Reckless Scholar
Creature — Human Wizard
: Target player draws a card, then discards a card.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Zendikar
- Price
- $0.06
- EDHREC rank
- #15363
Reckless Scholar puts a looting engine on a 2/1 body — tap to draw then discard, every turn, as long as it lives. Three mana to deploy is the ask, and in graveyard-matters or madness shells, that ask is trivially met.
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 | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Reckless Scholar earns its slot in any deck that wants to pitch cards rather than merely cycle them — Anje Falkenrath madness builds, Muldrotha the Gravetide value engines, and Araumi of the Dead Tide all treat the discard as a feature. Pauper is where it sees the most competitive daylight, fueling blue-red madness and looter-tempo strategies at common. In Legacy and Vintage the effect is too slow and too fragile to compete with the one-mana looters those formats run. Modern and Pioneer have enough redundancy that Reckless Scholar rarely makes the cut outside of budget builds, but it's never embarrassing in a focused discard-synergy shell.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.06 bulk tier
At $0.06, Reckless Scholar is deep bulk — you're paying for cardboard, not a card. That price is stable by definition; there's no floor left to fall through, and foils exist for brewers who want the visual upgrade without spending real money.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.