Diminishing Returns
Sorcery
Each player shuffles their hand and graveyard into their library. You exile the top ten cards of your library. Then each player draws up to seven cards.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Eternal Masters
- Price
- $7.89
- EDHREC rank
- #17105
Diminishing Returns refills your hand with seven fresh cards for four mana — the catch is that you exile ten cards from the top of your library first, a cost that is irrelevant in decks designed to win the turn they go off and punishing in everything else. Run it when you need a budget Timetwister effect and your win condition doesn't live in the bottom third of your deck.
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 |
Commander is the primary home for Diminishing Returns — it slots into wheel-based strategies as a cheaper alternative to Timetwister, and the three-opponent table means you're pressuring multiple hands at once. In Legacy, it's legal but competes with Timetwister itself and Wheel of Fortune, both of which lack the exile clause, so Diminishing Returns only shows up in lists that want redundancy at a lower financial cost. Vintage is the same story: the power-nine environment makes the exile penalty more relevant, since Vintage decks win off very specific card sequences. Outside of those three formats, the card doesn't exist competitively.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Budget Alternatives
Cheaper options that do most of the same work
Windfall does the same job in most wheel decks — you discard your hand and draw the same number of cards as each opponent, and it costs one less mana with no exile clause, though the payoff scales with how many cards opponents are holding. Reforge the Soul hits the same seven-card floor as Diminishing Returns for one more mana, and the miracle cost makes it occasionally free; you trade the exile clause for a higher floor on mana investment rather than library attrition.
Price Context
Current price
$7.89 mid tier
At $7.89, Diminishing Returns sits in the mid tier — affordable enough that it's not a budget obstacle, but noticeable enough that you should confirm the slot is earning its keep before buying in. The price has held because Timetwister is financially out of reach for most players and Diminishing Returns is the closest functional substitute at a fraction of the cost, which keeps demand steady.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.