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Mischievous Poltergeist

Creature — Spirit

Flying
Pay 1 life: Regenerate this creature.

CMC
3
Mana cost
{2}{B}
Color identity
B
Rarity
uncommon
Set
Classic Sixth Edition
Price
$0.17
EDHREC rank
#16489
Buy on TCGplayer
Mischievous Poltergeist card art
Mischievous Poltergeist turns your own life total into a resource by letting you pay life repeatedly on your upkeep, and Rowan, Scion of War converts every point of that self-inflicted damage into a discount on black and red spells. The cost is real — you can race yourself to zero if you're not careful — but in the right shell it's one of the most efficient engines in the format.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Rowan, Scion of War

Rowan, Scion of War

17.1% of decks · synergy 0.17

Rowan, Scion of War's ability reduces the cost of black and red spells by the life you've lost this turn, and Mischievous Poltergeist turns that into a repeatable, on-demand discount engine that fires every upkeep before you've even cast a spell.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern not legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Mischievous Poltergeist is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but its home is firmly Commander, where the life-payment loop scales with the format's longer game and high-cost spells make the discount meaningful. In Legacy and Vintage it's far too slow and parasitic — those formats don't reward paying life incrementally over multiple turns when you could just run faster engines. Oathbreaker shares Commander's appeal if your planeswalker leans into life-loss payoffs, but the card pool is narrower and the window to execute the loop is shorter.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.17 bulk tier

At $0.17, Mischievous Poltergeist is deep bulk — you're picking it up for nearly nothing. It won't appreciate unless a new life-payment commander dramatically spikes demand, so grab it for the combo and don't think twice about the cost.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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