Plunge into Darkness
Instant
Choose one —
• Sacrifice any number of creatures. You gain 3 life for each creature sacrificed this way.
• Pay any amount of life, then look at that many cards from the top of your library. Put one of those cards into your hand and exile the rest.
Entwine 
(Choose both if you pay the entwine cost.)
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Fifth Dawn
- Price
- $10.27
- EDHREC rank
- #12221
Plunge into Darkness is a one-mana instant that can pay any amount of life to exile that many cards off the top, then return a chosen card to your hand — raw tutoring power at zero opportunity cost if you're already losing life on purpose. In decks built around Rowan, Scion of War or Children of Korlis, the life payment isn't a drawback; it's the resource you're farming.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Rowan, Scion of War
Rowan, Scion of War reduces spells' costs by the amount of life lost this turn, so Plunge into Darkness pulling a key threat while simultaneously turbochaging your spell chain is exactly what the deck wants — the life paid becomes mana discount, making the tutor effectively free or better.
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 |
In Commander, Plunge into Darkness earns its slot in any deck that treats life total as a currency — black-red spell-slinging, lifedrain loops, or aristocrats builds where the life cost is trivial or actively beneficial. Legacy and Vintage allow it, but at a single target and sorcery-speed-adjacent deck searching, it rarely competes with Vampiric Tutor or Imperial Seal in those formats. Modern sees it occasionally in fringe combo shells that need a redundant tutor at one mana, though again the competition is stiff. Outside dedicated life-payment synergies, Plunge into Darkness is strictly a Commander card — the effect is too niche and the better-known formats have faster, cleaner options.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Children of KorlisVizkopa GuildmagePlunge into Darkness
Each opponent loses the game; Near-infinite lifeloss
View on Commander Spellbook ↗
Budget Alternatives
Cheaper options that do most of the same work
If the tutor mode is what you're after, Scheming Symmetry hits at under $1 and grabs any card, though it hands your opponent a free search — an acceptable trade-off in a life-payment deck that expects to close fast. For the life-loss trigger specifically, Sign in Blood costs $0.50, replaces itself with two cards, and deals two damage to an opponent if needed, though it doesn't dig as deep or grab a specific target the way Plunge into Darkness does.
Price Context
Current price
$10.27 mid tier
At $10.27, Plunge into Darkness sits in the mid tier — expensive for a single-target tutor with a conditional home, but not unreasonable if your deck genuinely converts the life payment into an engine. It's a niche card at a specialist price, so it holds value in the decks that want it and is dead weight in everything else.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.