Gild is one of the most interesting forms of creature removal ever printed in Magic: the Gathering. It was first printed in Born of the Gods, and later reprinted in a Commander 2015 preconstructed deck. With a casting cost of 3B (3 colorless, 1 Black), you exile target creature. In return, you put a colorless artifact token named Gold onto the battlefield under your own control. It has “Sacrifice this artifact: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.”

Exiling an opponent’s creature and getting yourself a token that can be sacrificed to give you one mana is not bad at all. As long as the Theros Gods were in Standard, who were indestructible, removal that could exile was very useful. Gild saw most of its play in Theros Block Constructed on Magic Online with the occasional sideboard play in Esper Control and Jund in Standard. Gild was also very strong removal in Limited events.

After its rotation from Standard, Gild found a few homes in EDH (Commander) decks. The Commanders who utilize Gild the most include King Macar, the Gold-Cursed, Demonlord Belzenlok, and Daxos the Returned. The natural place for Gold tokens is easily King Macar, who has an ability just like Gild. It’s an Inspired ability, meaning it activates whenever he un-taps. King Macar isn’t an incredibly competitive Commander on his own, but he’s flavorful.

Demonlord Belzenlok seems like a strange choice for Gild, but there is a purpose behind including it. Belzenlok’s ability to add cards to your hand from the top of your deck is repeated if that card has a mana value of four or more. Gild has a mana value of four, making it an obvious choice for a removal card in the deck. Granted, Gild has been played in less than 10 percent of Demonlord Belzenlok decks cataloged by EDHREC, but the inclusion does make sense.

Being an Enchantment-focused deck, Gild wouldn’t seem an obvious choice of removal for Daxos. Yet, people have chosen to play it likely because it has the bias of its inclusion in the same Commander 2015 deck as Daxos. After all, who doesn’t like removal that gives you free mana, even if that benefit is an artifact and not an Enchantment?

Gild isn’t the optimal choice for removal in Commander, as there are other more efficient options. Still, the Gold token can be useful. It’s a flavorful card but not one you’ll see many people play anymore unless it’s in place of other more expensive removal card in a casual Commander deck.