Arcane Foundry › Commanders › Liliana, Heretical Healer // Liliana, Defiant Necromancer

Liliana, Heretical Healer // Liliana, Defiant Necromancer

Legendary Creature — Human Cleric // Legendary Planeswalker — Liliana · {1}{B}{B} · Black commander

Lifelink Whenever another nontoken creature you control dies, exile Liliana, Heretical Healer, then return her to the battlefield transformed under her owner's control. If you do, create a 2/2 black Zombie creature token. +2: Each player discards a card. −X: Return target nonlegendary creature card with mana value X from your graveyard to the battlefield. −8: You get an emblem with "Whenever a creature dies, return it to the battlefield under your control at the beginning of the next end step."

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What Liliana, Heretical Healer // Liliana, Defiant Necromancer 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 · deathWhenever another nontoken creature you control dies, exile Liliana, Heretical Healer, then return her to the battlefield transformed under her owner's control. If you do, create a 2/2 black Zombie cre
• Activated ability+2: Each player discards a card.
• Activated ability−X: Return target nonlegendary creature card with mana value X from your graveyard to the battlefield.
• Activated ability−8: You get an emblem
• Keyword · lifelinklifelink

What a Liliana, Heretical Healer // Liliana, Defiant Necromancer deck needs

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

• expendable creatures and free sacrifice outlets (its payoff is creatures dying)
• ways to keep the commander planeswalker alive (blockers, fogs, pillowfort), loyalty growth (proliferate, loyalty boosters) and planeswalker synergies — it must survive a turn cycle to work
• self-mill, discard and recursion (the graveyard is a resource its text reads)
• token payoffs — anthems, sacrifice outlets and go-wide finishers (it makes tokens on repeat)

The Liliana, Heretical Healer // Liliana, Defiant Necromancer deck plan

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

• 6× Proliferate — every counter already placed is placed again
• 6× Repeat, double, protect or find planeswalkers — the engine around a planeswalker commander
• 12× Make creature tokens — a static anthem or a go-wide commander needs a board to be wide
• 6× Put your own cards into your graveyard as a resource
• 4× A team pump that actually pumps tokens
• 4× Sacrifice a creature for no mana, repeatably
• 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 Liliana, Heretical Healer // Liliana, Defiant Necromancer

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.

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