Top 5 Red Artifacts in Magic: The Gathering

The Reaver Cleaver

Let’s start with a card that perfectly embodies modern Red design, The Reaver Cleaver. If you’re playing a Voltron commander or just love big mana, this equipment is non-negotiable.

It gives your creature a power boost and Trample, but the real juice is the ability to create Treasure tokens equal to the damage you deal.

The inclusion of Trample here is a masterstroke of design. Without it, your opponent could chump block your massive attacker with a 1/1 token to prevent the trigger. With Trample, you are guaranteed to spill damage over to the player, generating a hoard of gold in the process.

This creates a loop of violence and commerce that fuels your entire deck. In high-power Commander games, this card is often paired with Aggravated Assault to create infinite combat steps.

You generate enough treasures from the first hit to pay for the extra combat, untap, and do it all again. 

Embercleave

You knew this was coming. Embercleave is the card that makes opponents sweat the moment you leave two mana open.

You flash it in, attach it for free, and suddenly your blocked creature has Double Strike and Trample. It turns safe blocks into some game-ending opportunities.

The magic of Embercleave lies in its cost reduction ability. In a go-wide deck full of Goblins or Knights, this legendary artifact often costs as little as two Red to cast.

It fundamentally changes the math of the combat phase. By granting Double Strike at instant speed, you often destroy blocking creatures before they can even deal damage back, or you push through lethal damage out of nowhere.

It is a staple in commanders like Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale, where it acts as a great finisher.  

Cursed Mirror

This might be my favorite sleeper pick on the list. On the surface, Cursed Mirror is just a mana rock that taps for Red. But the text box is wild, it enters the battlefield as a copy of any creature until the end of turn, and it gains Haste.

This solves Red’s biggest problem in Commander, which is needing ramp but not wanting to take a turn off from attacking.

You can copy your opponent’s best creature, perhaps a Titan or a dragon with a powerful enter-the-battlefield effect, swing with it immediately thanks to Haste, and then still have a functional mana rock for your future turns.

It is particularly potent in decks that care about Enter the Battlefield triggers or copying powerful utility creatures like Dockside Extortionist to generate a burst of mana before the mirror reverts to its reflective state.  

Urabrask’s Forge

Inevitability isn’t a word we usually associate with Red, but Urabrask’s Forge changes that.

Every turn, it spits out a Phyrexian Horror token that gets bigger and bigger. It starts as a 1/1, then a 2/1, and if your opponents don’t answer it, it eventually tramples over them for lethal.

What makes the Forge so dangerous is its resilience. Board wipes usually reset an aggro player’s progress, but the Forge sits safely as an artifact, ready to churn out another, even larger threat the very next turn.

It has found a unique home in Aristocrats strategies, such as Mishra, Claimed by Gix, because the token sacrifices itself at the end of the turn.

This guarantees you a death trigger every single rotation without costing you any additional cards or mana, providing a relentless, oily engine of progress.  

Combustible Gearhulk

Finally, we have the big gambler, Combustible Gearhulk.

This 6/6 First Striker forces your opponent to make a choice, let you draw three cards, or take damage equal to the mana value of three milled cards.

In a deck full of high-cost dragons and artifacts, that damage option can accidentally one-shot a player.

This card represents the Punisher mechanic done right. While opponents will usually try to take the damage to deny you cards, the Gearhulk turns your graveyard into a resource.

In decks led by Daretti, Scrap Savant or Goblin Welder, you can loop the Gearhulk in and out of the graveyard multiple times a turn.

Eventually, your opponents’ life totals will get low enough that they have to let you draw the cards, at which point the Gearhulk has done its job. It is chaotic, high-stakes, and quintessentially Red.