Mindwhisker
Creature — Rat Wizard
At the beginning of your upkeep, surveil 1. (Look at the top card of your library. You may put it into your graveyard.)
Threshold — As long as there are seven or more cards in your graveyard, creatures your opponents control get -1/-0.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Bloomburrow
- Price
- $0.27
- EDHREC rank
- #8310
Mindwhisker hits the table and immediately taxes opponents' hands — every card they hold costs them life, turning a full grip into a liability. The cost is real: you need to keep Mindwhisker alive in a format full of spot removal, and the payoff is incremental rather than explosive. Run it in dedicated discard and hand-punishment shells; it earns its slot there and almost nowhere else.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Wick, the Whorled Mind
Wick, the Whorled Mind rewards you for emptying opponents' hands, and Mindwhisker pressures them into pitching cards or bleeding out — both outcomes feed Wick's graveyard-and-copy engine cleanly.
Mirko, Obsessive Theorist
Mirko, Obsessive Theorist mills opponents when they discard, so Mindwhisker's life-loss incentive to dump cards translates directly into graveyard fuel and milling pressure on the same axis.
Vren, the Relentless
Vren, the Relentless generates Rat tokens off opponents' discard triggers, making Mindwhisker's sustained hand-tax a reliable token production engine over a long game.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Mindwhisker is a role-player, not a staple — it belongs in dedicated hand-punishment builds where opponents regularly hold large grips and the cumulative life loss compounds across three targets. Outside Commander, the card is legal in Standard, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage, but it hasn't made noise in any of those formats; a three-mana 2/2 with a conditional drain effect doesn't clear the competitive bar in 1v1 where games end faster and opponents can sequence around a single threat. Pauper is the one format where Mindwhisker can't play at all. Stick to Commander.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.27 bulk tier
At $0.27, Mindwhisker is bulk — you're paying almost nothing to test it, and the low price reflects its narrow role. Don't expect the price to move; it's a niche synergy piece rather than a broadly-played staple.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Wick, the Whorled Mind
- Mirko, Obsessive Theorist
- Vren, the Relentless
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.