The 37 Best Orzhov Creatures in Magic Ranked

Obzedat, Ghost Council | Illustration by Svetlin Velinov

In MTG, Orzhov () has plenty of tools to be the last man standing, and its creatures reflect that. It’s a color combination that takes advantage of its tokens, its lifegain and life drain capabilities, and good graveyard interaction for reanimation and recursion. As creatures die, Orzhov gets stronger while its controller usually gains more life.

Today, we take a look at white and black creatures in MTG that make this grindy strategy possible.

What Are Orzhov Creatures in MTG?

Ketramose, the New Dawn | Illustration by Maaz Ali Khan

Orzhov () creatures have a white and black color identity. These can be gold creatures, hybrid creatures, or even a white creature with a black activated ability. You could also consider an artifact creature with a white and black ability, too.

Orzhov is a very grindy color combination, and thus, these creatures usually have something to do with gaining life, draining life, or returning creatures from your graveyard to your hand or straight to the battlefield.

We also have some supported creature types and typal interactions among these colors, like spirits, vampires, clerics, and even Phyrexians.

#37. Tidehollow Sculler

Tidehollow Sculler is such a classic from a time when MTG was focused on 1v1 combat. A bear that disrupts your opponent’s plan is pretty efficient, and we can see similar, newer designs in cards like Deep-Cavern Bat. This card is usually playable in most low-power Cubes, and it’s also an artifact and a zombie for synergy reasons.

#36. General Kudro of Drannith

Everybody loves a good human lord. General Kudro of Drannith is excellent when you go wide since you buff your creatures and turn the weaker ones into removal. With this card around, your opponents know their big creatures are in danger whenever you can make human tokens.

#35. Elenda, the Dusk Rose

Elenda, the Dusk Rose has nice death insurance, so you can invest in growing it. It fits vampire decks, but also sacrifice and token decks. You can also switch between go-tall and go-wide with Elenda around.

#34. Obzedat, Ghost Council

Obzedat, Ghost Council is a classic card that manages to stay relevant in today’s high-power MTG. Obzedat has a nice enter effect, and it auto-blinks, so you always get that value, almost like you had an enchantment that does that every turn. It’s impervious to opposing sorcery speed removal and most wrath effects, and it can be a nice lifegain enabler.

#33. Rodolf Duskbringer

Rodolf Duskbringer is a sizeable flying creature that can, by itself, recur creatures from your graveyard straight to the battlefield. Not great for 6 mana, but it deserves some respect in a lifegain matters deck, besides having two good creature types in these colors.

#32. Kunoros, Hound of Athreos

Kunoros, Hound of Athreos is a solid creature that messes with your opponent’s graveyard plans. A good 3-drop that can shut off graveyard recursion is a big deal. The worst part about this card is that it doesn’t have an enter effect, but it’s a good role-player creature nonetheless.

#31. Deathbringer Liege

Deathbringer Liege is a pet card of mine from the old days. It’s a cool incentive to play black and white creatures, since they get both +1/+1 bonuses. But the best part is how it turns any Orzhov spell into a free Murder. It’s not legendary, but it’s a cool addition to a heavy multicolor deck, even if you branch into more colors.

#30. Shilgengar, Sire of Famine

Back in my day, 6/6 flying demons for just 5 mana used to have a pretty big downside, and Shilgengar, Sire of Famine is quite the opposite. It’s a free sacrifice outlet, and it also gives you something else to do with Blood tokens. If you can reliably sacrifice angels to Shilgengar in an Orzhov deck, you can make a powerful engine that sacs angels and recovers them.

#29. Athreos, Shroud-Veiled

Athreos, Shroud-Veiled is a little bit on the slow side, but you can get a lot of value with a sacrifice outlet and another creature. Instant speed sac outlets like Viscera Seer are best for this, so you can put the coin counter on your creature and sacrifice it right away. Or, if you have removal spells, you can put the coin counter on your foe’s creature, destroy it, and steal it.

#28. Liesa, Forgotten Archangel

Liesa, Forgotten Archangel has pretty good stats as a Baneslayer Angel-type card. You want to sacrifice a lot of creatures for value when Liesa is around, because they’ll all end up in your hand at the end of turn. Playable in various decks, from angel lifegain decks to aristocrat decks.

#27. Shadrix Silverquill

Shadrix Silverquill is a versatile dragon, already capable of fighting as a 4/5 in the air, which gets better with auras or combat tricks. But the selection of symmetrical effects every turn is what makes this card great, not to mention, with EDH’s politics, your opponents will never know who you’ll help next.

#26. Ratadrabik of Urborg

What makes Ratadrabik of Urborg so powerful is that there are plenty of legendary creatures that go infinite with this card around. Any creature that says “the Ring tempts you” goes infinite with Ratadrabik and a sacrifice outlet (the token becomes your Ring-bearer and thus legendary). But just playing this card alongside legends and getting additional value when they die is strong, and there are a couple ways to double the dying triggers. Overall, this card is very flexible and can lead you to victory with easy support available.

