Cosmic Rebirth
Instant
Choose target permanent card in your graveyard. If it has mana value 3 or less, you may put it onto the battlefield. If you don't put it onto the battlefield, put it into your hand.
You gain 3 life.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- GW
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- March of the Machine: The Aftermath
- Price
- —
- EDHREC rank
- #5938
Cosmic Rebirth returns any permanent from your graveyard to your hand and gains you life equal to its mana value — stapled to a three-mana instant. That life gain isn't a rider; in commanders like Trelasarra, Moon Dancer it's the whole point, triggering counters and synergies on top of the recursion.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Trelasarra, Moon Dancer
Trelasarra, Moon Dancer triggers on every life gain event, so Cosmic Rebirth pulls double duty: it recovers a lost piece while dropping a +1/+1 counter and a scry on the commander at instant speed.
Polukranos Reborn
Polukranos Reborn cares about large power and toughness, so Cosmic Rebirth retrieving a high-mana-value creature at instant speed generates a meaningful life total bump that feeds the deck's life-matters subtheme.
Shanna, Purifying Blade
Shanna, Purifying Blade converts life gain into card draw, so Cosmic Rebirth recovering a permanent is almost secondary — the spell effectively draws a card via Shanna while also rebuying whatever was in the graveyard.
Aerith, Last Ancient
Aerith, Last Ancient rewards gaining life with incremental value each turn, and Cosmic Rebirth slots in as an instant-speed recursion spell that also nudges that life total higher on the opponent's end step.
Katilda and Lier
Katilda and Lier generates value from humans and spell recursion, and Cosmic Rebirth can recover a key human or enchantment while the life gain feeds any life-matters payoffs threaded through the list.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Commander is where Cosmic Rebirth earns its slot — the singleton format makes graveyard recursion at instant speed genuinely valuable, and life gain is a live trigger in a wide range of popular commanders rather than a meaningless bonus. In competitive 60-card formats like Modern and Pioneer, Cosmic Rebirth is legal but faces steep competition: three mana at sorcery speed for hand recursion is already marginal, and instant speed doesn't compensate for the lack of raw efficiency compared to format staples. Legacy and Vintage have access to far more powerful recursion at lower cost, so Cosmic Rebirth won't see play there outside fringe brews. Oathbreaker mirrors Commander's dynamic closely enough that the same life-matters shells that want it there will want it in Oathbreaker as well.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
unknown tier
Pricing data for Cosmic Rebirth isn't currently available in our database — check Scryfall or TCGPlayer for a live number before buying. Given its inclusion across several popular Commander archetypes, it's worth verifying whether supply has kept pace with demand.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Trelasarra, Moon Dancer
- Polukranos Reborn
- Shanna, Purifying Blade
- Aerith, Last Ancient
- Katilda and Lier
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.