by Elton Gahr

Created on: October 30, 2009

One of the reasons that equipment is so useful is that most people do not have all that much artifact removal in their deck, little more than a single set of cards in many decks and often those are used for other things as well. But there are two ways to deal with equipment. The first is to destroy the equipment itself the second is to kill the creature that it equips and make you spend mana to attach it to another creature. This is not a perfect solution but it generally works, except when equipment makes that less worthwhile.

Deathrender is a rare artifact equipment from the Lorwyn expansion set of magic the gathering. It costs four colorless mana to put into play and two colorless mana to equip to a creature. Once attached it gives the creature +2/+2 but far more important than that is the ability of deathrender which reads " Whenever equipped creature is put into a graveyard, you may put a creature card from your hand onto the battlefield and attach Deathrender to it."

This leads to the ideal situation for deathrender in which you put it out early, attach it to a small and generally disposable creature and then put a much larger creature into play for free and this is a generally good plan, but it is not the only way to use the card.

One of the major advantages of deathrender is that your opponent has to assume that you are going to put a larger creature into play if he kills the creature that you have. This can allow you to bluff by attacking with it into a much larger enemy force. The opponent then has to decide if he will block, risking you having a larger, and now untapped creature or take the damage. And once he has made the decision it is likely that he will continue on the same line of reasoning at least for some period of time.

Another value is that since this attaches for free there is no limit to the number of creatures that can be sacrificed while holding deathrender except the cards in your hand. For example if you were to attach this to a creature that sacrificed itself, then put a ball lightning into play to attack with and then when the ball lightning died at the end of the turn attach the creature to something else. This could also be used as a sort of flash for creatures so long as you have a way to sacrifice the creature, allowing you to block when your opponent does not expect it.

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