Arcane Foundry › Commanders › Orcus, Prince of Undeath

Orcus, Prince of Undeath

Legendary Creature — Demon · {X}{2}{B}{R} · Black/Red commander

Flying, trample When Orcus enters, choose one — • Each other creature gets -X/-X until end of turn. You lose X life. • Return up to X target creature cards with total mana value X or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. They gain haste until end of turn.

Build an Orcus, Prince of Undeath deck →

What Orcus, Prince of Undeath 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 · etbWhen Orcus enters, choose one —
• Keyword · flyingflying
• Keyword · trampletrample
• Ability• Each other creature gets -X/-X until end of turn. You lose X life.
• Ability• Return up to X target creature cards with total mana value X or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. They gain haste until end of turn.

What an Orcus, Prince of Undeath deck needs

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

• blink and recursion aimed at the commander itself (its value is its own enter trigger)
• self-mill, discard and recursion (the graveyard is a resource its text reads)

The Orcus, Prince of Undeath deck plan

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

• 10× Exile a permanent you control and return it — the button a value-ETB deck presses
• 8× Evasion that does NOT target or attach — for a commander your own auras and equipment cannot legally touch
• 12× A permanent whose value is in its enter-the-battlefield trigger — the payload a blink deck reuses
• 11× Put your own cards into your graveyard as a resource
• 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
• 7× Refill your hand
• 2× Keep a permanent you control alive through removal

Best cards for Orcus, Prince of Undeath

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