Cathartic Adept
Creature — Human Wizard
: Target player mills a card.
- CMC
- 1
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Shards of Alara
- Price
- $0.23
- EDHREC rank
- #16248
Cathartic Adept mills one card from any player's library for a single tap — repeated, free activation with no mana cost attached. Outside of Xanathar, Guild Kingpin decks that lock opponents out of their draws, that effect is too slow and too small to matter.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Xanathar, Guild Kingpin
Xanathar, Guild Kingpin stops opponents from drawing, and Cathartic Adept mills away the card sitting on top before they ever get the chance — turning Xanathar's soft lock into a hard one over enough turns.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Cathartic Adept is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Vintage, Pauper, and Oathbreaker, but seeing meaningful play in exactly one of them. In Commander, it earns a slot almost exclusively in Xanathar, Guild Kingpin decks where the mill-one trigger cleans up the top card an opponent can't draw. In Pauper, dedicated mill strategies exist, but one-at-a-time mill on a 1/1 body is too inefficient when Rmill and Tome Scour do the job faster. In Legacy and Vintage, Cathartic Adept isn't close to playable — the formats are too fast and the mill rate too negligible.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.23 bulk tier
At $0.23, Cathartic Adept is deep bulk — the kind of card you pull from a common box rather than order. Demand is narrow enough that this price isn't going anywhere.
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Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.