#25. Teysa, Orzhov Scion

Teysa, Orzhov Scion is a pretty good reason to build a deck around white and black creatures. You can sacrifice three white creatures for a removal effect, and if they’re also black, you get white creatures for your efforts. Grab a bunch of Orzhov afterlife creatures and go to town to get both the white and the black abilities.

#24. Athreos, God of Passage

Athreos, God of Passage complements a sacrifice strategy very well, as players in a Commander pod aren’t that keen on losing life to disrupt your plans, and you can even choose who’s going to pay the life. Indestructible is also huge, and that usually means your Athreos stays on the battlefield for a long time.

#23. Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff

Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff can put a halt to your opponents’ plans because no one likes to give Treasure tokens for free. It’s like an invisible tax effect on the table, and very similar to the “do you pay the ” situations. Of course, you’ll surround this card with other effects that generate Treasure and ways to put your Treasure to good use, too.

#22. Kambal, Consul of Allocation

Kambal, Consul of Allocation is a nice engine for gaining life over the course of a given match, even if it eats up a removal spell or a wrath effect. You can use the life you gain to mitigate the downside on cards like Phyrexian Arena or Dark Confidant. It’s also a powerful stax card that can stop some infinite loops by taxing the caster’s life, or make sure you last a little longer on the battlefield.

#21. Drana and Linvala

And speaking of stax pieces, here’s Drana and Linvala. This card already has good stats, and you can both stop your opponent’s creatures' activated abilities and also use them for yourself. All this while you beat them in the air with vigilance, no less.

#20. Commissar Severina Raine

Commissar Severina Raine has plenty of desirable characteristics. You’ll want to attack with a lot of creatures alongside this card, so you’d better have some protective equipment or combat tricks in hand. If one of your creatures is going to die, no problem! You can turn it into cards while you drain everybody else. No matter who you attack, everybody loses. You can build around it or add it to an already strong Mardu () go-wide deck.

#19. Karlov of the Ghost Council

Karlov of the Ghost Council is a mega-juiced-up Ajani's Pridemate. It’s so much better to get two counters than just one, and sometimes you can turn them into exile removal. Often, you'll prefer an 8/8 that’s alive and kicking, but sometimes this card eats a removal spell, and it’s nice to have something to do with the counters.

#18. Edgar, Charmed Groom / Edgar Markov’s Coffin

Edgar, Charmed Groom was a mainstay of its Standard format as a beefy, recurring threat. Vampire lords are often weaker than 4/4 creatures with upside, I’ll tell you that. Even if this card dies, you get more vampire tokens with Edgar Markov's Coffin. If you’re playing vampires in Orzhov, there’s little excuse not to play this.

#17. Teysa Karlov

Magic players love to build around cards that double any kind of trigger, and Teysa Karlov is no exception. Many Orzhov decks are built around sacrificing creatures for profit, and we also have mechanics like afterlife that greatly benefit from having this card around. Teysa Karlov gives you the incentive to play cards like Intangible Virtue and Lingering Souls and take the “smash face” route.

#16. Clavileño, First of the Blessed

Clavileño, First of the Blessed is a very strong incentive to build around vampires. Just having a sacrifice outlet around and attacking with any vampire, even a mere 1/1 token, means that regardless of blocks, you get a 4/3 flying Vampire Demon and a card. Cards like Sanctum Seeker can make all your attacks count, while Cordial Vampire turns your sacrifices into a team buff. This card is a solid commander, as well as a nice addition to an Edgar Markov EDH deck.

#15. Astarion, the Decadent

Astarion, the Decadent can double the amount of life your opponents lose or the amount of life you gain in a single turn. This can have powerful implications depending on the synergies you have available. Many cards these days make opponents lose half their life, and Astarion can deliver the final blow, but you can also gain double the life if you have a card like Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose. As a black and white legendary vampire, it’s up to you if this card is your commander or just a powerful ally in the 99, led by other powerful vampires.

#14. Corpse Knight

Corpse Knight can be a good win condition if you have any sort of repeatable token-creating, blink, or recursion engine. Sometimes, it can be a game-winning play to have this card on the battlefield play while you make 5-10 tokens with a big X-spell, not to mention the synergies Corpse Knight has with cards like Elspeth, Sun's Champion and its +1 ability.

#13. Cruel Celebrant

Cruel Celebrant can be Zulaport Cutthroat number two, a card aristocrat decks are usually in the market for. You’ll usually want this kind of effect in big numbers, so don’t overlook this.

#12. Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim

Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim unites everything that a token deck could want. You gain life as you make tokens, which triggers all your Ajani's Pridemate synergies. And when you finally lose or sacrifice your creatures, your opponents lose life. It’s Soul Warden and Blood Artist, all mixed together in a cheap, legendary deathtouch body.

#11. Bartolomé del Presidio

Free sacrifice effects are usually good. With Bartolomé del Presidio, you have a card with good types, vampire and knight, and a creature that can also sacrifice creatures and artifacts at will to make it stronger. Given that most free sacrifice outlets offer bonuses like a free scry effect, it's nice to see the +1/+1 counters make this a sizeable threat instead.

