Merciless Harlequin
Creature — Human Assassin
Freerunning 
(You may cast this spell for its freerunning cost if you dealt combat damage to a player this turn with an Assassin or commander.)
When this creature enters, you draw a card and you lose 1 life.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Assassin's Creed
- Price
- $0.14
- EDHREC rank
- #11315
Merciless Harlequin drains each opponent for one life and mills two cards every time you attack with an Assassin — a repeatable, multiplayer-scaled clock that piles up fast at a three-mana entry. Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad turns every Assassin trigger into a countdown, and Merciless Harlequin is one of the most efficient ways to keep that counter ticking.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad
Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad rewards stacking Assassin attacks with accumulating poison counters, and Merciless Harlequin adds a parallel drain-and-mill clock so opponents are losing life and library simultaneously — two win conditions running off the same combat step.
Ramses, Assassin Lord
Ramses, Assassin Lord cares about opponents losing life outside of combat damage, and Merciless Harlequin's drain trigger fires on every attacking Assassin, feeding Ramses's win condition without relying on anything making it through blockers.
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 | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Commander is where Merciless Harlequin does its best work — three opponents means three drain triggers and six milled cards per attack step, which compounds quickly in a dedicated Assassin shell. In Pauper it's legal and its stats are reasonable, but the Assassin tribal payoff is largely absent at that level and the drain rarely closes games fast enough. Legacy and Vintage have no serious interest: the effect is too slow and too narrow against those formats' threat density. Oathbreaker can support it in the same Assassin-heavy configurations that Commander does, just at a compressed game length that makes the drain slightly more relevant per turn.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.14 bulk tier
At $0.14, Merciless Harlequin is pure bulk — grab a copy without a second thought if you're building Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad or any Assassin tribal shell. Bulk rares with narrow tribal homes rarely spike, so don't expect the price to move unless a future Assassin-matters set pushes the archetype into the mainstream.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.