Is Near-Death Experience good in Commander?

Near-Death Experience

Enchantment

At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have exactly 1 life, you win the game.

CMC: 5
Mana cost
Color identity: W
Rarity: rare
Set: Rise of the Eldrazi
Price: $0.51
EDHREC rank: #15011

Near-Death Experience wins the game on your upkeep if you entered the turn at exactly 1 life — a condition demanding real infrastructure, but Wall of Blood turns it into a two-card kill at instant speed. The payoff is unconditional and immune to combat math, which makes the fragility of the setup worth engineering around.

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

Near-Death Experience is a Commander card through and through — the singleton format rewards dedicated life-manipulation packages, and multiplayer tables give you time to assemble the enchantment plus a way to hit 1 life safely. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but laughable; four-mana do-nothing enchantments that require a full upkeep cycle to win don't survive the tempo of those formats. Oathbreaker shares enough of Commander's slow, political pace that Near-Death Experience can function there too, especially in white-black life-drain shells.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

1,454 decks