Heretic's Punishment
Enchantment
: Choose any target, then mill three cards. This enchantment deals damage to that permanent or player equal to the greatest mana value among the milled cards.
- CMC
- 5
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- R
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Innistrad
- Price
- $0.12
- EDHREC rank
- #24565
Heretic's Punishment mills the top five cards of a library and deals damage equal to the highest mana value among them — a repeatable, enchantment-based threat that scales with the power level of your opponents' decks. Six mana plus two per activation is genuinely expensive, but in the right shell this card closes games that stall out.
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 |
Heretic's Punishment is a Commander card through and through — the format's higher mana values mean the damage ceiling is real, and multiplayer tables give you three libraries to target instead of one. In Legacy and Vintage it's a non-starter: six mana enchantments that don't immediately win are unplayable against decks that end things on turn one or two. Oathbreaker shares enough of Commander's casual, slower structure that the card can function there, particularly in spell-heavy metas where opponents' decks spike to five and six mana values regularly.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.12 bulk tier
At $0.12, Heretic's Punishment sits firmly in bulk territory — you're paying for cardboard, not scarcity. Bulk rares rarely appreciate unless they find a competitive home, and this one won't, so treat it as a free inclusion if you already own a copy.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.