Kusari-Gama
Artifact — Equipment
Equipped creature has "
: This creature gets +1/+0 until end of turn."
Whenever equipped creature deals damage to a blocking creature, this Equipment deals that much damage to each other creature defending player controls.
Equip 
(: Attach to target creature you control. Equip only as a sorcery.)
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- C
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Champions of Kamigawa
- Price
- $5.98
- EDHREC rank
- #10655
Kusari-Gama turns a single unblocked creature into a board wipe — anything that takes damage also takes the full power of the equipped creature, so one hit can chain-kill an entire table's worth of tokens and utility creatures. The four-mana equip cost is the real friction point, but the on-board threat it creates warps how opponents assign blocks the moment it resolves, and Maarika, Brutal Gladiator exploits that effect better than almost any commander in the format.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Maarika, Brutal Gladiator
Maarika, Brutal Gladiator already deals damage to a creature whenever she attacks, and Kusari-Gama redirects that ping to every other creature the opponent controls — a single swing can clear out an entire board before combat damage even resolves.
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 |
Kusari-Gama is a Commander card through and through — the multi-opponent, creature-dense environment is exactly where chaining damage across a board full of tokens or value creatures becomes backbreaking. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but sees essentially no play; four mana to equip is glacial in formats where the game is often decided by turn three, and single-target damage chains don't map well onto those linear strategies. Modern is the same story: equipment synergy decks there prefer Colossus Hammer or Sword of Fire and Ice for far more efficient payoffs. Stick to Commander, specifically in aggressive or Gruul-style builds where you're already planning to attack every turn and the board-clear upside is essentially free.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Budget Alternatives
Cheaper options that do most of the same work
Thornbite Staff does something adjacent — it untaps the equipped creature whenever another creature dies, which in the right shell generates its own chain effect — and it costs under a dollar. Hornet Sting-style pinger redundancy isn't a perfect substitute for what Kusari-Gama does, but if the goal is leveraging combat damage to wipe small creatures, Basilisk Collar plus any deathtouch-granting effect achieves a similar political deterrent at a lower total price.
Price Context
Current price
$5.98 mid tier
At $5.98, Kusari-Gama sits in the mid tier — expensive enough that it's a deliberate include rather than a bulk pickup, but cheap enough to justify in any deck that genuinely wants the effect. It's a single-printing niche equipment with a loyal home in Maarika builds, so the price is stable rather than speculative.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Maarika, Brutal Gladiator
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.