Gaze of Pain
Sorcery
Until end of turn, whenever a creature you control attacks and isn't blocked, you may choose to have it deal damage equal to its power to a target creature. If you do, it assigns no combat damage this turn.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Ice Age
- Price
- $0.12
- EDHREC rank
- #23506
Gaze of Pain lets excess damage from a blocked creature carry over to the defending player — a niche effect that almost never justifies a card slot. The cost of running it is steep: you're trading a real card for a marginal damage bonus that requires your creature to be blocked and over-statted relative to the blocker.
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, Gaze of Pain is a fringe inclusion at best, relevant only in decks that repeatedly attack with large creatures into blockers — think Voltron or combat-math strategies that expect their creatures to survive blocks by a wide margin. Legacy and Vintage are non-starters; neither format has any use for a narrow enchantment that only matters in combat. Pauper is the one format where it's at least legal and theoretically affordable, but even there the effect is too situational to see play. Gaze of Pain simply asks too much — specific board state, a blocked creature, and a stat mismatch — for the payoff it delivers.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.12 bulk tier
At $0.12, Gaze of Pain is deep bulk — the kind of card that costs more to ship than it's worth. That price will hold because demand won't materialize; there's no competitive shell that wants this effect.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.