MTG Lifelink: Rules, Best Cards & Every Interaction

Lifelink is one of the friendliest keywords in Magic to read and one of the easiest to get wrong at the table. The reminder text — “damage dealt by this creature also causes you to gain that much life” — hides a rules change, a stack interaction that no longer exists, and a set of combat corner cases that decide games.

So this guide does two things. First, it settles the rules with the actual Comprehensive Rules wording and works through the interactions people argue about. Second, it puts numbers on the keyword: every lifelink card in paper Magic, pulled from the Scryfall API on 24 August 2026 and audited card by card, because the obvious way to count them is wrong by seven cards.

What lifelink actually does

Rule 702.15 is short: lifelink is a static ability. Damage dealt by a source with lifelink causes that source’s controller — or its owner, if it has no controller — to gain that much life, in addition to whatever else that damage does.

Three consequences follow, and each one is a rules question people ask constantly.

It is not a triggered ability, and it does not use the stack

This is the single most important thing to know, and it is the thing most likely to be remembered wrong by anyone who learned Magic before 2009. Lifelink used to be a triggered ability. Life gain went on the stack, which meant there was a window between the damage and the life — a window in which you could lose the game at 0 life before the lifelink that would have saved you resolved.

The Magic 2010 rules update changed lifelink to a static ability. Since then, the damage and the life gain happen simultaneously. There is nothing to respond to, nothing to counter, and no window in which your life total dips first. If you are at 3 life and your 5/5 lifelinker trades with a 5/5, you take 5 and gain 5 at the same instant; state-based actions check afterwards and you are still at 3.

It applies to all damage, not just combat damage

Nothing in the rule mentions combat. If a creature with lifelink deals damage in any way — fighting, pinging with an activated ability, being sacrificed to something that deals damage equal to its power — you gain that much life. Damage dealt to a player, a creature, a planeswalker or a battle all count equally.

Multiple instances are redundant

Giving a creature that already has lifelink a second lifelink does nothing. Two copies of the ability do not double the life gain, because the rule is a property of the source, not a counter. If you want more life out of one attack you need more damage, not more lifelink — which is why the trample and double strike lines below matter so much.

The five interactions people get wrong

Lifelink and deathtouch

This is the best-known pair and it works exactly as well as it looks. Deathtouch makes any nonzero amount of damage lethal; lifelink converts all of that damage into life. A 1/1 with both, blocked by a 9/9, kills the 9/9 and gains you 1 life. The damage dealt is 1, so the life gained is 1 — deathtouch does not inflate the number, it just changes what the number destroys.

28 of the 360 lifelink cards in paper Magic also have deathtouch printed on them.

Lifelink and trample

You gain life equal to all the damage the creature deals, including the excess that tramples over. A 7/7 with trample and lifelink blocked by a 2/2 assigns 2 lethal damage to the blocker and 5 to the player: 7 damage dealt, 7 life gained. Trample is the cheapest way to make a lifelinker gain more without adding another keyword. 17 cards have both.

Lifelink and double strike — one card in the entire game

Double strike is the biggest multiplier lifelink has: the creature deals combat damage twice, so you gain life twice. A 4/4 with double strike and lifelink that connects gains you 8.

And in thirty-three years of Magic, exactly one card has been printed with both lifelink and double strike: Drogskol Reaver. It is a 3/5 Spirit for {5}{W}{U} that also draws a card whenever you gain life — meaning it draws twice per connection, once for each strike. It costs about $0.19.

If you want the double-strike-plus-lifelink line in any other deck, you have to build it: give a lifelinker double strike, or give a double striker lifelink. There is no second card that arrives with both.

Prevented and replaced damage gains you nothing

Lifelink keys off damage actually being dealt. If the damage is prevented — a fog, a protection effect, a damage-prevention shield — no damage is dealt, so no life is gained. The same is true if the damage is replaced by something else entirely. “My creature has lifelink” is not a floor; it is a rider on a number that can be reduced to zero.

Blocked by a 0/1 wall? You still gain the full amount

Damage dealt to a creature is damage dealt. A 6/6 lifelinker blocked by a 0/1 assigns all 6 to the blocker (unless it has trample and you assign lethal, which is 1, and 5 to the player). Either way the total is 6 and you gain 6. What you cannot do is decline to assign damage in order to save it for later.

Every lifelink card, counted properly

Scryfall’s keyword:lifelink search returns 367 unique paper cards. That number is wrong, and the way it is wrong is instructive.

