Circle of Despair
Enchantment
, Sacrifice a creature: The next time a source of your choice would deal damage to any target this turn, prevent that damage.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- BW
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Mirage
- Price
- $2.79
- EDHREC rank
- #22668
Circle of Despair gives you a repeatable damage shield for one mana per trigger, protecting you or a planeswalker from any color you name on the spot. It costs a life each activation, but taxing one damage from every source of a chosen color is a legitimate defensive tool in creature-heavy metas.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Commander is where Circle of Despair does its best work — four opponents means more combat steps, more burn spells, and more windows to name the right color and shave real damage. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but effectively invisible; those formats move too fast for a tap-and-pay shield to matter. Circle of Despair is a Commander card, full stop.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$2.79 cheap tier
At $2.79, Circle of Despair sits at the low end of the pricing spectrum — cheap enough that budget isn't a reason to skip it if the effect fits your deck. Demand is narrow and casual, so the price is stable rather than likely to climb.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.