Aether Rift
Enchantment
At the beginning of your upkeep, discard a card at random. If you discard a creature card this way, return it from your graveyard to the battlefield unless any player pays 5 life.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- GR
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Invasion
- Price
- $0.59
- EDHREC rank
- #22904
Aether Rift puts a repeatable discard-then-reanimate engine on the table for two mana — every upkeep, you pitch a card and potentially cheat something enormous into play for free. The cost is real: you need a creature in hand to discard, the reanimate is a coin-flip on a 50% chance, and at enchantment speed it's slow against fast tables.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Aether Rift is a Commander card through and through — the graveyard synergies, big-creature shells, and slower game pace of the format are exactly where a repeating discard-reanimate engine earns its slot. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but functionally irrelevant: those formats kill before a two-mana enchantment with a delayed, random payoff gets to matter. Oathbreaker is a theoretical home if your planeswalker and signature spell care about the graveyard, but the 20-life clock and faster pace make Aether Rift marginal there too. In short, sleeve it in Commander or don't sleeve it at all.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.59 bulk tier
At $0.59, Aether Rift sits firmly in bulk territory — you're not paying a premium for power, you're paying for a niche role-player. Demand is narrow enough that the price is unlikely to spike without a reprint or sudden graveyard-combo breakout, so it holds its value the same way most bulk enchantments do: steadily, near zero.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.