Scryfall builds each card’s keyword list by reading its text. A card that names a keyword therefore lands in that keyword’s roster whether or not it has the ability. Odric, Blood-Cursed is the clearest case: it has no keyword abilities at all, but its trigger counts “abilities from among flying, first strike, double strike, deathtouch, haste, hexproof, indestructible, lifelink, menace, reach, trample, and vigilance” — so it appears in the roster for all twelve.

Auditing all 367 by hand turns up seven cards that do not have lifelink: Odric; Zur, Eternal Schemer and Hungry for More, which grant it to other things; Celebr-8000 and Reluctant Role Model, which can acquire it conditionally; and Contortionist Otter Storm and Mystic Doom Sandwich, which are Unfinity stickers rather than cards at all.

367 − 7 = 360. Every number below is computed on those 360.

Lifelink is a white and black keyword, and the gaps are absolute

Nineteen years, 360 cards, and not one mono-blue, mono-red or mono-green card has ever been printed with lifelink. Those colours only reach the keyword through gold cards: counting how often each colour appears anywhere in a lifelink card’s colour identity gives white 235, black 187, blue 40, green 38, red 26. Blue, green and red are passengers.

The five colourless lifelinkers are all artifacts or Eldrazi: Wurmcoil Engine, Phyrexian Fleshgorger, Scavenged Brawler, Sire of Seven Deaths and Brisela, Voice of Nightmares.

359 of 360 are creatures

Lifelink is a combat keyword and the type line proves it. Every lifelink card in paper Magic is a creature except one: Valor’s Flagship, a Legendary Vehicle from Aetherdrift with flying, first strike and lifelink for {4}{W}{W}{W}, crewed for 3. If you want lifelink on something that is not a creature, that is the entire list.

The debut curve is climbing — which makes lifelink the opposite of a dying mechanic

The keyword debuted in Future Sight on 4 May 2007 with Mistmeadow Skulk, then arrived properly in Lorwyn that October with Changeling Hero, Knight of Meadowgrain and Brion Stoutarm. Its three biggest years are its three most recent: 2024 delivered 46 new lifelink cards, 2025 delivered 45, and 2026 has delivered 33 with four months still to run.

That is worth contrasting with a keyword going the other way. When we counted regenerate the same way, it had a seven-year printing gap and zero new cards in 2026. Lifelink has no gap anywhere in its curve.

A note on the count: the 360 includes 8 cards from sets that have not been released yet — Reality Fracture (2 October), Mystery Booster Commander Edition (9 November) and the two Star Trek products (13 November). Scryfall carries spoiled cards with future release dates, so a naive query returns a “newest lifelink card” that you cannot buy. The 352 in the table above are the ones actually printed; the most recent released card with lifelink is Bofur, Reliable Guardian from The Hobbit, 14 August 2026.

Rarity and mana value

Rare 122, uncommon 89, common 79, mythic 70. The mana curve peaks hard in the middle: 85 cards at mana value 3 and 75 at mana value 2, with 28 one-drops and a long thin tail up to Brisela, Voice of Nightmares at 11. Only one lifelink card has mana value 0 — Westvale Abbey, which is a land that becomes Ormendahl.

The best lifelink cards to actually play

Commander staples

Ranked by how often Commander decks run them. Prices are Scryfall USD as of 24 August 2026.

Standard-legal lifelink

92 of the 360 are legal in Standard right now — a striking contrast with keywords that have been retired from evergreen rotation. If you are building for the current Standard meta, this is the pool.

Lifelink is a cheap keyword to buy

Of the 345 lifelink cards with a Scryfall USD price, 258 — 74.8% — cost under a dollar, and the median is $0.31. The expensive end is short and it is not really about lifelink: Archangel of Thune at $60.82, Ocelot Pride at $39.54 and Doctor Doom, Unrivaled at $34.83 are priced by their other text. You can build a functioning lifelink deck for the price of one of them. Check current numbers on our card pricing tool before you buy — these move.

Handing lifelink to the rest of your board

Having lifelink on one creature is a rider. Granting it to your whole team is a strategy. 147 paper cards grant lifelink to something else, and 136 of them do not have the keyword themselves — they are enablers, not bodies.

Witch’s Clinic is the sleeper here — a colourless land that turns any commander into a lifelinker for two mana, in any deck, at no cost to your colour requirements.

Lifelink and the ban lists

Across every sanctioned format, exactly two lifelink cards are banned anywhere — and they are banned in perfectly complementary places.

Griselbrand’s “Pay 7 life: Draw seven cards” is a tutor-and-reanimate engine that Commander’s rules committee decided was too reliable at 40 life; lifelink is what refills the resource. Lurrus was a free companion that constrained deckbuilding in constructed formats but is unremarkable in a 100-card singleton deck. For the wider picture, see our MTG banned list guide.

