Presence of the Wise
Sorcery
You gain 2 life for each card in your hand.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Saviors of Kamigawa
- Price
- $0.20
- EDHREC rank
- #28161
Presence of the Wise gains you life equal to your hand size — in a Commander game with a full grip, that's often 10–15 life off a single sorcery. The cost is that it does exactly nothing else: no card draw, no board impact, just a life total adjustment that most decks don't need badly enough to spend a card on.
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 |
Presence of the Wise is a Commander card almost by definition — 100-card decks and the natural card-advantage of a long multiplayer game mean your hand is routinely large enough to make the life gain meaningful. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but irrelevant; those formats end before life totals matter and no competitive shell wants a do-nothing sorcery. Oathbreaker shares enough of Commander's DNA that dedicated life-gain-matters shells could use it, but the 60-card constraint keeps hands smaller on average, softening the ceiling.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.20 bulk tier
At $0.20, Presence of the Wise is deep bulk — you'll find it in a commons box before you'd bother ordering it. That price reflects demand accurately: it's a narrow role-player with no crossover appeal, so don't expect it to climb.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.