MagicTheGathering.fyi

Gishath, Sun's Avatar

Legendary Creature — Dinosaur Avatar

Vigilance, trample, haste
Whenever Gishath deals combat damage to a player, reveal that many cards from the top of your library. Put any number of Dinosaur creature cards from among them onto the battlefield and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.

CMC
8
Mana cost
{5}{R}{G}{W}
Color identity
GRW
Rarity
mythic
Set
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan
Price
$7.14
EDHREC rank
#2377
Buy on TCGplayer
Gishath, Sun's Avatar card art
When Gishath, Sun's Avatar connects, it doesn't just deal damage — it dumps an entire Dinosaur tribe onto the battlefield, turning a single swing into a board state most decks need several turns to build. Eight mana is real, but trample, haste, and vigilance mean Gishath pressures immediately and the payoff when it lands is game-warping enough to justify the cost. The one niche exception worth knowing: Mortuary turns Gishath's triggered ability into a soft lock by putting revealed Dinosaurs back on top rather than into play, so keep opponents' enchantment removal in mind.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Pantlaza, Sun-Favored

Pantlaza, Sun-Favored

82.0% of decks · synergy 0.72

Pantlaza, Sun-Favored is the definitive Dinosaur commander and runs Gishath, Sun's Avatar in over 80% of lists because Gishath's attack trigger is one of the most explosive discover-adjacent effects in the tribe — hitting several Dinosaurs off a single swing feeds directly into Pantlaza's own discover chain.

02
Atla Palani, Nest Tender

Atla Palani, Nest Tender

41.2% of decks · synergy 0.31

Atla Palani, Nest Tender cheats creature costs by cracking Eggs, and Gishath, Sun's Avatar is one of the premier targets — a free 7/6 with haste that immediately threatens another cascade of Dinosaurs the turn it arrives.

03
Zacama, Primal Calamity

Zacama, Primal Calamity

36.3% of decks · synergy 0.26

Zacama, Primal Calamity shares Gishath, Sun's Avatar's Naya colors and the same go-big, mana-intensive identity, so the two appear together as redundant late-game threats in Dinosaur-adjacent stompy shells.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern legal
pioneer legal
standard legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Commander is where Gishath, Sun's Avatar lives — it's explicitly built around the 100-card singleton format's ability to reward tribal density, and a deck stuffed with Dinosaurs turns every Gishath attack into a free deployment of three to five creatures. Outside Commander, the 8-mana cost is prohibitive: competitive Constructed formats in Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage all fold to faster clocks before Gishath ever attacks, and no serious competitive shell has found a home for it. It's technically legal across those formats but functionally irrelevant in them. Oathbreaker is the one adjacent format where Gishath could theoretically serve as a signature spell target, though the planeswalker-commander constraint means it doesn't slot naturally.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

The closest budget replacement for Gishath, Sun's Avatar's mass-deployment effect is Zirda, the Dawnwaker paired with cost reducers, but the cleaner analogue is Wakening Sun's Avatar — a cheaper-to-hard-cast threat that wipes non-Dinosaurs and closes games in the same Naya shell, typically under $1. The trade-off is significant: you lose the attack-trigger cascade entirely, gaining a board-wipe instead of a board-fill, so it's a different role rather than a true substitute.

Price Context

Current price

$7.14 mid tier

At $7.14, Gishath, Sun's Avatar sits in the affordable mid tier — reasonable for a card that functions as the centerpiece of an entire archetype. Demand from Pantlaza, Sun-Favored decks keeps a floor under the price, so it's unlikely to drop significantly as long as Dinosaurs remain a popular Commander tribe.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

← All cards

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