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Faces of the Past

Enchantment

Whenever a creature dies, tap all untapped creatures that share a creature type with it or untap all tapped creatures that share a creature type with it.

CMC
3
Mana cost
{2}{U}
Color identity
U
Rarity
rare
Set
Scourge
Price
$14.64
EDHREC rank
#16843
Buy on TCGplayer
Faces of the Past card art
Faces of the Past turns every creature death into a mass tap or untap trigger across a shared creature type, which makes it either a lockdown engine or a combo accelerant depending on whose creatures are dying. In Marrow-Gnawer Rat token shells it's a cornerstone, not a luxury — when your tokens flood the board and start sacrificing, everything with rat in its type line flips simultaneously.

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

Faces of the Past is a Commander card in practice — the tribal synergy payoff only scales in a multiplayer environment where creature types overlap across multiple opponents' boards and your own engine has room to snowball over several turns. In Legacy and Vintage it's technically legal but sees no play; the effect is too slow and setup-dependent to compete in those formats, where a three-mana enchantment that doesn't immediately affect the board is a liability. Oathbreaker offers the same multiplayer dynamics as Commander at a smaller table, and tribal-adjacent Oathbreaker builds can get real mileage out of it. Anywhere else, Faces of the Past simply isn't legal.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

Reconnaissance Mission and similar draw-on-attack enchantments don't replicate the tap effect, so the honest budget alternative is Intruder Alarm — it untaps all creatures whenever a creature enters rather than dies, which covers the combo-acceleration role Faces of the Past fills in Rat and token decks for under $3. For the lockdown angle specifically, Glare of Subdual fills the tap-down function in green-white shells for roughly $1, though it requires tapping your own creatures as a cost rather than triggering off deaths.

Price Context

Current price

$14.64 mid tier

At $14.64, Faces of the Past sits in the mid tier — meaningful budget ask, but not a reserved-list luxury. It holds that price because it's the linchpin of the Marrow-Gnawer combo and has no true functional reprint, so demand stays narrow but reliable.

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Sources

Mentioned

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