Profaner of the Dead
Creature — Snake Wizard
Exploit (When this creature enters, you may sacrifice a creature.)
When this creature exploits a creature, return to their owners' hands all creatures your opponents control with toughness less than the exploited creature's toughness.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- The List
- Price
- $0.34
- EDHREC rank
- #13578
Profaner of the Dead bounces every creature your opponents control with toughness less than its exploit target's toughness — a one-sided board reset stapled to a 3/3 body for four mana. The catch is exploit: you sacrifice a creature to trigger it, which means the effect only fires once and requires setup, but in the right shell that cost is a feature, not a bug.
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 |
Profaner of the Dead sees essentially no play in competitive eternal formats — Legacy and Vintage have cheaper, unconditional bounce and wraths that don't ask you to sacrifice anything. In Modern and Pioneer the four-mana exploit clause is too slow and too conditional against the threats that matter. Commander is where Profaner of the Dead actually functions: mass bounce without the symmetry of a true wrath is a powerful political and tactical tool, and sacrifice-synergy commanders can fire the trigger off expendable tokens or recursive creatures so the cost approaches zero. In Oathbreaker the format's lower life totals and faster games make a four-mana exploit sorcery marginal, but it's legal and occasionally correct in a dedicated sacrifice shell.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.34 bulk tier
At $0.34, Profaner of the Dead is deep bulk — pick it up in any common box or throw it in a trade binder without thinking twice. Bulk rares with narrow commander applications rarely climb unless a new commander pushes the archetype hard, so treat the current price as a ceiling, not a floor.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.