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Spreading Plague

Enchantment

Whenever a creature enters, destroy all other creatures that share a color with it. They can't be regenerated.

CMC
5
Mana cost
{4}{B}
Color identity
B
Rarity
rare
Set
Invasion
Price
$12.18
EDHREC rank
#14872
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Spreading Plague card art
Spreading Plague turns every creature that enters the battlefield into a board wipe for its own color — opponents can't rebuild through it without changing colors entirely. Pair it with Painter's Servant naming a single color and nothing survives the turn it drops.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

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

Spreading Plague is a Commander card through and through — the enchantment's slow, cumulative pressure is exactly what a 100-card singleton game rewards, and multiplayer boards full of same-colored creatures make each trigger matter more. In Legacy and Vintage, it's legal but irrelevant: five mana for a conditional continuous effect doesn't survive contact with Force of Will, and faster threats close games before Spreading Plague stabilizes anything. Oathbreaker is the one other format worth mentioning, where the lower starting life total and tighter card pool mean the board-control angle can actually close a game.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

Spreading Plague's continuous color-based destruction is genuinely unusual — nothing else does exactly that for less. Engineered Plague and Meathooks Massacre both punish creature-heavy boards at lower price points, but they're one-shot or type-based rather than color-based, so they won't replicate the combo ceiling Spreading Plague has with Painter's Servant.

Price Context

Current price

$12.18 mid tier

At $12.18, Spreading Plague sits in mid-tier territory — expensive enough to feel like a real purchase, cheap enough that a single combo inclusion justifies it. It's a Reserved List card, so the supply ceiling is fixed and the price reflects genuine scarcity rather than just demand.

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Sources

Mentioned

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