Cruel Witness
Creature — Bird Horror
Flying
Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, surveil 1. (Look at the top card of your library. You may put it into your graveyard.)
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Innistrad: Double Feature
- Price
- $0.24
- EDHREC rank
- #18110
Cruel Witness enters with a scry-2 trigger that immediately filters your next draw, then sticks around as a 2/3 body that drains one life whenever you cycle or discard a card. That combination of enter-the-battlefield value and sustained incremental drain makes it a real card in any deck built around the graveyard or hand manipulation — not a staple, but not filler either.
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, Cruel Witness earns a slot in dedicated cycling or discard-matters builds where the drain trigger fires multiple times per turn cycle, turning otherwise innocuous loot effects into a win condition. In Pauper it's a legitimate build-around at common — cycling shells can close games with enough of these triggers stacking. Modern and Pioneer have faster, more consistent payoffs for discard synergies, so Cruel Witness sits at the fringe unless a dedicated cycling deck emerges that wants redundancy. Legacy and Vintage simply have no interest.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.24 bulk tier
At $0.24, Cruel Witness is deep bulk — you're paying almost nothing for a card with a real, repeatable effect. Bulk rares with narrow synergy homes rarely climb without a competitive breakout, so don't expect movement, but as an inclusion it's essentially free.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.