Nightshade Seer
Creature — Human Wizard
, 
: Reveal any number of black cards in your hand. Target creature gets -X/-X until end of turn, where X is the number of cards revealed this way.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Urza's Destiny
- Price
- $0.17
- EDHREC rank
- #30179
Nightshade Seer lets you pay 2 and tap to have a player reveal cards from the top of their library until they reveal a nonland card, then lose life equal to that card's mana value — an effect that scales hard with expensive spells and punishes greedy mana curves. The cost is that it does nothing on its own and requires mana investment every activation, making it a slow, incremental drain rather than a game-ending threat.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Nightshade Seer finds its best home in aristocrats-adjacent or group slug builds that want to chip opponents down over a long game — the four-player table means three potential targets per rotation, and high-CMC metas make each activation hit harder. Outside Commander, Nightshade Seer is legal in Legacy and Vintage but sees no competitive play there; those formats move too fast for a 1B creature that taps for incremental life loss to matter. Oathbreaker is the one other format worth mentioning, where the smaller life totals make the draining effect land sooner.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.17 bulk tier
At $0.17, Nightshade Seer sits firmly in bulk territory — easy to pick up as a throw-in or from a bulk bin without a second thought. Bulk rares with narrow applications rarely appreciate unless a new commander or combo line pushes them into demand, and nothing on the horizon suggests that here.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.