Balor

Creature — Demon

Flying

Whenever Balor attacks or dies, choose one or more. Each mode must target a different player.

• Target opponent draws three cards, then discards three cards at random.
• Target opponent sacrifices a nontoken artifact.
• Balor deals damage to target opponent equal to the number of cards in their hand.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Alchemy	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (15)

Niko9 on How Good is Pain Magnification?

2 weeks ago

Last_Laugh I agree with you, in commander it looks like a very snowballey enchantment. I think Pain Magnification might take the right deck to be great, it's not a rakdos staple, but in the right build it would absolutely be a must remove threat.

The main drawback I could see with it is that in commander players can get very salty about discarding and not everyone will have enchant removal, so you may become the archenemy when you play this.

Just throwing out ideas here, but Pain Magnification might be brutal in a rakdos Blade of Selves deck that runs Balor and Archon of Cruelty as reanimated blade carriers.

Gleeock on Why Do Recent Sacrifice Effects …

3 months ago

I love those effects. Balor has become a big pet-card for me. Chain Devil is fun.

A less-discussed aspect of this is how it enables strategies that are reliant on using cards out of opponent's graveyards. If sac-dependent decks only allowed for opponents to cherrypick their least important tokens all the time, then you would never see any cards (tokens not being cards & all) of importance going to opponent's graveyards & you would not be able to synergize with decks that like to resurrect out of opponent's graveyards (not without having to make a mill deck). Not that I advocate for cEDH Tergrid... but there are much more casual & interesting cards & decks that do this.

It also presents a good balancing option against death-by-Voltron, where a few voltron decks will swing tall with an important (hexproof/indestruct) card, then incidentally spit out some token-fodder.

WoTC has been HEAVY on the rapid token-pooping decks with low versatility lately as well, so I think it is nice to have options to balance that. Or make players have to add some versatility to token decks. Also, token decks can still "token it up" with this type of removal, it just may remove a piece of a token engine.

Last_Laugh on debuf

4 months ago

Pain Magnification, Kardur, Doomscourge, Vial Smasher the Fierce, Delirium, Backlash, The Ruinous Power, Balor, Emberwilde Captain, and Unquenchable Fury all come to mind as possibilities.

Gleeock on UB: LOTR

10 months ago

I was kindof hoping for a creature as fun as Balor

Gleeock on Devil in the Details

1 year ago

Fun deck.

How about Balor? I just love that card and I always seem to ding someone with one of the abilities, the non token artifact really gets under the skin

Descent into Avernus is just great

City on Fire looks like a shoe-in. The new Phyrexians artifact hate devil seems good

Sleepysherlock on Attacks

1 year ago

Backdraft Hellkite, Scourge of the Throne, Drakuseth, Maw of Flames, Grave Titan, Urabrask the Hidden, Big Score, Unexpected Windfall, Deadly Dispute, Hostile Negotiations, Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger, Goldspan Dragon, Alesha, Who Smiles at Death, Balor, Explorer's Scope, Strionic Resonator, Parhelion II, Hall of the Bandit Lord, Legion Loyalty, Utvara Hellkite, Tyrant's Familiar, Gorex, the Tombshell, Greven, Predator Captain, Graveyard Trespasser  ^Flip, Ilharg, the Raze-Boar, Kaalia of the Vast, Inferno Titan, Olivia, Crimson Bride, Tajic, Legion's Edge, Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice, Felisa, Fang of Silverquill

Triton on The Legacy of the Igniter

1 year ago

Here's a good list to start from, based on the EDHREC page for Darigaaz:

Rites of Flourishing Stormfist Crusader Balor Heartwood Storyteller Peer into the Abyss Unquenchable Fury Vicious Shadows Tainted Strike

Thoughtseize isn't good in commander unfortunately, since you're only removing one of your opponent's cards in hand. There are also a solid amount of Black Vise effects to choose from, love seeing some group hug and slug that isn't Nekusar!

Besides those more fun cards, I think it is super important to include as much ramp as you can for this deck, you'll want as much as possible to get away with all the junk!

Hope this helps and keep Junding em out!

Crow_Umbra on Musashi's Mosh Pit [Primer]

1 year ago

Thank you KBK7101! Honestly I'm kind of surprised with how popular Isshin became in the past year. He's already in or near the top 10 commanders in EDHREC. A year ago I thought that Satoru Umezawa or Hinata, Dawn-Crowned would have been the most popular commanders from Neon Dynasty.

I try to post updates when I feel they're relevant enough or worth posting lol. I printed out a copy of Otharri to try to play-test in the games I played last weekend, but sadly I didn't get the chance to play it irl then. I did like Skyhunter Strike Force and Mondrak, Glory Dominus when I played them in that game.

In solo play-testing I've mostly liked Otharri so far. I like that it has Haste baked in, so it is a bit speedier for a 5 drop. Although it has the baked in self-recursion, I'm not sure how often that will be relevant or used. If it manages to stick around or come back, then its token production potential will continue to scale up each swing with new Experience counters. I like that Otharri has flying, as I've wanted a little more "verticality" for attacking and defense.

I feel like the 5-drop and 6-drop creature slots are ones I've experimented with the most. I've also tested stuff like Balor, Death Tyrant, Karlach, Fury of Avernus, Ilharg, the Raze-Boar, and Adriana, Captain of the Guard at various points as 5-drop options.