Power Leak
Enchantment — Aura
Enchant enchantment
At the beginning of the upkeep of enchanted enchantment's controller, that player may pay any amount of mana. This Aura deals 2 damage to that player. Prevent X of that damage, where X is the amount of mana that player paid this way.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Limited Edition Alpha
- Price
- $26.50
- EDHREC rank
- #26581
Power Leak enchants a permanent and forces its controller to pay escalating mana upkeep each turn or sacrifice it — a soft lock that compounds pressure over time. It's a niche piece of attrition, not a slam-dunk include, and most decks will find harder answers faster.
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 | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Power Leak is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, Pauper, and Oathbreaker, and sees virtually no competitive play in any of them. In Commander, the four-player table makes slow upkeep taxes even weaker — opponents simply pay the mana, ramp past it, or bounce it, and you've spent a card doing nothing decisive. In Legacy and Vintage, faster clocks and better disruption make Power Leak irrelevant. Pauper is its most plausible home, where mana is scarcer and grinding attrition matters more, but even there dedicated enchantment-removal and tempo archetypes have cleaner options.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Budget Alternatives
Cheaper options that do most of the same work
Power Leak's upkeep-tax effect is largely outclassed by Contamination or Nether Void at the high end, but budget players looking for a similar "pay or lose it" angle should consider Bind or just run hard removal — a two-mana instant that destroys a permanent outright does more than Power Leak ever threatens to. There's no direct budget equivalent because the effect itself isn't desirable enough to have a premium version worth replacing.
Price Context
Current price
$26.50 premium tier
At $26.50, Power Leak sits in premium territory entirely on collector and reserve-list scarcity, not playability. The price reflects its age and reprint protection, not demand from competitive or casual players — don't pay it expecting a gameplay upgrade.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.