Whenever a permanent owned by another player is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, you draw a card and you lose 1 life.
Cast Kothophed and turn every opponent's dying permanent into a card for you while you actively blow up the board to fuel the engine. You churn through your deck, refill your hand, and convert that card advantage into a grindy mono-black win. Manage your life total carefully—you can deck-draw yourself out or bleed dry if you're not paying attention.
Massive card advantage, especially against token, sacrifice, and creature-heavy tables
Pairs perfectly with your own boardwipes and edict effects to draw fistfuls of cards
Evasive 7-power flyer that closes games on its own
Mono-black gives access to elite tutors, ramp, and recursion
The life loss is symmetric and uncontrolled—mass removal can drain you fast
Removal magnet; opponents prioritize killing it, and recasting at 6 mana hurts
Can deck or kill yourself if the trigger snowballs out of control
Mono-black struggles with enchantments and non-creature permanents without specific answers
Punishes opponents for drawing and offsets your own life loss from triggers.
Add fast mana (Dark Ritual, Mana Crypt, Sol Ring) and reanimation (Reanimate, Animate Dead) to deploy Kothophed ahead of curve. Tighten the lifegain suite—Whip of Erebos, Vito, Gray Merchant—so the symmetric life loss never kills you, and include tutors (Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor) to find your engine pieces. Top it off with a deterministic drain finisher like Exsanguinate or Torment of Hailfire to close before the table stabilizes.
Legendary Creature — Demon
