Nine-Lives Familiar
Creature — Cat
This creature enters with eight revival counters on it if you cast it.
When this creature dies, if it had a revival counter on it, return it to the battlefield with one fewer revival counter on it at the beginning of the next end step.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Foundations
- Price
- $3.03
- EDHREC rank
- #2672
Nine-Lives Familiar enters the battlefield and immediately resets your life total to 9 — a free stabilization effect stapled to a creature that costs just one white mana. It's a staple in Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER decks for good reason: if your commander cares about life total thresholds or damage dealt relative to life, resetting to 9 on demand is an engine trigger, not just a safety net.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER
Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER advances his Crisis gauge whenever you've dealt damage to a player who had more life than you at the start of the turn — Nine-Lives Familiar sets your life to 9 on entry, making almost every opponent a valid target for that bonus damage trigger. Over 50% of Sephiroth decks run it, and that number reflects how central the life-reset is to the engine.
Felisa, Fang of Silverquill
Felisa, Fang of Silverquill generates Inklings when nontoken creatures you control die with +1/+1 counters on them — Nine-Lives Familiar, which often picks up counters through companion-adjacent life-tracking mechanics, converts cleanly into that death trigger. The life reset is a secondary bonus that keeps Felisa decks alive long enough to flood the board.
Evereth, Viceroy of Plunder
Evereth, Viceroy of Plunder rewards aggressive, treasure-generating play that often drains your life total faster than opponents', and Nine-Lives Familiar's reset to 9 lets you engineer favorable life-gap situations for Evereth's damage bonuses. Nearly 38% inclusion across a large pool of decks confirms it slots naturally into the gameplan.
Super Shredder
Super Shredder cares about dealing excess damage and punishing opponents at low life totals, and Nine-Lives Familiar's consistent entry-trigger reset creates predictable math for lining up lethal swings. The combination is straightforward: you know your life total, you know the gap, you attack accordingly.
Fumulus, the Infestation
Fumulus, the Infestation scales off counters and incremental resource generation, and Nine-Lives Familiar contributes a enters-the-battlefield life-reset that doubles as a stall against fast aggro decks threatening to end the game before Fumulus's engine goes online. About 35% of Fumulus decks include it as a cheap, functional piece of the lifecycle.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Nine-Lives Familiar is purpose-built for life-total-manipulation strategies — any commander that benefits from a specific life threshold or a known life gap finds immediate value in a one-mana creature that enters and resets the clock. Outside Commander, the card is legal in Standard, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but sees virtually no competitive play in those formats; resetting to 9 life is a liability in 60-card environments where opponents are already threatening lethal on turns three or four. The exception would be fringe combo shells in older formats that can loop the enters-the-battlefield trigger, but Nine-Lives Familiar isn't currently breaking through in any 60-card metagame. Commander is its home, and the synergy data bears that out.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$3.03 cheap tier
At $3.03, Nine-Lives Familiar sits at the low end of mythic-adjacent staples — cheap enough that including it in any qualifying deck is a no-brainer budget decision. It's a new-enough card with a narrow enough home that the price is unlikely to spike dramatically, but it won't crater either as long as Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER remains a popular commander.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER
- Felisa, Fang of Silverquill
- Evereth, Viceroy of Plunder
- Super Shredder
- Fumulus, the Infestation
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.