Price of Fame
Instant
This spell costs 
less to cast if it targets a legendary creature.
Destroy target creature.
Surveil 2. (Look at the top two cards of your library, then put any number of them into your graveyard and the rest on top of your library in any order.)
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Murders at Karlov Manor Commander
- Price
- $0.30
- EDHREC rank
- #4079
Price of Fame destroys any legendary creature for two mana — full stop — and replaces itself with two surveil triggers on top of that. Outside the legendary clause it costs four, which is fair but unremarkable; inside it, nothing in black removes a commander this efficiently.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Mirko, Obsessive Theorist
Mirko, Obsessive Theorist runs Price of Fame in nearly 70% of builds because killing a legendary creature for two mana fuels exactly the kind of cheap, efficient interaction Mirko needs to keep untapping and milling — the surveil 2 even feeds the graveyard synergies that make Mirko tick.
Toshiro Umezawa
Toshiro Umezawa casts instants from the graveyard whenever a creature dies, so Price of Fame does double duty: it kills a threat, surveys twice, and then sits in the yard waiting to be recurred the next time removal lands.
Anowon, the Ruin Thief
Anowon, the Ruin Thief wants to attack with Rogues and strip opponent hands, and Price of Fame keeps the board clear of blockers while the surveil quietly stocks the graveyard for future payoffs.
Marvo, Deep Operative
Marvo, Deep Operative cares about casting spells with high impact at low cost to maximize its deep-dive triggers, and Price of Fame is a two-mana instant that deals with the most commonly played permanents in the format — legendary commanders.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Commander is where Price of Fame earns its keep: every deck has a legendary commander, which means Price of Fame is almost always a two-mana unconditional removal spell that cantrips via surveil. In competitive Commander pods where commanders come down early and often, the discount fires reliably enough to treat the four-mana fallback as a rounding error. In Legacy and Vintage, legendary permanents are common enough to trigger the discount, but those formats have access to cheaper, harder interaction — Force of Will, Fatal Push — that makes a sorcery-speed-adjacent instant less compelling. Modern and Pioneer can squeeze value here in legendary-heavy metas, but Price of Fame mostly lives in Commander, where its design is a perfect fit.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.30 bulk tier
At $0.30, Price of Fame is bulk, and that price is stable — it's a narrow card with a ceiling defined by its Commander-specific utility. Stock up freely; there's no version of this card that climbs past a dollar unless a reprint drives it even lower.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.