as intricate as some of the blue-based spellslinger or control decks. Still, there’s a wide variety of WB archetypes in existence, some of which are well-supported, and some a bit more niche. If you’re the type of player who likes having an answer for anything, or someone who’s patient and willing to build up towards a powerful finisher, give an Orzhov deck a try.

Interested in the best cards from other color combinations? Check out our other rankings: Simic, Rakdos, Golgari, Gruul, Izzet, Azorius, Selesnya, Dimir, Boros.

Now’s your time to tell me what I missed. Did I leave off a highly important Orzhov card that you believe deserves a spot on the list? Or do I give too much credit to a card I included? Let me know in the comments below or over in the Draftsim Discord, and check out our newsletter to stay up to date on the latest things happening in MTG.

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