The 16 Best Deathtouch Commanders in Magic Ranked

Vraska, the Silencer | Illustration by Kieran Yanner

Given enough cards, almost any mechanic can become an archetype. Lifelink has alternate win conditions like Test of Endurance, sagas tie into enchantresses. There’s counter distribution, proliferation, and reanimation, and even creature lands have their own payoffs.

Deathtouch is a mechanic that strikes fear into newer players that are more conservative with their creatures. All you need is one untapped deathtoucher, and someone might refuse to attack you entirely. But what about when you make deathtouch a core part of your deck’s identity? And which commanders should you run if you want build around it?

What Are Deathtouch Commanders in MTG?

Hooded Blightfang | Illustration by Uriah Voth

Deathtouch commanders broadly benefit from the deathtouch keyword, usually on your creatures. Some commanders explicitly pay off creatures with deathtouch, while others reward you for picking out targets before you snipe them. You can use a commander that pays you off when your opponents’ creatures die, or even a commander that has a repeatable way to reanimate your own creatures.

Commanders that have deathtouch or grant it to other creatures aren’t enough to warrant serious consideration. A commander has to take advantage of deathtouch somehow.

Honorable Mentions: Archetypes

Some archetypes or strategies use deathtouch as a component of what they try to do, but it’s usually as a rattlesnake, or to deter your opponent from blocking your creature.

Keyword Soup

Deathtouch is one of many abilities keyword soup decks like Indominus Rex, Alpha or Kathril, Aspect Warper want to leverage. But deathtouch is just an ingredient in the soup, not the entrée, so I won’t consider these kinds of commanders elsewhere.

Saboteur

Decks that want to hit their opponent to trigger combat damage abilities use deathtouch as part of their evasion, alongside abilities like flying, trample, or unblockable. For example, Etrata, Deadly Fugitive cloaks the top card of your opponent’s library when your assassins connect with them.

Death Payoffs

If your commander cares about creature deaths,, deathtouch and combos with Thornbite Staff offer you a lot of upside.

-1/-1 commanders like The Reaper, King No More or The Scorpion God reward you when creatures with -1/-1 counters on them die. Deathtouch creatures help ensure that they die, but that cuts into better cards for the archetype, like proliferation or other -1/-1 cards.

#16. Black Widow, Deadly Hunter

Black gets a deathtouch-matters commander in Black Widow, Deadly Hunter, and the saboteur trigger is… fine. It’s a more restricted, more castable, more fragile Toski, Bearer of Secrets. Oh, and you lose life when you draw the cards.

#15. Shay Cormac

Shay Cormac gets around the issue that deathtouch decks run into with protective abilities like hexproof and indestructible, which would already make it a valuable role-player elsewhere. For a deathtouch deck, my issue comes from how the bounty counters come from targeted spells and abilities. Royal Assassin, pingers, and tappers can do the job, but it isn’t the cleanest interaction with your deathtouch creatures.

#14. Kraven the Hunter

Ready to go big game hunting? Kraven the Hunter rewards you with cards and grows when each opponent’s biggest creature dies, which sounds perfect for a deathtouch pingers build to me. Deathtouch enablers and fight or bite spells ensure you kill the creatures you need to take out.

#13. Hansk, Slayer Zealot

Pingers go infinite with Thornbite Staff when you can give them deathtouch, and Hansk, Slayer Zealot is also in good colors for some haste enablers to make sure you can go off a.s.a.p. The card draw is limited by the number of zombies your opponents have, which is a knock against it here.

#12. Judith, Carnage Connoisseur

Deathtouch on creatures won’t be as prevalent in this build, but the keyword still matters given how Judith, Carnage Connoisseur gives your instants and sorceries deathtouch. Grapeshot doesn’t need as high of a storm count to sweep the board if you only need one copy per target.

#11. Hawkeye, Avenging Archer

The more I look at Hawkeye, Avenging Archer, the more I want to build it. As with Hansk, Thornbite Staff and a deathtouch enabler like Gorgon's Head allow Hawkeye to sweep almost the entire board; surviving requires phasing, indestructible, hexproof, or shroud. Add Hawkeye's Bow to the mix and you’re burning your opponents while you clear away their creatures. The only hiccup is that Izzet () isn’t the best combination for death payoffs, though there’s Gimli, Counter of Kills, Hissing Iguanar, or Selhoff Occultist.

#10. Xira, the Golden Sting

There’s a few commanders that put a special type of counter onto creatures and reward you when creatures with those counters die, and they all improve when you use deathtouchers as part of your strategy. Xira, the Golden Sting’s boon is cards and insect tokens, but you only accumulate egg counters when your commander attacks. Extra combats can help, but this will remain a casual commander at best.

#9. Chevill, Bane of Monsters

Task focus is the name of the game here. Chevill, Bane of Monsters can claim a reward of 3 life plus card draw when creatures with its bounty counters die, but you don’t add counters on your upkeep if something already has a bounty counter on it. I love the bounty hunter flavor on display here, a Kraven-before-Kraven.

#8. Vraska, the Silencer

Vraska, the Silencer is almost identical to a certain Tolkienian demon spider that shares its color identity, but our gorgon assassin is lackluster in comparison. You have to pay to copy your opponent’s dead creatures, and Vraska doesn’t help your posse at all.

