Molten Gatekeeper

Card text

Whenever another creature you control enters, this creature deals 1 damage to each opponent.

Unearth {R} ({R}: Return this card from your graveyard to the battlefield. It gains haste. Exile it at the beginning of the next end step or if it would leave the battlefield. Unearth only as a sorcery.)

Market price

Latest aggregated market price for the normal finish of this printing: $0.33 (as of 2026-10-23).

The figure covers this printing only; other printings carry their own price on their own page.

Format legality

Legality of Molten Gatekeeper by format. Formats in which it is not legal are not listed.

Official rulings

Five official rulings apply to Molten Gatekeeper, newest first.

• 2024-06-07 At the beginning of the next end step, a permanent returned to the battlefield with unearth is exiled. This is a delayed triggered ability, and it can be countered by effects that counter triggered abilities. If the ability is countered, the permanent will stay on the battlefield and the delayed triggered ability won't trigger again. However, the replacement effect will still exile the permanent if it eventually leaves the battlefield.
• 2024-06-07 Unearth grants haste to the permanent that's returned to the battlefield (even if it's not a creature card). However, neither of the "exile" abilities is granted to that permanent. If that permanent loses all its abilities, it will still be exiled at the beginning of the next end step, and if it would leave the battlefield, it is still exiled instead.
• 2024-06-07 Activating a card's unearth ability isn't the same as casting that card. The unearth ability is put on the stack, but the card is not. Spells and abilities that interact with activated abilities will interact with unearth, but spells and abilities that interact with spells (such as Flare of Denial) will not.
• 2024-06-07 If you activate a card's unearth ability but that card is removed from your graveyard before the ability resolves, that unearth ability will do nothing as it resolves.
• 2024-06-07 If a permanent returned to the battlefield with unearth would leave the battlefield for any reason, it's exiled instead-unless the spell or ability that's causing the permanent to leave the battlefield is actually trying to exile it! In that case, it succeeds at exiling it. If that spell or ability later returns the card to the battlefield (as Static Prison might, for example), the permanent card will return to the battlefield as a new object with no relation to its previous existence. The unearth effects will no longer apply to it.

Similar cards

Other artifact creature cards with a red colour identity, ranked by how often they appear in Commander decks.

• Combustible Gearhulk
• Iron Myr
• Lizard Blades
• Slicer, Hired Muscle // Slicer, High-Speed Antagonist
• Komainu Battle Armor
• Unruly Catapult
• Rose, Cutthroat Raider
• Depthshaker Titan