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Death Cultist

Creature — Human Wizard

Sacrifice this creature: Target player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.

CMC
1
Mana cost
{B}
Color identity
B
Rarity
common
Set
Rise of the Eldrazi
Price
$0.21
EDHREC rank
#16820
Buy on TCGplayer
Death Cultist card art
Death Cultist drains one life from each opponent on entry and again when it dies — two pings for one mana, and that damage adds up fast in multiplayer. Gwenom, Remorseless turns that death trigger into a repeatable engine, and Mortuary can loop it back into position when the graveyard cooperates.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Gwenom, Remorseless

Gwenom, Remorseless

32.1% of decks · synergy 0.31

Gwenom, Remorseless rewards exactly the kind of cheap, recursive death triggers Death Cultist supplies — every time it dies and drains, you're feeding the engine Gwenom wants running all game.

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

Death Cultist is a Commander card through and through — one life per opponent is largely irrelevant in 1v1 formats but scales to three targets in a four-player pod, and the recursion lines available in EDH let it trigger repeatedly rather than once. In Pauper it's legal but competes with more efficient one-drops that close games faster; the drain rate simply doesn't pressure life totals quickly enough. Legacy, Vintage, and Modern all have access to it, but it sees essentially no play there — one damage at a time doesn't move the needle in those formats. Commander is where Death Cultist earns its slot.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.21 bulk tier

At $0.21, Death Cultist sits firmly in bulk territory — easy to pick up as a throw-in or from a bulk bin. Bulk commons and uncommons with specific combo applications tend to stay cheap indefinitely, so there's no urgency either way.

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Sources

Mentioned

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