Mutilate
Sorcery
All creatures get -1/-1 until end of turn for each Swamp you control.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Warhammer 40,000 Commander
- Price
- $2.21
- EDHREC rank
- #2250
Mutilate hits the board as a sweeper that scales with Swamp count, frequently landing as a -5/-5 or worse to everything in mono-black before the game hits turn six. The cost is real — it demands a heavily black mana base to reliably kill large threats — but Massacre Girl, Known Killer runs it at over 54% inclusion precisely because creatures dying to -X/-X triggers her wither counters engine.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Massacre Girl, Known Killer
Massacre Girl, Known Killer's triggered ability fires whenever a creature gets a -1/-1 counter, and Mutilate puts those counters on every creature at once — one spell can cascade into a full board wipe and stack of triggers even when opponents have large blockers.
Imotekh the Stormlord
Imotekh the Stormlord wants opponents' non-Necron creatures dead so his Necron Warriors enter uncontested, and Mutilate handles wide boards cheaply enough that the Warrior tokens start swinging the same turn the dust settles.
Phage the Untouchable
Phage the Untouchable needs a clear path to attack, and Mutilate in a mono-black shell routinely hits -6/-6 or deeper — enough to wipe even the fattest blockers before Phage ever has to touch them.
Trazyn the Infinite
Trazyn the Infinite runs artifacts he'd rather not sacrifice, so Mutilate's -X/-X approach clears the board without triggering sacrifice-based removal that could threaten his permanents.
Acererak the Archlich
Acererak the Archlich loops through dungeons and wants creatures cleared away to prevent early pressure from derailing the engine; Mutilate handles that role in a mono-black shell where every Swamp adds another point of toughness reduction.
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 | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Commander is where Mutilate belongs — mono-black and heavily black decks run enough Swamps to routinely make it a -5/-5 or better, which outperforms most unconditional sweepers at the same mana cost. In Legacy and Vintage, it's legal but effectively unused; Damnation costs the same four mana and has no land-count dependency, so Mutilate only competes there in dedicated mono-black builds where the gap closes. Modern legality is similarly academic — the format's card pool offers too many consistent alternatives for Mutilate to carve out a slot. Oathbreaker mirrors the Commander logic: mono-black signatures can exploit it, but the smaller life totals mean the game often ends before sweepers matter.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$2.21 cheap tier
At $2.21, Mutilate sits in the cheap tier — a negligible buy-in for a sweeper that earns its slot in any mono-black Commander deck. The price has stayed low because Mutilate is format-narrow, which means it's unlikely to spike unless a pushed mono-black commander drives sudden demand.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.