Kagemaro, First to Suffer
Legendary Creature — Demon Spirit
Kagemaro's power and toughness are each equal to the number of cards in your hand.
, Sacrifice Kagemaro: All creatures get -X/-X until end of turn, where X is the number of cards in your hand.
- CMC
- 5
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Saviors of Kamigawa
- Price
- $2.25
- EDHREC rank
- #17474
Kagemaro, First to Suffer is a walking board wipe — sacrifice it while your hand is full and every creature on the table takes damage equal to your hand size, which ends games when you're holding seven or more cards. The cost is real: you lose a 5/5 body and the wipe scales off your own resources, so it underperforms when you're in topdeck mode.
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 |
Commander is where Kagemaro, First to Suffer does its best work — black decks regularly maintain large hand sizes through Necropotence, Phyrexian Arena, and similar engines, making the sacrifice ability a reliable one-sided board wipe that leaves tokens and small utility creatures dead in the water. It also serves as a recursion target in reanimator shells, letting you rebuy the wipe whenever you need it. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but sees no competitive play; those formats move too fast for a five-mana creature that demands a full grip to threaten the board. Modern is similarly barren for it — better cheap removal exists at every turn of the curve.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$2.25 cheap tier
At $2.25, Kagemaro, First to Suffer sits at the cheap end of the market for a card with genuine Commander utility, and that price reflects its age and narrow audience rather than a lack of power. It's unlikely to spike without a reprint or a breakout synergy piece, but at this floor it's a low-risk pickup for any black Commander deck that wants redundant board control.
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Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.