Garza's Assassin
Creature — Human Assassin
Sacrifice this creature: Destroy target nonblack creature.
Recover—Pay half your life, rounded up. (When another creature is put into your graveyard from the battlefield, you may pay half your life, rounded up. If you do, return this card from your graveyard to your hand. Otherwise, exile this card.)
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Coldsnap
- Price
- $1.24
- EDHREC rank
- #17377
Garza's Assassin destroys a nonland permanent outright — no targeting restrictions, no condition — and the only cost is half your life total each time you recur it. In Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad builds where assassination triggers are the whole game, that repeatable removal is exactly what the engine wants, and you pay the life tax once per loop rather than once per game.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad
Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad rewards you for assassinating creatures, and Garza's Assassin turns that into a repeatable engine — pay half your life, recur it from the graveyard, kill again, stack another assassination counter, and keep the chain going as long as your life total holds.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Garza's Assassin is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but it sees essentially zero play outside Commander. In Legacy and Vintage, unconditional removal at three mana is far too slow when your opponent is winning on turn one or two. Modern has better options at every point on the curve. Commander is where Garza's Assassin actually lives — 100-card singleton means the recursive angle matters more, and a 30-life starting total makes the half-life cost survivable across multiple activations, especially in decks that gain life or care about creature deaths as triggers.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$1.24 cheap tier
At $1.24, Garza's Assassin sits in the cheap tier — low enough that there's no real barrier to picking it up for the right deck. It's a narrow card with a specific home, so don't expect the price to move much in either direction.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.