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Ethereal Champion

Creature — Avatar

Pay 1 life: Prevent the next 1 damage that would be dealt to this creature this turn.

CMC
5
Mana cost
{2}{W}{W}{W}
Color identity
W
Rarity
rare
Set
Classic Sixth Edition
Price
$0.25
EDHREC rank
#27950
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Ethereal Champion card art
Ethereal Champion drops all life totals to 1 the moment it enters the battlefield — a board-wide reset that immediately enables Near-Death Experience and similar payoffs without any additional setup. The cost is obvious: your life total drops too, and any opponent with a burn spell or combat trick ends the game before you get your trigger.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern not legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Ethereal Champion is a Commander card through and through — the symmetrical life-reset is punishing in 1v1 formats where any opponent can freely exploit it, but in a four-player pod it creates chaos that a prepared pilot can navigate while three opponents scramble. Legacy and Vintage have access to it but offer faster, more consistent paths to whatever Ethereal Champion is trying to enable, so it doesn't see play there. In Commander, it slots cleanly into life-total-matters builds that want every player at 1 simultaneously, either to close with a single win condition or to leverage asymmetric lifegain to pull back ahead immediately.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.25 bulk tier

At $0.25, Ethereal Champion is firmly bulk — pick it up without a second thought if the combo appeals to you. Bulk rares with narrow combo applications like this rarely move on price, so don't expect that to change.

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Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.