Folk Medicine
Instant
You gain 1 life for each creature you control.
Flashback 
(You may cast this card from your graveyard for its flashback cost. Then exile it.)
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- GW
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Judgment
- Price
- $0.11
- EDHREC rank
- #28389
Folk Medicine gains you life equal to the number of creatures you control — nothing more, nothing less — at the cost of two mana and a sorcery-speed slot. Life gain without card advantage or board impact is close to unplayable in most contexts, and Folk Medicine clears that bar only in dedicated lifegain-matters shells.
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, Folk Medicine is a fringe inclusion at best — the format's 40-life starting total already diminishes pure lifegain, and sorcery speed means it does nothing against the board state threatening to kill you. Pauper is the one format where Folk Medicine has a plausible home, specifically in token-based white strategies that can inflate the creature count before casting it and pair the life padding with aggressive go-wide plans. Legacy and Vintage are legal but irrelevant — those formats have no interest in a two-mana sorcery that draws no cards. Oathbreaker mirrors the Commander read: only worth considering if your signature spell or planeswalker explicitly rewards life totals.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.11 bulk tier
At $0.11, Folk Medicine is pure bulk — you're not buying this for value, you're buying it because the effect fits a niche slot in a token lifegain build. Bulk commons don't appreciate, so treat it as a throw-in rather than an acquisition.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.