#10. Eriette of the Charmed Apple

Eriette of the Charmed Apple is pretty much the only aura representative among the best Orzhov creatures. It offers us an interesting play pattern: You can put good auras on your opponents’ creatures and prevent them from attacking you, kind of like how goad works. Given that Eriette’s passive just requires auras to be on the battlefield, you don’t need to attack, so you can either go the Voltron route and attack or just sit back and relax while you slowly drain your opponents.

#9. Kambal, Profiteering Mayor

Orzhov and MTG in general care a lot about tokens these days, so Kambal, Profiteering Mayor will only get bigger profit margins. Not only can you build around it with tokens of any sort, but you’ll also leech on your opponents’ tokens as well. Kambal shines as a way to make sure that your infinite token combos – like the ones involving Pitiless Plunderer – can effectively kill your opponents.

#8. Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos

Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos is an excellent reason to build a deck around one of MTG’s fiercest villains: Phyrexian creatures. Brimaz is a payoff for casting Phyrexian spells and artifact spells alike, and its Incubator tokens generate many artifacts for you to play with or to build around. As if that weren’t enough, you can also proliferate if a Phyrexian dies, which is excellent with all the many Incubator tokens, planeswalkers, or creatures with +1/+1 counters. You can even go the poison/infect route.

#7. Ketramose, the New Dawn

Ketramose, the New Dawn is seeing some Constructed play in Standard as a resilient threat that can use exile-based removal to draw some cards. This card provides a lot of value for midrange decks, and sometimes even fringe-playable cards that exile a card from a graveyard can be powerhouses here. When we extend this to EDH, Ketramose is a commander that’s easy to build around, one that’s very resilient on the battlefield.

#6. Amalia Benavides Aguirre

When we talk lifegain synergies, cards like Ajani's Pridemate are usually the first point of reference. But Amalia Benavides Aguirre is a huge lifegain payoff as well, one that allows you to explore, which can be a +1/+1 counter or card advantage. Amalia goes very well with Wildgrowth Walker in an Abzan combo deck, to the point of that it’s banned in Pioneer. But just exploring twice or three times over the course of a turn is already an excellent payoff for gaining life.

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

The amount of value you get from just 2 mana these days. Sorin of House Markov is a well-statted vampire as a 1/4 creature with extort and lifelink. You can already put this card in your vampire decks with any sort of lifelink synergies. But then, you can turn it into a planeswalker just by gaining 3 life, which is trivial in a dedicated deck. Sorin, Ravenous Neonate is a strong planeswalker that gets better if you’re gaining life since it offers you Food tokens and removal. This creature is very pushed, and it fits Orzhov lifegain/vampire decks very well.

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

Cecil, Dark Knight is extremely efficient as a 2/3 deathtoucher for only 1 mana, one that already sees play in many Dimir () Standard decks. It’s also a card that makes you lose life, which is pretty much the point of Death's Shadow decks, and for that reason, it started to see play in many different formats. EDH also has a dedicated archetype for black “self-sacrifice” decks that pairs the likes of Scourge of the Skyclaves and Wall of Blood, so this card can fit there if the color identity isn’t an impediment. When it transforms into Cecil, Redeemed Paladin, you get a way to recover your life and a powerful attack trigger.

#3. Greasefang, Okiba Boss

Greasefang, Okiba Boss‘s ability to cheat strong vehicles in play, like Parhelion II or Skysovereign, Consul Flagship, is massive. The best format to take advantage of this is naturally Pioneer, a format that’s not too fast like Modern and has all the necessary tools. What makes this card so powerful is that you have a narrow window to answer it or else you’re probably dealing with a mega vehicle that can win games on its own, plus this card, of course.

#2. Tymna the Weaver

Tymna the Weaver deserves a top spot among Orzhov creatures due to its cEDH prowess. A Commander favorite, the partner ability allows us to pair it with other powerful commanders to expand what you can do and the colors you can access. Tymna itself is already strong, and just dealing damage to a single player, paying 1 life, and drawing a card is what you want to do anyway. And of course, it gets better when you can deal damage to more than one player, so you get a natural, strong card advantage engine on your commander.

#1. Lurrus of the Dream-Den

Lurrus of the Dream-Den, like many other companions, is very close to a design mistake. The card is so powerful that it’s been banned in almost every format, even after nerfing the companion mechanic. Besides the excellent 3/2 lifelink body, the ability to play a card for free from your graveyard every turn is huge card advantage, and every color in MTG, including colorless, has broken cards to make this fundamentally unfair. This card is a powerhouse even with the mana value restrictions, and when you can chain something like Black Lotus into Lurrus to cast Black Lotus again for free, you know you have something special.

Wrap Up

Rodolf Duskbringer | Illustration by Billy Christian

And that’s about it for Orzhov () creatures today, folks. These are heavily themed around “life or death”, and many cards reward you for sacrificing creatures or creatures dying. It’s no surprise that most of the best Orzhov creatures fit aristocrat decks well. We also have particular designs that really incentivize us to build entire Commander decks around them.

Did I miss your favorite Orzhov card? Please let me know in the comments section below, or we can discuss it further on the Draftsim Discord.

Thanks for reading, and keep getting more value out of your Orzhov creatures.