A budget lifelink core for Commander

Rather than a full 100, here is the part that is hard to assemble: thirty lifelink and lifelink-adjacent cards in white/black colour identity, every one Commander-legal, every one under $3, that slot into any W/B lifegain shell. The whole core costs $28.08 at the prices read on 24 August 2026.

Two build notes. Lurrus of the Dream-Den is legal in Commander despite its bans elsewhere, so it is a fine 99 card — it just cannot be your companion in the formats that banned it. And Rhox Faithmender plus Felidar Sovereign is the compact win condition: double your life gain, then convert 40 life into a win at your upkeep.

If you would rather have the shell built for you, our AI deck builder will assemble a full 100 around any of these commanders, and you can browse what other players have published in the public deck gallery.

Frequently asked questions

Does lifelink trigger, or is it automatic?

Automatic. Lifelink has been a static ability since the Magic 2010 rules update. Damage and life gain happen simultaneously, nothing goes on the stack, and there is no window in which an opponent can respond.

Does lifelink work on non-combat damage?

Yes. The rule says “damage dealt by a source with lifelink” with no restriction to combat. Fight effects, activated abilities that deal damage, and damage to planeswalkers, battles or creatures all cause life gain.

Do two instances of lifelink double my life gain?

No. Multiple instances of lifelink on the same object are redundant. To gain more life you need to deal more damage — via trample, double strike, or a bigger creature.

Does lifelink save me if I am at 1 life?

Yes, if the damage is dealt at the same time. Because the life gain is simultaneous with the damage, you never dip below your final total. Being at 1 life and trading with a 3/3 using a 3/3 lifelinker leaves you at 1, not dead.

What happens with deathtouch and lifelink together?

Deathtouch makes the damage lethal regardless of size; lifelink converts the damage dealt into life. A 1/1 with both kills anything it damages and gains you 1 life. Deathtouch does not increase the life gained.

Does trample increase lifelink’s life gain?

It increases the damage, and therefore the life. You gain life equal to the total damage dealt, including damage that tramples through to the player.

How many cards have both lifelink and double strike?

One: Drogskol Reaver. It is the only card in paper Magic printed with both, and it draws a card each time you gain life, so it draws twice per connection.

Do I gain life if the damage is prevented?

No. No damage dealt means no life gained. Prevention and replacement effects that stop the damage stop the lifelink with it.

How many lifelink cards are there in Magic?

360 unique paper cards as of 24 August 2026, of which 352 have actually been released. Scryfall’s raw keyword:lifelink search returns 367, but seven of those cards only mention the word.

What colours get lifelink?

White (130 cards) and black (105), plus 120 multicolour and 5 colourless. There has never been a mono-blue, mono-red or mono-green card printed with lifelink.

Is lifelink good in Commander?

Yes — 351 of the 360 are Commander-legal, and a 40-life format rewards incremental gain far more than a 20-life one. It also turns on payoffs like Felidar Sovereign, Archangel of Thune and Ocelot Pride.

What is the most expensive lifelink card?

Archangel of Thune at $60.82, followed by Ocelot Pride at $39.54 and Doctor Doom, Unrivaled at $34.83. But 74.8% of priced lifelink cards are under a dollar.

Is lifelink legal in Standard?

Very. 92 lifelink cards are Standard-legal right now, including Vampire Nighthawk, Lyra Dawnbringer, Valgavoth and Sire of Seven Deaths.

Are any lifelink cards banned?

Two. Griselbrand is banned in Commander but legal in Modern, Legacy and Vintage; Lurrus of the Dream-Den is banned in Modern, Legacy and Pioneer but legal in Commander and Vintage.

Can a non-creature have lifelink?

Only one does: Valor’s Flagship, a Vehicle from Aetherdrift. Every other lifelink card in paper Magic is a creature. Plenty of non-creature cards grant lifelink, though — 147 cards do.

The short version

Lifelink is a static ability that turns any damage a source deals into an equal amount of life, simultaneously and unanswerably. It is white and black almost exclusively, it is overwhelmingly cheap to buy, it is the healthiest it has ever been by printing volume, and its ceiling comes from stacking damage multipliers rather than stacking the keyword itself. If you are picking a lane, trample is the cheap multiplier, deathtouch is the defensive one, and double strike is the best one — you just have to build it, because Magic has only ever printed the pair on a single card.

Want more keyword deep dives? We have the same treatment for regenerate, indestructible, haste and vigilance — or test how well you know your commanders with Guess That Commander.