Purple Pentapus
Creature — Octopus Starfish
When this creature enters, surveil 1. (Look at the top card of your library. You may put it into your graveyard.)
, Tap an untapped creature you control: Return this card from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped.
- CMC
- 1
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Avatar: The Last Airbender Eternal
- Price
- $0.09
- EDHREC rank
- #20868
Purple Pentapus enters, spreads -1/-1 counters across any number of creatures, and removes those counters at end of turn to create Octopus tokens equal to the counters it picked up — that's a repeatable board-presence engine packed into a 3/3 for five mana. The payoff is real, but five mana for a creature that needs a full turn cycle to generate tokens means it folds hard to removal before the engine fires.
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 |
Purple Pentapus is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, Pauper, and Oathbreaker, but it's a Commander card through and through — the token generation and -1/-1 counter synergies need the slower, creature-dense environment that 100-card singleton provides. In Pauper it's technically available but competes against formats that punish a five-mana do-nothing-immediately creature ruthlessly. Legacy and Vintage don't want it at all; the power bar is simply too high for a 3/3 that asks you to wait a turn. Commander is the one format where opponents have enough creatures to spread counters across, the game goes long enough to untap with Pentapus, and -1/-1 counter synergies like Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons or Atraxa, Praetors' Voice can turn every trigger into a win condition.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.09 bulk tier
At $0.09, Purple Pentapus is firmly bulk — you're picking it out of a dollar box, not tracking it on a buylist. Bulk creatures with narrow synergy profiles rarely climb, so don't expect this to hold more than its current floor.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.