#7. Shirei, Shizo’s Caretaker

While not your typical deathtouch commander, Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker can get around one of the main problems of a deck built around the keyword. Deathtouchers tend to be small creatures, since the deathtouch keyword is what makes them trade well in combat. They’re quite likely to die in such a trade, so reanimation is a good way to get more value out of them. Shirei’s automatic reanimation may be limited to creatures with 0 or 1 power, but there’s a bunch of deathtouchers at that level.

#6. Aveline de Grandpré

Aveline de Grandpré rewards your pawns with buffs when they reach the end zone, which only makes them more potent threats later on. I’m not terribly high on it because it’s just another aggro +1/+1 counters commander at the end of the day, but I get why others might run it.

#5. Shelob, Child of Ungoliant

It completely broke my brain when I realized that Shelob, Child of Ungoliant gives you token copies of your opponent’s creatures if they die the same turn that your spiders have damaged them. They become noncreature artifacts, but that’s often a perk. Artifacts don’t have summoning sickness, so you don’t have to wait to activate mana abilities or anything else that requires you to tap them. Shelob is also a deathtouch enabler for your brood of spiders.

#4. Kelsien, the Plague

Kelsien, the Plague has been the proof that sniper builds are viable for half a decade. The Avatar Jumpstart boosters and the God of War Secret Lair have added more experience counter cards to Mardu (), so you get additional payoffs for the counters you’ll rack up while Kelsien takes pot shots from a crow’s nest.

Paying you in EXP for killing creatures is so RPG coded that I’ve even seen a Kelsien build inspired by Fallout: New Vegas that uses no cards from the precons.

#3. The Serpent Society

A single opponent can’t target The Serpent Society more than once in a game, and even then, you’re probably running enough proliferation to take ‘em out quick if they do. But that’s distracting from our deathtouch dissection. The Serpent Society has a neat way to use deathtouch creatures: They become edicts that force your opponents to sac nontoken creatures, which… oh, the machinations are brewin’. Add Archetype of Finality to any persist or Chatterfang combo you’d run in Golgari (), for example.

#2. Aphelia, Viper Whisperer

On the surface, Aphelia, Viper Whisperer is a gorgon and snake typal commander, but do you know how many of them have deathtouch? Heck, the Archetype of Finality is a gorgon! Aphelia’s activated ability is the win condition here; even a Changeling Outcast becomes a battlecruiser.

#1. Fynn, the Fangbearer

Fynn, the Fangbearer has been a steady player since Kaldheim as an effective mono-green commander you can build on a budget. The additional poison counters if your deathtouchers connect put your opponents on the clock when you pair it with some proliferation. You only need to connect with an opponent once if you have the proliferate abilities to do the rest, but you can also pump out a bunch of tokens and grant them deathtouch with Ohran Frostfang.

Fynn has also seen a pair of reskins as Westley, Dread Pirate Roberts from the Princess Bride Secret Lair and Vayne Carudas Solidor in the Final Fantasy: Through the Ages bonus sheet.

Other Deathtouch Support Cards

Deathtouchers are usually small creatures that die in combat, so indestructible enablers like Heroic Intervention or Darksteel Plate allow you to get more attacks or blocks out of them.

Cards that can turn your deathtouchers into pingers like Viridian Longbow remove opposing creatures quickly. Thornbite Staff costs mana to activate, but your deathtoucher untaps itself whenever the creatures it damages die. Both equipment together combo with any deathtouch creature that doesn’t have summoning sickness to take out all opposing creatures that you can target and aren’t indestructible.

Lures and similar abilities force your opponents to block your deathtouch creatures, even if they don’t want to. You can also take advantage of punch or bite spells to deal damage to your opponents’ creatures with your deathtouchers.

Playing with deathtouch usually means that creatures will die left, right, and center. Blood Artist and other payoffs take advantage of that fact, while reanimation cards bring your deathtouchers back for more. Some death payoffs even allow you to bring back your opponents’ creatures under your own control.

Saboteur triggers also play well with deathtouch creatures since the keyword encourages your opponents to leave your creatures unblocked. Theft options like Rev, Tithe Extractor or Gonti, Night Minister are some of the more interactive payoffs, but there’s also card draw like Toski, Bearer of Secrets.

Some other cards that specifically support deathtouch creatures include Hooded Blightfang, White Widow, Yelena Belova, and Vraska, Swarm's Eminence.

Commanding Conclusion

Aveline de Grandpré | Illustration by Aurore Folny

Creature and card types are fun to build around, but some keywords have received just enough direct or tangential support that they’re viable as archetypes themselves. We’ve got flying matters cards, cards that care about when creatures that entered this turn get into combat, and even J. Jonah Jameson as a menace lord. Deathtouch lords and payoffs have tended to stick in Golgari, but they can get up to some fun stuff when you start to mix it other colors.

Which commander do you run for a deathtouch theme? Which other keywords would you like to see get their own lords and commanders? Let me know in the comments below or over on the Draftsim Discord. For more Magic news and brews, check out our newsletter, The Daily Upkeep.

Until next time, stay safe, and watch your step!