Shay Cormac
Legendary Creature — Human Knight Rogue
: Permanents your opponents control lose hexproof, indestructible, protection, shroud, and ward until end of turn.
Whenever a creature an opponent controls becomes the target of a spell or ability you control, put a bounty counter on that creature.
Whenever a creature with a bounty counter on it dies, put two +1/+1 counters on Shay Cormac.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- BW
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Assassin's Creed
- Price
- $0.26
- EDHREC rank
- #3864
Shay Cormac puts a bounty counter on every creature your opponents control when he enters, then rewards you with card draw whenever one of those creatures dies — stapling a persistent draw engine onto a single creature slot. The cost is real: he needs opponents to have creatures and needs something to kill them, so he's dead weight against creature-light decks. Pair him with Agatha's Soul Cauldron or Ardbert, Warrior of Darkness and the counters do double duty, but on his own he's a value piece, not a threat.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Ardbert, Warrior of Darkness
Ardbert, Warrior of Darkness cares about counters on opponents' creatures, and Shay Cormac blankets every opposing board with bounty counters the moment he lands — turning Ardbert's triggered ability into a reliable engine rather than an occasional bonus.
Mathas, Fiend Seeker
Mathas, Fiend Seeker already places bounty counters on opponents' creatures one at a time; Shay Cormac accelerates that gameplan by covering the whole table at once, letting the deck draw and gain life at a pace Mathas alone can't match.
Kelsien, the Plague
Kelsien, the Plague taps to deal one damage, which conveniently kills small creatures and triggers any death-matters payoffs — Shay Cormac turns each of those kills into a card draw, giving Kelsien a repeatable advantage engine attached to his own combat step.
Ezio Auditore da Firenze
Ezio Auditore da Firenze marks creatures for death and rewards you when marked creatures die, which overlaps cleanly with Shay Cormac's bounty-counter-draw loop and makes the two feel purpose-built for the same pile.
Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad
Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad distributes minus-one-minus-one counters when creatures with his knowledge counters die, and Shay Cormac's bounty counters give that death trigger more opportunities to fire, widening the board-shrink effect with every swing.
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 |
Shay Cormac is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but his home is unambiguously Commander — a four-mana 3/3 with a conditional draw trigger is nowhere near the rate required for Legacy or Vintage, and Modern has enough efficient threats that a symmetry-dependent value creature barely registers. In Commander, the multiplayer environment makes his enter-the-battlefield effect genuinely powerful: three opponents means six, nine, or more bounty counters land at once, and any board wipe or sacrifice outlet turns that into a burst of cards. He's best in the command zone's supporting cast rather than as a build-around, slotting into any Mardu deck that already has a plan for creatures dying.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Shay CormacAgatha's Soul CauldronWalking Ballista
Destroy each creature that enters the battlefield under an opponent's control; Destroy all creatures opponents control; Lock
View on Commander Spellbook ↗
Shay CormacAgatha's Soul CauldronTriskelion
Destroy each creature that enters the battlefield under an opponent's control; Destroy all creatures opponents control; Lock
View on Commander Spellbook ↗Price Context
Current price
$0.26 bulk tier
At $0.26, Shay Cormac is firmly bulk — the kind of card you pick up as a throw-in without thinking twice. Given that he's a mythic-adjacent crossover card with real synergy density in Ardbert and Kelsien shells, that price is a bargain and unlikely to drop further.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.