Norn's Decree
Enchantment
Whenever one or more creatures an opponent controls deal combat damage to you, that opponent gets a poison counter.
Whenever a player attacks, if one or more players being attacked are poisoned, the attacking player draws a card.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Phyrexia: All Will Be One Commander
- Price
- $8.45
- EDHREC rank
- #3948
Norn's Decree taxes every attack aimed at you with a poison counter, turning aggro opponents into a ticking clock against themselves. At four mana for a repeatable deterrent that feeds directly into infect-based win conditions, it earns its slot — Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa decks run it in over 76% of lists for good reason.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa
Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa already wants opponents poisoned to trigger its corrupted ability, and Norn's Decree hands out poison counters every time anyone swings at you — the two cards form a self-reinforcing engine that accelerates opponents toward the ten-counter threshold without combat from your side.
Vishgraz, the Doomhive
Vishgraz, the Doomhive cares about total poison counters across all opponents, so Norn's Decree functions as a passive poison accelerant that makes every Mite token Vishgraz produces hit harder against an already-softened table.
Elesh Norn
Elesh Norn's transform condition and Phyrexian-tribal payoffs benefit from a poison-heavy gamestate, and Norn's Decree keeps opponents accumulating counters even during turns when Elesh Norn isn't attacking.
Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos
Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos proliferates incubate counters whenever opponents get poisoned, so Norn's Decree turns every attack aimed at you into a free proliferate trigger that grows your Phyrexian tokens.
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice's end-step proliferate turns each poison counter from Norn's Decree into compounding pressure, meaning even a slow drip of one counter per attack cycle snowballs quickly toward elimination.
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 |
Commander is where Norn's Decree lives — a four-player table means three opponents who might attack you, and each of them accruing poison counters from doing so creates a deterrent that scales with table aggression. The card is legal in Legacy and Vintage but sees no meaningful play there; competitive non-rotating formats have no poison-based synergy infrastructure to support it, and a four-mana enchantment with no immediate board impact is too slow for those environments. In Oathbreaker it is legal and can appear in poison-focused pods, though the smaller life totals make combat less frequent. Norn's Decree is, practically speaking, a Commander card.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Budget Alternatives
Cheaper options that do most of the same work
Contentious Plan and Spread the Sickness both cost under $0.50 and add poison counters while proliferating existing ones, but neither replicates Norn's Decree's passive, repeatable trigger — they're one-shot spells rather than a persistent disincentive to attack you. Leeching Powder is the closest sustained analogue, draining poison over multiple turns, but it doesn't punish attackers directly the way Norn's Decree does, so it fits differently in the curve.
Price Context
Current price
$8.45 mid tier
At $8.45, Norn's Decree sits in the mid tier — reasonable for a card that appears in the majority of its best commander's lists and has no functional reprint at a lower price point. Demand is narrowly concentrated in Phyrexian and infect builds, which keeps the price stable rather than climbing, so it's a safe pickup if those are your colors.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.