Icy Prison

Enchantment

When this enchantment enters, exile target creature.
At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice this enchantment unless any player pays {3}.
When this enchantment leaves the battlefield, return the exiled card to the battlefield under its owner's control.

CMC
2
Mana cost
{U}{U}
Color identity
U
Rarity
rare
Set
Ice Age
Price
$0.39
EDHREC rank
#27353
Buy on TCGplayer
Icy Prison card art
Icy Prison exiles a creature for free — zero mana — but demands you sacrifice an island at each of your upkeeps or the creature comes back. In dedicated blink and flicker shells like Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward, that drawback evaporates entirely, making this a one-mana unconditional exile stapled to an engine piece.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander
legacy
modern
pioneer
standard
vintage
pauper
oathbreaker

In Commander, Icy Prison is a niche inclusion — the island tax is real in four-player games where you need the enchantment to stick for multiple turns, and most blue decks would rather run Imprisoned in the Moon or Reality Acid for set-and-forget control. Legacy and Vintage allow it but ignore it; cheaper and cleaner answers exist at every point on the curve. Pauper is where Icy Prison gets a second look, since the card pool is shallow enough that zero-mana interaction with a recoverable downside is worth evaluating, especially in tempo builds that can replay the enchantment. Oathbreaker mirrors the Commander read — blink your signature spell, and the cost structure suddenly looks very different.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.39 bulk tier

At $0.39, Icy Prison is deep bulk — pick it up without hesitation if the archetype fits. Demand is narrow enough that the price isn't going anywhere, so there's no urgency beyond your next order.

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.