Soul Enervation
Enchantment
Flash
When this enchantment enters, target creature gets -4/-4 until end of turn.
Whenever one or more creature cards leave your graveyard, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Murders at Karlov Manor
- Price
- $0.14
- EDHREC rank
- #10547
Soul Enervation drains each opponent for 1 and gains you 3 life every time a Phoenix you control dies — an effect that snowballs fast in any deck that recurs Phoenixes repeatedly. Syrix, Carrier of the Flame turns that into a closing engine: stack enough death triggers and the life totals tell the whole story before combat even matters.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Syrix, Carrier of the Flame
Syrix, Carrier of the Flame is the natural home — Soul Enervation converts every Phoenix death and recursion loop into a drain-3-gain-3 swing across the table, and Syrix's built-in reanimation means those triggers fire constantly without extra setup.
Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker
Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker brings back creatures with one or less power at end of turn, so Soul Enervation sits in that shell as a repeatable life-drain engine — each Shirei recursion loop that passes through a qualifying Phoenix fuels another round of loss and gain.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Soul Enervation is a Commander card almost by definition — its value scales with the number of times you can trigger it in a single game, and only Commander's long games and recursion-heavy engines give it enough reps to matter. In competitive 60-card formats like Modern and Pioneer, a three-mana enchantment that drains one opponent for one and gains you life only when a specific creature type dies is nowhere near the rate those formats demand. Legacy and Vintage are similarly uninterested; the effect is too narrow and too slow against the interaction density at those tables. Standard is the one environment where it might occasionally see fringe play if a Phoenix-heavy archetype emerges, but even there it competes against far more efficient payoffs.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.14 bulk tier
At $0.14, Soul Enervation is deep bulk — pick it up in any common-bin sweep without a second thought. Bulk enchantments with narrow tribal triggers rarely climb in price unless a new Phoenix commander breaks out, so treat this as a cheap inclusion, not a spec.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.