Contaminated Ground
Enchantment — Aura
Enchant land
Enchanted land is a Swamp.
Whenever enchanted land becomes tapped, its controller loses 2 life.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Gatecrash
- Price
- $0.08
- EDHREC rank
- #18053
Contaminated Ground turns any land into a Swamp that deals 1 damage to its controller on each of their upkeeps — soft land disruption stapled to a minor drain. It's a role-player in dedicated discard and land-hate builds, not a general-purpose include.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Contaminated Ground earns a slot only in decks built around punishing opponents' mana or grinding out life total — think Tourach, Dread Cantor or Sheoldred, the Apocalypse shells that stack incremental damage. In Pauper it sees the most competitive play, where land-type manipulation and recurring chip damage on a two-mana enchantment can actually matter in a slower, resource-tight format. Legacy, Vintage, and Modern have faster and more decisive land disruption available, so Contaminated Ground doesn't register in those formats. Pioneer is the same story — the effect is too slow to compete with what those formats demand by turn two.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.08 bulk tier
At $0.08, Contaminated Ground is pure bulk — you're picking it out of a commons box, not tracking it down. Demand is niche enough that the price has no meaningful floor to fall through, but it's not going anywhere either.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.