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Balancing Act

Sorcery

Each player chooses a number of permanents they control equal to the number of permanents controlled by the player who controls the fewest, then sacrifices the rest. Each player discards cards the same way.

CMC
4
Mana cost
{2}{W}{W}
Color identity
W
Rarity
rare
Set
Odyssey
Price
$1.57
EDHREC rank
#20335
Buy on TCGplayer
Balancing Act card art
Balancing Act resets the board to the lowest common denominator — permanents, lands, and hands all equalized to whatever player has the least — and the side that planned around it walks away ahead. The catch is symmetry: without a way to blank your own side, like Teferi's Protection, you're gambling that your opponents' piles are worse than yours.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern not legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Commander is where Balancing Act earns its slot, specifically in decks that can enter the turn with zero or one permanent and watch opponents rebuild from scratch — artifact-light stax shells and token decks that go wide then sac down are the natural homes. Legacy and Vintage are legal formats, but Balancing Act has never found a foothold there; at four mana it's too slow to compete with the format's broken-symmetry payoffs. Outside those three, the card simply isn't legal.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$1.57 cheap tier

At $1.57, Balancing Act sits in the bulk-rare tier — cheap enough to pick up on a whim. Demand is narrow and unlikely to spike unless a high-profile Commander deck mainlines it, so expect the price to stay flat.

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Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.