Madcap Experiment
Sorcery
Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal an artifact card. Put that card onto the battlefield and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order. Madcap Experiment deals damage to you equal to the number of cards revealed this way.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- R
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Kaladesh
- Price
- $0.15
- EDHREC rank
- #21613
Madcap Experiment puts any artifact from your library directly onto the battlefield — no mana cost — at the price of life equal to the cards it flips past. The ceiling is a free Blightsteel Colossus on turn four; the floor is lethal damage when you're already behind.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Madcap Experiment is a combo piece first and a value card never — you run it to cheat one specific artifact into play, usually something with an unpayable cost like Blightsteel Colossus or Platinum Emperion. Pairing it with Platinum Emperion is the canonical lock: the Emperion enters and immediately caps your life total so subsequent life-loss triggers can't kill you. In Modern, the same shell appeared as a legitimate combo deck, using Madcap Experiment plus Platinum Emperion to establish an early lock that many decks couldn't answer. Legacy and Vintage offer faster and more consistent ways to cheat artifacts, so it sees negligible play there despite being legal.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.15 bulk tier
At $0.15, Madcap Experiment is pure bulk — one of the most underpriced two-card combo enablers in Commander given what it can fetch for free. Don't expect that to change; supply is deep and the card's combo dependency keeps casual demand low.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.