Lazav, Familiar Stranger

Strategy & Gameplay

Lazav, Familiar Stranger is a versatile three-mana legendary creature that offers tremendous value in interactive blue-black control and midrange strategies. The card's power lies in its inherent synergy with the crime mechanic, a core element of the Outlaws of Thunder Junction set that rewards players for targeting opponents, their permanents, or their graveyards. Every time you interact with your opponent—whether through creature removal, discard effects, targeted hand disruption, or graveyard hate—Lazav grows stronger with a +1/+1 counter while simultaneously gaining access to your opponent's best creatures through exiling them from their graveyard. This creates a unique gameplay pattern where your removal and interaction spells become card advantage engines, allowing you to steal copies of threats you've eliminated while building Lazav into a resilient threat that's difficult to race. The creature's initial 1/4 body makes it a respectable blocker that survives most early removal, giving you time to accrue value. In constructed formats like Standard, Pioneer, and Modern, Lazav slots perfectly into crime-focused decks that naturally run heavy interaction, making synergy almost inevitable. Decks featuring targeted discard like Grief and Unmarked Grave, creature removal, or graveyard interaction suddenly become more threatening as Lazav turns every meaningful spell into incremental advantage. The card is particularly potent in Commander and Oathbreaker formats where longer games and deeper graveyards maximize the opportunities for copying powerful creatures, essentially giving you access to multiple win conditions while protecting your own board presence.