Martyr of Ashes
Creature — Human Shaman
, Reveal X red cards from your hand, Sacrifice this creature: This creature deals X damage to each creature without flying.
- CMC
- 1
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- R
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Coldsnap
- Price
- $0.18
- EDHREC rank
- #27924
Martyr of Ashes clears the board of small creatures for the cost of revealing red cards from your hand — the more you reveal, the wider the sweep. It's a conditional board wipe stapled to a one-drop body, and in the right shell that condition is trivially met.
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 | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Martyr of Ashes occupies a narrow but real niche: a repeatable, scalable board wipe in mono-red or red-heavy decks that otherwise struggle to clear small utility creatures without spending premium removal slots. Pauper is where it sees its most consistent competitive use — token-flood matchups are common and the card advantage cost of revealing is manageable in formats with tighter hand sizes. Legacy and Vintage have the raw card power to make it irrelevant; you're not revealing four red cards to wipe Delver tokens when you could just cast a more efficient sweeper. Modern has better options at every point on the curve, so Martyr of Ashes doesn't register there. Oathbreaker mirrors the Commander read — useful in red signatures that need cheap sweeper access.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.18 bulk tier
At $0.18, Martyr of Ashes is deep bulk — you're picking it out of a dollar bin or adding it to a cart as an afterthought. Bulk commons with narrow applications don't appreciate, so there's no reason to buy more than you need right now.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.