Diabolic Revelation
Sorcery
Search your library for up to X cards, put those cards into your hand, then shuffle.
- CMC
- 5
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Magic 2013
- Price
- $11.77
- EDHREC rank
- #8993
Diabolic Revelation scales with your mana — drop it for X=3 or more and you're assembling a full combo package in a single cast. Commanders like Atemsis, All-Seeing and Witherbloom, the Balancer run it because the raw card advantage at high X values simply ends games, and the cost is that you need a lot of mana before it does anything worth the slot.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Witherbloom, the Balancer
Witherbloom, the Balancer generates massive amounts of mana through its life-drain engine, and Diabolic Revelation converts that mana directly into every combo piece or finisher you need — a 37% inclusion rate across nearly 10,000 decks reflects exactly how well these two scale together.
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 |
Diabolic Revelation is a Commander card through and through — the format's 40-life total and longer game arc give you the mana development to cast it at a meaningful X, and singleton construction makes multi-target tutoring genuinely powerful rather than redundant. In Legacy and Vintage it's technically legal but entirely unplayed; those formats end before you ever tap seven or more mana for a sorcery that doesn't win on the spot. Oathbreaker is the one non-Commander 60-card-adjacent format where it occasionally appears, since planeswalker signatures can hit absurd mana totals, but it remains a fringe inclusion there.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Budget Alternatives
Cheaper options that do most of the same work
Diabolic Revelation's closest budget stand-ins are Mastermind's Acquisition and Cruel Tutor — Mastermind's Acquisition grabs exactly one card but adds the wish clause for cards outside the game, while Cruel Tutor hits any card at the cost of topping your library. Neither replicates the multi-card haul at high X values, so if you need to assemble three pieces at once, the Revelation earns its slot in ways no single-target tutor can.
Price Context
Current price
$11.77 mid tier
At $11.77, Diabolic Revelation sits in the mid tier — not a budget include, but not a barrier to entry for a tuned list either. It holds that price because Commander demand is steady and there's no functional reprint that obsoletes a card that tutors for multiple targets.
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Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.