Glistening Oil
Enchantment — Aura
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature has infect.
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a -1/-1 counter on enchanted creature.
When this Aura is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, return it to its owner's hand.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- New Phyrexia
- Price
- $12.46
- EDHREC rank
- #6708
Glistening Oil turns any creature into a poison-counter delivery system and refills your hand through its own -1/-1 counter drain — the card does real work on both axes. The catch is the recurring self-damage: in non-dedicated -1/-1 or infect shells it's a liability, but commanders like The Scorpion God convert every counter ping into a free draw and make Windfall look slow by comparison.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
The Scorpion God
The Scorpion God draws a card every time a creature gets a -1/-1 counter, and Glistening Oil staples itself to a creature and fires that trigger every upkeep for free — the Oil effectively reads 'draw a card each turn' in this deck.
Eriette of the Charmed Apple
Eriette of the Charmed Apple cares about Auras attached to opponents' creatures, and Glistening Oil is an Aura that simultaneously drains its host and threatens infect kills — both halves of the card feed Eriette's drain-and-gain gameplan.
Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons
Glistening Oil drops a -1/-1 counter on upkeep every turn, and Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons converts each of those triggers into a 1/1 deathtouch Snake — the Oil alone can flood the board over three or four turns without any other support.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Commander is where Glistening Oil actually lives — the 100-card singleton format gives -1/-1 and infect synergies enough critical mass to make the recurring counter relevant rather than incidental. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but firmly unplayed; infect strategies there want creatures that threaten a kill on turn one or two, and a two-mana Aura that chips away over multiple upkeeps is too slow against those formats' interaction density. Modern is the same story: the card is legal but the format has moved well past the point where a slow enchantment-based infect plan competes. Glistening Oil is a Commander card through and through, and even there it belongs in a dedicated shell — slotting it into a generic black-green goodstuff deck just to threaten poison is rarely worth the self-inflicted attrition.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
WindfallGlistening OilNekusar, the Mindrazer
Each opponent loses the game
View on Commander Spellbook ↗
WindfallGlistening OilRazorkin Needlehead
Each opponent loses the game
View on Commander Spellbook ↗
Budget Alternatives
Cheaper options that do most of the same work
Phyresis does most of the same job for a fraction of the price — it grants infect without the self-destructing -1/-1 counter drain, which is actually better in shells that don't want to kill their own creatures. Glistening Oil's edge is the hand-refill on death and the repeating counter trigger, so if your commander doesn't care about -1/-1 synergies, Phyresis is the cleaner swap; if it does, there's no real substitute at a lower price point.
Price Context
Current price
$12.46 mid tier
At $12.46, Glistening Oil sits in the mid tier — meaningful enough to feel on a budget but not a barrier for an established deck. It's a niche card with a narrow home, so demand is driven almost entirely by dedicated -1/-1 and infect Commander builds; price stability follows that narrowness.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.