Angel of Suffering
Creature — Nightmare Angel
Flying
If damage would be dealt to you, prevent that damage and mill twice that many cards.
- CMC
- 5
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- mythic
- Set
- Streets of New Capenna
- Price
- $3.64
- EDHREC rank
- #4534
Angel of Suffering turns every point of damage aimed at you into mill, and anything milled from your library goes to the graveyard instead of your life total — making it a damage-redirect engine and self-mill accelerant in one body. At five mana for a 4/3 flier with no ETB, the rate is mediocre, but Shilgengar, Sire of Famine makes the tradeoff irrelevant the moment it starts sacrificing the angels Angel of Suffering generates.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Shilgengar, Sire of Famine
Shilgengar, Sire of Famine creates a self-sustaining loop where Angel of Suffering feeds the graveyard, Shilgengar reanimates those creatures by spending life, and the board snowballs faster than opponents can answer it. The near-70% inclusion rate reflects that this is one of the deck's core engines, not a fringe include.
Syr Konrad, the Grim
Every card Angel of Suffering mills triggers Syr Konrad, the Grim, turning incoming damage into a passive drain on all opponents simultaneously. The two cards together mean a single attack step can represent meaningful life loss across the whole table.
Emet-Selch, Unsundered
Emet-Selch, Unsundered wants a stocked graveyard to reanimate high-cost permanents for free, and Angel of Suffering provides a continuous self-mill engine without requiring any additional mana investment. The damage-replacement clause also buys Emet-Selch more turns to set up his reanimation payoffs.
Mimeoplasm, Revered One
Mimeoplasm, Revered One needs raw graveyard density from both libraries, and Angel of Suffering accelerates your own while you take hits from aggressive decks. Milling four or five cards off a single combat damage trigger gives Mimeoplasm substantially more material to copy and exile from.
Old Stickfingers
Old Stickfingers mills a creature-heavy stack into the graveyard on cast, and Angel of Suffering keeps that pipeline running through the midgame as the deck absorbs pressure. The combination means the graveyard fills reliably enough to support recursive creature strategies without dedicated self-mill spells.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Angel of Suffering is a Commander card — the damage-replacement ability is most relevant when you're a single player defending against multiple opponents, and the self-mill synergies it enables (reanimator, aristocrats, graveyard value) are most densely supported in the 99. In Modern and Legacy it's legal but essentially absent; a 4/3 for five with no immediate board impact can't compete with the threats those formats present, and the mill-instead-of-damage clause rarely matters when games end on turns four and five. Pioneer is the same story. Oathbreaker is the one adjacent format where it could see niche play in a graveyard-focused shell, but the card's real home is Commander, full stop.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$3.64 cheap tier
At $3.64, Angel of Suffering sits at the cheap end of the mythic rare spectrum, reflecting solid demand from graveyard and reanimator Commander builds without any crossover into competitive 60-card formats driving the price higher. It's a straightforward pickup for the archetypes that want it, and there's no meaningful budget barrier here.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Shilgengar, Sire of Famine
- Syr Konrad, the Grim
- Emet-Selch, Unsundered
- Mimeoplasm, Revered One
- Old Stickfingers
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.