Card of the Day · August 7, 2026 Format Mover
Vilis, Broker of Blood
Legendary Creature — Demon · Rare
This is the best payoff mono-black has for a life-loss shell, full stop, and it doubles as a board control tool that doesn't need a second card to work.
Why now
Mono-black players have known for a while that this thing is a card draw engine wearing a demon costume, and reanimator decks love it because dropping it on turn one off Reanimate or Dark Ritual into Entomb turns a hand of nothing into a hand of eight.
What it does
Vilis flies, shrinks an opposing creature every turn you can spare the mana and life, and converts life loss from other sources like fetch lands, pain lands, and combat damage into a matching number of cards drawn.
Where it shines
Mono-black decks built around paying life for value (Bolas's Citadel, Necrologia-style effects, Phyrexian mana) want this as a repeatable engine, and dedicated reanimator shells want it as the single best target to cheat into play early.
Plays well with
- Citadel lets you cast straight off the top for life, and every point paid refills your hand through Vilis instead of costing you cards in the long run.
- Both reward you for paying life to dig, and Vilis turns Doom Whisperer's surveil cost into extra cards on top of the filtering.
- Vilis functions as a repeatable version of the same life-for-cards exchange, minus the one-shot limitation, as long as it survives on the battlefield.
The catch
It's a 3/4 for eight mana with no protection, so it dies to any removal spell before it draws you anything, and if you're not careful about tracking life total you can deck yourself.