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Children of Korlis

Creature — Human Rebel Cleric

Sacrifice this creature: You gain life equal to the life you've lost this turn. (Damage causes loss of life.)

CMC
1
Mana cost
{W}
Color identity
W
Rarity
common
Set
Time Spiral Remastered
Price
$0.37
EDHREC rank
#4543
Buy on TCGplayer
Children of Korlis card art
Children of Korlis turns your own life-loss into a free life-swing — sacrifice it and you gain back every point of life you lost this turn, which in a dedicated lifegain shell can mean 20+ life off a single activation. Pair it with Vizkopa Guildmage and that life swing becomes a damage trigger; pair it with Mister Negative and the counters it generates snowball fast enough to close games.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Mister Negative

Mister Negative

57.5% of decks · synergy 0.54

Mister Negative's +1/-1 counter synergies reward aggressive life payment, and Children of Korlis closes the loop by converting that paid life directly into a burst of lifegain that loads up the counter engine all over again.

02
Betor, Ancestor's Voice

Betor, Ancestor's Voice

53.1% of decks · synergy 0.49

Betor, Ancestor's Voice leans on repeated life-loss triggers to fuel its recursion and drain effects, and Children of Korlis acts as a reset valve that swings the life total back hard enough to keep the engine alive through multiple attack steps.

03

Cecil, Dark Knight

44.6% of decks · synergy 0.41

Cecil, Dark Knight regularly pays life as a resource, and Children of Korlis converts that accumulated debt into a massive single-turn lifegain spike that Cecil can immediately leverage for cost reductions and combat.

04
Licia, Sanguine Tribune

Licia, Sanguine Tribune

30.4% of decks · synergy 0.30

Licia, Sanguine Tribune's cost reduction scales directly with life gained in a turn, and Children of Korlis can manufacture enough lifegain in one activation to cast Licia for free even from a depleted board state.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper legal
oathbreaker legal

Commander is where Children of Korlis belongs — the effect is too narrow and too slow for the high-pressure formats, but 100-card singleton games regularly build around paying life as a resource, which is exactly where it overperforms. In Legacy, Vintage, and Pauper it's technically legal but sees essentially no play; those formats move too fast for a one-shot life-swap on a 1/1 body to matter. Pauper in particular has better lifegain options at common that don't require dying to function. Stick to Commander, and specifically to decks that treat life as currency.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.37 bulk tier

At $0.37, Children of Korlis is deep bulk — easy to pick up in any common box or throw into a cart without a second thought. The price is stable because demand is narrow and supply is plentiful, so don't expect movement in either direction.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.