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Nefarious Lich

Enchantment

If damage would be dealt to you, exile that many cards from your graveyard instead. If you can't, you lose the game.
If you would gain life, draw that many cards instead.
When this enchantment leaves the battlefield, you lose the game.

CMC
4
Mana cost
{B}{B}{B}{B}
Color identity
B
Rarity
rare
Set
Odyssey
Price
$3.57
EDHREC rank
#14496
Buy on TCGplayer
Nefarious Lich card art
Nefarious Lich converts all damage you take into discards and all life gain into card draw, rewiring your life total into pure card economy — but the moment it leaves the battlefield, you lose the game outright. That zero-floor kill condition is the whole deal, and gifts-matter commanders like Blim, Comedic Genius exploit it by donating Nefarious Lich to an opponent and watching the loss trigger fire on their turn; pairing it with Despotic Scepter gives you a way to blow it up yourself before the trigger resolves.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Blim, Comedic Genius

Blim, Comedic Genius

53.3% of decks · synergy 0.52

Blim, Comedic Genius runs Nefarious Lich as a kill condition on a stick — donate it to an opponent during your end step, and when it leaves their battlefield for any reason (including them bouncing or destroying it), they lose immediately; the 53% inclusion rate reflects how central this line is to the archetype.

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

Nefarious Lich is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but it's effectively a Commander card — the life-total-to-card-draw engine doesn't have a reliable shell in Legacy or Vintage, where game speeds and disruption levels make a four-mana enchantment with a built-in lose condition a serious liability. In Commander, the multiplayer rules create the exploitable gap: donating it via Blim, Comedic Genius or similar gift effects turns the lose trigger into a removal-resistant finisher against whichever opponent receives it. Oathbreaker is the other format where it can be built around, but the smaller deck size narrows the combo support.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$3.57 cheap tier

At $3.57, Nefarious Lich sits in the cheap tier despite being a narrow, build-around enchantment with real Commander demand — the low price reflects limited reprint history rather than low interest. It holds value steadily in the Blim, Comedic Genius ecosystem and is unlikely to get cheaper without a dedicated reprint.

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Sources

Mentioned

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