Crush of Tentacles
Sorcery
Surge 
(You may cast this spell for its surge cost if you or a teammate has cast another spell this turn.)
Return all nonland permanents to their owners' hands. If this spell's surge cost was paid, create an 8/8 blue Octopus creature token.
- CMC
- 6
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- mythic
- Set
- Oath of the Gatewatch
- Price
- $1.06
- EDHREC rank
- #11287
Crush of Tentacles clears every nonland permanent off the board and leaves an 8/8 Octopus token behind — that's a one-card swing that wins games. Six mana is real, but Kiora, Sovereign of the Deep can cast it for free off a Kraken or Leviathan trigger, which makes the cost irrelevant.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Kiora, Sovereign of the Deep
Kiora, Sovereign of the Deep triggers whenever you cast a Kraken, Leviathan, Octopus, or Serpent, letting her cast Crush of Tentacles for free from your hand — a reset that immediately produces an 8/8 blocker to protect her loyalty. That combo of board wipe, free cast, and threat production is the core reason Crush of Tentacles shows up in nearly 15% of Kiora, Sovereign of the Deep decks.
Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle
Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle wants to land giant sea creatures and win through combat, and Crush of Tentacles fits both halves: it removes blockers and counters that threaten Arixmethes while adding an 8/8 body to the board. The surge cost is also easier to enable in a deck already casting multiple spells to remove slumber counters.
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 | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Commander is the natural home for Crush of Tentacles — one-sided feel-bad bounce effects don't typically survive three opponents' worth of countermagic, but at six mana with an 8/8 attached, you're getting enough raw impact to justify the slot. In Legacy and Vintage, the card is legal but essentially absent; six mana is a glacial timeline in those formats, and the payoff doesn't compete with the broken things legal cards do there. Modern and Pioneer offer a friendlier clock, but Crush of Tentacles still struggles to justify its cost against faster threats in those formats. Oathbreaker is the one non-Commander 60-card variant where it sees occasional play, specifically in blue walkers that generate extra mana.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$1.06 cheap tier
At $1.06, Crush of Tentacles is an easy pickup — you're getting a board wipe stapled to a body at a budget price. Demand is narrow enough that the price is unlikely to spike, but it also isn't going to fall further for a mythic rare with this kind of Commander-table impact.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.