Pyrrhic Blast
Instant
As an additional cost to cast this spell, sacrifice a creature.
Pyrrhic Blast deals damage equal to the sacrificed creature's power to any target. Draw a card.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- R
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- The Brothers' War
- Price
- $0.12
- EDHREC rank
- #15655
Pyrrhic Blast deals damage to each creature and each player equal to the number of Islands opponents control — a board wipe and a life-drain stapled together, with the cost that you take the same hit. In blue-heavy metas, the payoff is enormous; in landless or artifact-combo pods, it's a blank.
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 |
In Commander, Pyrrhic Blast lives and dies by how blue your table is — one opponent on Atraxa or The Ur-Dragon can push this into Earthquake territory while also shredding their board. In Legacy and Vintage, Islands are everywhere but the format is too fast and too interactive for a sorcery-speed symmetrical effect to matter. Modern and Pioneer have enough non-Island blue strategies that the damage ceiling is unreliable; you'll find better sweepers in both formats. Commander is the only context where Pyrrhic Blast earns a real look, and specifically in red decks that want both a board reset and a route to closing the game in a single spell.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.12 bulk tier
At $0.12, Pyrrhic Blast is pure bulk — the kind of card you pick out of a dollar box without a second thought. Given that it's a narrow role-player with a meaningful ceiling in the right meta, the price is unlikely to move unless a high-profile Commander deck brings it into rotation.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.