Avarice AmuletHow it works & interactions with other cards

A Boon of Greed

Avarice Amulet grants the equipped creature +2/+0, vigilance, and a triggered ability that lets you draw a card at the start of your upkeep. Vigilance is particularly useful here, as it allows the creature to attack without tapping, leaving it ready to block and protect your life total—or itself—during the opponent's turn.

The Price of Failure

The Amulet's second ability is a triggered ability that triggers specifically when the equipped creature dies. When this happens, a target opponent of your choice gains control of Avarice Amulet. This transfer of ownership is permanent unless another effect moves it, and it occurs even if the Amulet itself remains on the battlefield. Because the ability targets, you must choose which opponent receives the artifact as the trigger is put onto the stack.

Strategic Implementation

To maximize this card, you want to equip it to creatures that are difficult to kill or that you don't mind losing if you have a way to destroy the artifact in response. Remember that the draw trigger happens at the beginning of your upkeep; if the creature dies before your upkeep, you won't get that extra card. Since the equip ability can only be used at sorcery speed, you cannot 'save' the Amulet by moving it to another creature in response to a removal spell.

Interaction examples

Double the Value

Solemn Simulacrum

If you equip Avarice Amulet to Solemn Simulacrum, you create a value engine. At your upkeep, the Amulet lets you draw a card. If an opponent kills the Simulacrum, two triggers go on the stack: the Simulacrum's own ability to draw a card and the Amulet's ability to give control to an opponent. You will draw your card from the Golem, but the Amulet will then move to your opponent's side of the battlefield.

Denying the Gift

Commander's Sphere

Imagine your creature equipped with Avarice Amulet is about to die. Once the creature dies and the 'target opponent gains control' trigger goes on the stack, you cannot stop that specific trigger by conventional means. However, if you had a way to sacrifice the Amulet itself (similar to the utility of Commander's Sphere for mana or cards), doing so while the Amulet is still under your control would prevent the opponent from ever benefiting from it. Once it is in the graveyard, the control-change effect has no permanent on the battlefield to apply to.