Arcane Foundry › Commanders › Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher

Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher

Legendary Creature — Vampire Soldier · {3}{W}{B} · Black/White commander

Flying Whenever a player sacrifices a permanent, put a +1/+1 counter on Carmen and you gain 1 life. Whenever Carmen attacks, return up to one target permanent card with mana value less than or equal to Carmen's power from your graveyard to the battlefield.

Build a Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher deck →

What Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher actually does

Read off the card by the same engine the Forge and Analyzer use — this is the mechanical classification, not a summary.

• Triggered ability · sacrificeWhenever a player sacrifices a permanent, put a +1/+1 counter on Carmen and you gain 1 life.
• Triggered ability · attackWhenever Carmen attacks, return up to one target permanent card with mana value less than or equal to Carmen's power from your graveyard to the battlefield.
• Keyword · flyingflying

What a Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher deck needs

Plays as aristocrats. What the commander asks of the other 99 — read from the card and checked by hand.

• counter doublers and proliferate (it grows only itself with +1/+1 counters)
• free sacrifice outlets and expendable permanents (its payoff fires on every sacrifice)
• self-mill, discard and recursion (the graveyard is a resource its text reads)
• haste, evasion and protection for the commander, and extra combats (its own attack is the engine)

The Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher deck plan

The roles the Forge fills for this commander, and how many cards of each.

• 6× Put haste on the commander the turn it resolves — a tap ability is unusable otherwise
• 6× Sacrifice a creature for no mana, repeatably
• 12× Creatures you are happy to sacrifice — a free sac outlet on the commander is worthless with nothing to feed it
• 4× Make the commander connect — a body that never deals combat damage never triggers
• 6× Put your own cards into your graveyard as a resource
• 6× Put +1/+1 counters on creatures you control, or multiply the ones already there
• 5× Actually remove one problem permanent — preventing its damage is not removing it
• 9× Find the exact card the plan needs
• 1× Answer a whole board at once

Best cards for Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher

Ranked by an engine that reads what each card does — its real cost, its delay and how reliably it works — rather than counting how often other people play it.

Combos with Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher

Known combos from Commander Spellbook that Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher is a piece of, and how many decks list them.

• Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher + Warren Soultrader + Pitiless Plunderer + Reassembling Skeleton773 decks
• Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher + Warren Soultrader + Gravecrawler627 decks
• Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher + Yawgmoth, Thran Physician + Pawn Of Ulamog618 decks
• Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher + Mikaeus, The Unhallowed + Warren Soultrader274 decks
• Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher + Veinwitch Coven + Phyrexian Altar273 decks
• Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher + Veinwitch Coven + Phyrexian Altar273 decks

Build this deck in the Arcane Forge →

Arcane Foundry is free to join and every tool is included: the Arcane Forge deck builder, the ARCANE Analyzer that scores a deck by simulating games rather than counting staples, a card scanner, a collection vault, and live webcam Commander tables. Read the guide · Browse all commanders · Pricing