MagicTheGathering.fyi

Deathrender

Artifact — Equipment

Equipped creature gets +2/+2.
Whenever equipped creature dies, you may put a creature card from your hand onto the battlefield and attach this Equipment to it.
Equip {2}

CMC
4
Mana cost
{4}
Color identity
C
Rarity
rare
Set
Lorwyn
Price
$5.66
EDHREC rank
#10311
Buy on TCGplayer
Deathrender card art
Deathrender turns every creature death into a free deployment — whatever was equipped cheats the next creature in hand directly onto the battlefield, already strapped in. The four-mana equip cost is steep, but once it's moving it pays for itself immediately, and Koll, the Forgemaster makes the whole engine nearly unkillable by returning Deathrender to hand before it can be stripped.

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 not legal
oathbreaker legal

Deathrender is a Commander card front to back — the free-deployment trigger only becomes reliably repeatable in a 100-card singleton format where sacrifice synergies, death triggers, and graveyard loops are core archetypes. In Legacy and Vintage it's technically legal but sees no meaningful play; four mana for an Equipment with no immediate impact is far too slow against those formats' turn-two kill clocks. Modern has the same problem and better Equipment options besides. Deathrender's real home is any Commander pod where creatures are expected to die repeatedly and the question is whether you can convert each death into tempo — there, it earns its slot.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

No single card replicates what Deathrender does exactly, but Equipment with reduced costs on death offer a partial substitute — Skullclamp turns small creature deaths into cards rather than new bodies, and at under a dollar it slots into most of the same sacrifice shells. If the specific free-cheat-into-play effect is the goal, Lurking Predators and Mosswort Bridge approach the same idea from different angles, though neither triggers on death or attaches to a creature the way Deathrender does.

Price Context

Current price

$5.66 mid tier

At $5.66, Deathrender sits in the mid tier — affordable enough to justify in any deck that genuinely wants it, not so cheap that picking one up feels thoughtless. It's a unique effect on a card with a stable niche, so the price is unlikely to erode much; redundancy doesn't exist to push demand down.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

← All cards

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