Cranial Extraction
Sorcery — Arcane
Choose a nonland card name. Search target player's graveyard, hand, and library for all cards with that name and exile them. Then that player shuffles.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Champions of Kamigawa
- Price
- $0.61
- EDHREC rank
- #25490
Cranial Extraction strips every copy of a named nonland card from your opponent's hand, library, and graveyard — surgical, permanent, and irreversible. Four mana is the real cost, and in formats where threats are diverse, one-for-one extraction rarely justifies the slot.
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 | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Cranial Extraction occupies a narrow niche: naming a combo piece your opponent just tutored is devastating, but four mana at sorcery speed means you're often too late or spending your turn reactively against one player at a four-player table. Legacy and Vintage have historically preferred Surgical Extraction for its zero-mana floor, leaving Cranial Extraction on the fringes even where it's legal. Modern sees it occasionally as a sideboard answer to linear combo decks, but the format's speed mostly punishes a four-mana do-nothing. It's legal in Oathbreaker, where the smaller library size sharpens its impact, though the same targeting problem applies.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.61 bulk tier
At $0.61, Cranial Extraction sits firmly in bulk territory, which tracks with its narrow application and the competition it faces from cheaper surgical effects. The price is stable — there's no reason to expect movement in either direction.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.