Desperate Plea
Sorcery — Lesson
As an additional cost to cast this spell, sacrifice a creature.
Choose one or both —
• Return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield if its power is less than or equal to the sacrificed creature's power.
• Destroy target creature.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Avatar: The Last Airbender Eternal
- Price
- $0.70
- EDHREC rank
- #12334
Desperate Plea puts three cards in hand and leaves behind an Incubator token — meaningful card advantage stapled to a board presence, all for three mana. The catch is the Corrupted condition: you need an opponent at ten or fewer life, which means Desperate Plea is a reward for being ahead, not a way to claw back from behind.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Edea, Possessed Sorceress
Edea, Possessed Sorceress generates tokens from casting spells, so Desperate Plea does double duty — refilling your hand while also triggering Edea's engine and dropping an Incubator that can become another body to feed her payoffs.
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 |
Desperate Plea is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but it's effectively a Commander card — the Corrupted condition and Phyrexian creature type find their most natural home in 100-card singleton powered by tribal synergies and life-total variance. In Legacy and Vintage, three mana for conditional card draw is far too slow when the format is built to kill on turn one or two. Commander is where the ten-life threshold actually gets met with regularity, opponents start at 40 life so damage accumulates, and the Incubator token carries real board-state weight.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.70 bulk tier
At $0.70, Desperate Plea sits in bulk territory — easy to pick up without budget consideration. Given its narrow Corrupted condition, it's unlikely to spike unless a breakout Phyrexian Commander deck pushes demand, so there's no urgency either way.
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Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.