Drain Life
Sorcery
Spend only black mana on X.
Drain Life deals X damage to any target. You gain life equal to the damage dealt, but not more life than the player's life total before the damage was dealt, the planeswalker's loyalty before the damage was dealt, or the creature's toughness.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Fourth Edition
- Price
- $0.17
- EDHREC rank
- #15224
Drain Life deals X damage to a creature or player and gains you that much life — flexible reach that scales into the late game. The catch is it costs X plus two mana and only hits black and artifact creatures, making it inefficient compared to modern black removal that does more for less.
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 | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Drain Life sits on the fringe — the X-cost scaling is appealing in a format with 40 life totals, but black has so many better options at every point on the curve that it rarely earns a slot. Legacy and Vintage are legal but ignore it entirely; the rate is too poor for those formats' threat density. Pauper is where Drain Life has the most legitimate claim, since the card pool is shallow enough that flexible X-damage with lifegain carries real weight in slower black control builds.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.17 bulk tier
At $0.17, Drain Life is deep bulk — you'll pull it from a dollar box or a collection trade, not pay for it deliberately. That price will hold simply because supply is enormous and competitive demand is essentially zero.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.