Polar Kraken
Creature — Kraken
Trample
This creature enters tapped.
Cumulative upkeep—Sacrifice a land. (At the beginning of your upkeep, put an age counter on this permanent, then sacrifice it unless you pay its upkeep cost for each age counter on it.)
- CMC
- 11
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Masters Edition
- Price
- —
- EDHREC rank
- #24951
Polar Kraken is an 11/11 trample for ten mana — the biggest stat block you can slam into a blue deck — but it enters tapped, and you sacrifice a land during each of your untap steps until you can't, at which point it returns to your hand. That cumulative land tax makes it a liability in any deck that isn't actively cheating it into play or recurring it for value.
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 |
Polar Kraken is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but it's a fringe consideration in all of them. In Commander it sees the most play, slotted into decks that either reanimate it to dodge the cast cost or run Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle and similar sea-creature tribal shells where a massive blue body has flavor and function. In Legacy and Vintage the card is simply outclassed — those formats have cheaper, more reliable threats that don't threaten to eat your mana base. Oathbreaker is theoretically the friendliest home for a reanimation line, but the 20-life starting total means the game ends before Polar Kraken's landfall tax becomes relevant anyway.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
unknown tier
Pricing data isn't available for Polar Kraken at this time, so check Scryfall or TCGPlayer for current market rates. As a bulk rare from an early set with limited competitive demand, it historically trades near the bottom of the price floor — worth picking up as a casual inclusion, but not a card to chase at a premium.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.