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Bolas's Citadel

Legendary Artifact

You may look at the top card of your library any time.
You may play lands and cast spells from the top of your library. If you cast a spell this way, pay life equal to its mana value rather than pay its mana cost.
{T}, Sacrifice ten nonland permanents: Each opponent loses 10 life.

CMC
6
Mana cost
{3}{B}{B}{B}
Color identity
B
Rarity
rare
Set
War of the Spark Promos
Price
—
EDHREC rank
#262
Buy on TCGplayer
Bolas's Citadel card art
Bolas's Citadel lets you cast the top card of your library by paying life instead of mana — in practice, that means you can chain through five or six cards in a single turn with enough life padding. Pair it with Sensei's Divining Top to loop draws and reset your deck's top, and the card stops being a value engine and starts being a kill condition; Dargo, the Shipwrecker // Tymna the Weaver shells run it at nearly 74% inclusion for exactly that reason.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Dargo, the ShipwreckerTymna the Weaver

Dargo, the Shipwrecker // Tymna the Weaver

74.0% of decks · synergy 0.67

Dargo, the Shipwrecker // Tymna the Weaver is the single highest-synergy home for Bolas's Citadel because the life paid to cast spells off the top feeds directly into Tymna's draw trigger math — you're spending a resource that also generates card advantage, which is the engine in a nutshell.

02
K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth

K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth

69.9% of decks · synergy 0.41

K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth converts black mana pips into life loss, and Bolas's Citadel converts life into spells — stack them and you're effectively casting multiple spells a turn for almost no mana, which is the core of every K'rrik storm line.

03

Nicol Bolas, the Ravager

46.2% of decks · synergy 0.41

Nicol Bolas, the Ravager decks run Bolas's Citadel as much for flavor as function, but the card earns its slot by letting a Grixis shell dump its hand's worth of value off the top when mana isn't available — it's a second engine in a commander that already wants to go over the top.

04
Rowan, Scion of War

Rowan, Scion of War

49.1% of decks · synergy 0.39

Rowan, Scion of War discounts spells based on life lost, so the life payments from Bolas's Citadel double as cost reducers — casting expensive spells off the top becomes nearly free once Rowan's ability is online.

05
Mister Negative

Mister Negative

46.2% of decks · synergy 0.33

Mister Negative places -1/-1 counters on permanents as they enter, and Bolas's Citadel lets you flood the board with those permanents in a single turn by chaining casts off the top, turning a trickle of counters into a board-wide threat in one activation window.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

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

Commander is where Bolas's Citadel is a genuine staple — six mana is the entry price for an artifact that effectively gives you a second hand drawn from life total, and in a 40-life format that trade is much more favorable than it would be elsewhere. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but almost never played; those formats are too fast to untap with a six-mana artifact, and the payoff doesn't justify the setup time when your opponents can kill you on turn one or two. Modern and Pioneer allow it, but the same problem applies at a softer scale — midrange and combo decks in those formats find more efficient engines. Oathbreaker is the format most analogous to Commander in terms of life total and pace, and Bolas's Citadel performs similarly there in any black shell that can survive the life drain.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

unknown tier

Pricing data isn't available at the moment, so check Scryfall or TCGPlayer for the current market rate before buying. Bolas's Citadel has been reprinted enough that it's generally accessible, but foil and showcase versions carry a significant premium over the standard printing.

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Sources

Mentioned

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