Banishing Betrayal
Instant
Return target nonland permanent to its owner's hand. Surveil 1. (Look at the top card of your library. You may put it into your graveyard.)
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Secrets of Strixhaven
- Price
- $0.09
- EDHREC rank
- #19727
Banishing Betrayal exiles a creature and puts it under your control — a two-for-one that removes a threat and hands you a body — for five mana at sorcery speed. That cost is the ceiling on its ambition: it's a clean effect stapled to a price that makes it a finisher's assistant, not a flexible answer.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Banishing Betrayal is a Commander card first and almost exclusively. The permanent theft with exile-on-removal is worth the five-mana ask in a multiplayer game where a single stolen titan can swing the table, and sorcery speed matters less when you're playing threat-dense battlecruiser games. In 60-card formats — Modern, Pioneer, Legacy — five mana for a conditional sorcery is unplayable; those formats have Swords to Plowshares, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, and Murderous Rider doing more for far less. Pauper is the one outlier worth noting: Banishing Betrayal is legal at common, but the format's creature quality rarely justifies the cost. Stick to Commander.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.09 bulk tier
At $0.09, Banishing Betrayal is deep bulk — you're picking it out of a dollar box, not tracking it on a buylist. Bulk rares rarely climb without a competitive breakout, and this one's ceiling is casual Commander, so treat it as a free include rather than a spec.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.