There are many ways to modify creatures in Magic. You can buff their stats and grant keyword abilities through counters, stick auras on them or even stack creatures on top of each other through Mutate. One of the most popular ways to make your creatures stronger debuted in 2003's Mirrodin, when Magic players were introduced to a new artifact subtype: equipment.

The fundamental rules behind equipment are pretty straightforward. As with any other artifact, you pay their mana cost to cast them and they'll sit out on the board waiting to be activated. For the most part, however, they don't do anything on their own. Instead, you pay an equip cost to attach them to your creatures, at which point they can grant the equipped creature a wide variety of effects ranging from power and toughness boosts to new attack, combat damage or death triggers. Unlike counters and auras, however, they stick around after the creature wielding them leaves the board, meaning you can grant their abilities to other creatures later by paying the equip cost again. You can also move them around among your creatures, making them much more flexible and less risky than other forms of modification.

While the general rules behind equipment are simple to explain, there are a few rules quirks to keep in mind while playing with them. For one, while nearly all equipment have an equip ability, very few have abilities that unequip them. If you want to remove an equipment from one of your creatures, you will need another creature on the battlefield to attach it to. Equip abilities can also only be activated at sorcery speed and can only target creatures you control. Finally, like auras, you still control the equipment even if the creature it's attached to gets stolen by another player. This means that you can still equip them to your other creatures if one of your creatures is stolen by an unfortunate Blatant Thievery, and if you're the one casting Blatant Thievery you can't activate equip abilities of any equipment attached to a creature you stole.

Because of the popularity of equipment, Magic designers have tried many variations on it over the years, attempting to make the mechanic both more powerful and to spice it up a little. In 2011, Mirrodin Besieged introduced Living Weapon, one of the new mechanics created to represent the Phyrexian side of the block's conflict. When an equipment with this keyword enters, a 0/0 germ is created and the equipment is automatically attached to it. Almost all Living Weapon equipment come with a toughness increase so that the germ doesn't immediately die, although the germ will sadly perish if the equipment is destroyed or moved to another creature. A similar mechanic would appear in 2023's Phyrexia: All Will Be One in the form of For Mirrodin, a keyword that functions the same way but creates a 2/2 rebel instead of a germ. Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty introduced Reconfigure in 2022, which allows you to temporarily turn creatures with the keyword into equipment and attach them to your other creatures.

With the rules and variations out of the way, here are some examples of equipment you'll likely see during games of Magic. Tarkir: Dragonstorm's Cori-Steel Cutter is currently seeing a lot of play in several competitive 60-card formats, being the backbone of top-tier decks in Standard, Pioneer, and Modern. For two mana, it's an equipment with equip 2 that gives the equipped creature +1/+1 and haste. It also creates a 1/1 monk creature token with prowess when you cast your second spell each turn and automatically attaches itself to that token. It is a very aggressive card, only costing two mana and capable of creating overwhelming board states as early as turn 3 or 4. If you want to learn more about Cutter and its competitive prowess, check out this article from Carlo Favretto.

There are entire decks built around equipment in commander, but there are a few equipment cards that see play in all sorts of EDH decks. Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves are considered staples of the format, being low-mana-cost ways to both protect your commander with hexproof or shroud and grant them haste. These two cards can go in just about any deck that needs its commander in play to function, which is most decks in the format, so it wouldn't be surprising to see at least one of them in nearly every non-CEDH game. Skullclamp is also extremely popular; it's one of only three equipment currently banned in a competitive format, so EDH is one of the only places to play it. It costs one generic mana to cast and one generic mana to equip and gives the equipped creature +1/-1. It may sound tame so far, but it has a second ability that draws you two cards when the equipped creature dies, which can get out of hand in conjunction with the toughness decrease. It is banned in Modern and Legacy but is very popular in sacrifice and token commander decks, where it serves as an efficient card draw engine.

And with that, I'll wrap up this Mechanic Overview. If you want to learn more about building around equipment in EDH (or if you're excited about the upcoming Final Fantasy set), check out this article by Julian Sison for a deck tech on Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER.