Forbidden Ritual
Sorcery
Sacrifice a nontoken permanent. If you do, target opponent loses 2 life unless that player sacrifices a permanent of their choice or discards a card. You may repeat this process any number of times.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Visions
- Price
- $1.03
- EDHREC rank
- #24323
Forbidden Ritual lets you sacrifice any number of nonland permanents to strip an opponent's hand card-for-card — each permanent you feed it exiles one card from their hand. The cost is steep by design, and the card sees almost no play because trading your board for hand disruption is a losing proposition in nearly every game state.
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 |
Forbidden Ritual is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but sees negligible play in all of them. In Commander, one-for-one discard that costs you real permanents is structurally poor — targeted hand disruption is already underpowered in a four-player format, and Forbidden Ritual demands you pay in board presence to get it. Legacy and Vintage have access to far more efficient discard like Thoughtseize and Duress, which cost zero permanents and function at instant or sorcery speed for one mana. There is no format where Forbidden Ritual is the correct tool for the job.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$1.03 cheap tier
At $1.03, Forbidden Ritual sits in the bulk-rare tier — cheap enough to pick up without thought, but the price reflects demand accurately. It doesn't hold value the way playable rares do, and there's no competitive pressure pushing it higher.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.