Death in the Family
Instant
Exile target creature with mana value 3 or less.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- Price
- $0.17
- EDHREC rank
- #19950
Death in the Family destroys a target creature and, if that creature had a graveyard trigger or was a token, replaces itself with a 1/1 black insect — removal that occasionally draws a card's worth of board presence. At one mana, the ceiling is real, but the floor is a vanilla Disfigure with a bug stapled on, and conditional upside on a removal spell is usually not where you want to be.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Death in the Family competes in a slot packed with unconditional answers — Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Generous Gift — and the insect rider rarely justifies the trade-off against a field full of commanders and creatures that don't care about their graveyard. In Standard and Pioneer it has more room to breathe, where the 1/1 token can matter on a board with go-wide payoffs and graveyard-matters creatures are common enough to hit consistently. Legacy and Vintage have no interest in a one-mana conditional removal spell that doesn't interact with the stack. Death in the Family is at its best in lower-power Standard environments where the token is a real tempo bonus, not a footnote.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.17 bulk tier
At $0.17, Death in the Family is deep bulk — you're not buying it for value, you're grabbing it out of a common box. Bulk uncommons with narrow conditions don't appreciate, so treat the copy you own as a free slot filler and don't go hunting for more.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.