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Sokrates, Athenian Teacher

Legendary Creature — Human Advisor

Defender
Sokrates has hexproof as long as it's untapped.
Sokratic Dialogue — {T}: Until end of turn, target creature gains "If this creature would deal combat damage to a player, prevent that damage. This creature's controller and that player each draw half that many cards, rounded down."

CMC
3
Mana cost
{1}{W}{U}
Color identity
UW
Rarity
rare
Set
Assassin's Creed
Price
$0.40
EDHREC rank
#4655
Buy on TCGplayer
Sokrates, Athenian Teacher card art
Sokrates, Athenian Teacher turns every draw trigger into a mandatory group-draw engine, flooding the table with cards and building toward a lethal Body of Research or similar library-count payoff faster than opponents expect. The cost is real: you're feeding everyone's hand, so the engine collapses without a way to convert that shared card advantage into a win before the table does.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
The Archimandrite

The Archimandrite

23.3% of decks · synergy 0.22

The Archimandrite's ability to reward creatures of each color pairs naturally with Sokrates, Athenian Teacher in a group-draw shell where stacking draw triggers accelerates the monk count and pulls The Archimandrite's own synergy pieces into hand faster than any conventional draw engine.

02
Kwain, Itinerant Meddler

Kwain, Itinerant Meddler

21.5% of decks · synergy 0.19

Kwain, Itinerant Meddler is the definitive group-draw commander, and Sokrates, Athenian Teacher is one of its best redundancy pieces — each activation of Kwain triggers Sokrates's replacement effect, compounding card flow across the table and pushing the deck toward its library-drain or storm payoffs.

03
Pramikon, Sky Rampart

Pramikon, Sky Rampart

18.0% of decks · synergy 0.17

Pramikon, Sky Rampart's politics-and-pillowfort strategy leans on buying time, and Sokrates, Athenian Teacher fits that plan by generating goodwill through shared draws while quietly accelerating Pramikon's own card advantage without threatening the combat restrictions the deck enforces.

04

Heliod, the Radiant Dawn

16.2% of decks · synergy 0.14

Heliod, the Radiant Dawn decks often run enchantment-centric draw suites, and Sokrates, Athenian Teacher slots in as a low-cost enchantment that multiplies those triggers, turning every enchantress proc into additional card flow for the whole table while Heliod assembles its own engine.

05
The Council of Four

The Council of Four

16.4% of decks · synergy 0.14

The Council of Four already rewards opponents drawing cards by creating tokens, making Sokrates, Athenian Teacher a direct accelerant — each group-draw trigger from Sokrates feeds The Council of Four's token production, widening the board without spending additional resources.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Commander is by far the primary home for Sokrates, Athenian Teacher — the group-draw effect is negligible in a one-on-one game but becomes a genuine engine at a four-player table where every triggered draw refuels three opponents simultaneously and creates political texture. In Legacy and Vintage, Sokrates is legal but functionally irrelevant; those formats have no interest in a four-mana enchantment with no immediate board impact and no broken interaction with fast mana or broken spells. Modern is similarly uninterested — the effect is too slow and too symmetrical to compete. Oathbreaker can support it in the same group-draw niche as Commander, though the 20-life starting total compresses the window before someone wins off the shared cards.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

1 decks
Sokrates, Athenian TeacherBody of ResearchThought Reflection

Sokrates, Athenian TeacherBody of ResearchThought Reflection

Infinite card draw; Infinite draw triggers; Near-infinite draw triggers for target opponent; Near-infinite card draw for target opponent

View on Commander Spellbook ↗

Price Context

Current price

$0.40 bulk tier

At $0.40, Sokrates, Athenian Teacher is firmly bulk — easy to pick up as a throw-in or cheap addition to any group-draw order. Bulk enchantments with narrow commander niches rarely climb unless a high-profile deck pushes demand, so don't expect the price to move.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.