Bloodthirsty Conqueror – Foundations
Date Reviewed: January 10, 2025
Ratings:
Constructed:
Casual:
Limited:
Multiplayer:
Commander [EDH]:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
This guy does for vampires what Baneslayer Angel did for angels (indeed, midrange creatures in general) so long ago – he absolutely blows out what they’re capable of and what people need to expect when they play against them. If he were just a keyword monster, attacking and defending with extreme prowess and being ridiculously hard to trade with profitably, he might already do that. Yet he’s also a combo card, and unlike the existing Sorin plus Ghalta and Mavren interaction, he kills immediately and beats any infinite life combo that doesn’t involve Un-cards. That last one is perhaps more relevant in casual than in Standard (which also has a card that lets him go infinite!), but it means that any time someone even thinks you’re playing him, they have no choice but to consider the possibility that you could end the game out of nowhere, and that will change the way they play – and probably make even more openings for you. This is just a really good card no matter how you use it.
Constructed: 4
Casual: 5
Limited: 5
Multiplayer: 4.5
Commander [EDH]: 4.5 (vampire kindred decks having their own combo kill in Magic’s answer to engine-building board games is kind of a big deal)
Bloodthirsty Conqueror is Exquisite Blood stapled to s body, and that both makes it better and worse. Notably, Bloodthirsty Conqueror joins Standard alongside a creature whose effect mirrors Exquisite Blood’s long-time combo companion in the form of Enduring Tenacity…and, yes, this is infinite. As soon as someone loses a point of life, the two cards will alternate triggering off of one another until everybody is thoroughly exsanguinated. Between Enduring Tenacity and Sanguine Bond, and this card and Exquisite Blood, you can mix and match and even have a bit of redundancy.
That being said, Bloodthirsty Conqueror shines a bit brighter than Exquisite Blood in being a pretty potent card as-is. An evasive creature that takes nearly anything else it fights out in combat is a pretty potent approach to things, and being a 5/5 means it will hit hard when its blows land. And the life loss will trigger its own ability, so opponents need to answer this to avoid a big life swing blowing the game open in short order.
The combo might be what earns this the most notoriety, but Bloodthirsty Conqueror is quite good besides, and it even has a solid typeline to help it out in many decks. It’s definitely worth a look in both fair and…well, combo-tastic applications.
Constructed: 4
Casual: 5
Limited: 5 (this is the kind of card that tends to be a big blowout)
Multiplayer: 4.75
Commander [EDH]: 4.75
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