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Stranglehold

Enchantment

Your opponents can't search libraries.
If an opponent would begin an extra turn, that player skips that turn instead.

CMC
4
Mana cost
{3}{R}
Color identity
R
Rarity
rare
Set
Commander Anthology
Price
$7.70
EDHREC rank
#6375
Buy on TCGplayer
Stranglehold card art
Stranglehold shuts off tutors and extra land drops simultaneously — two of the most powerful things opponents do in Commander — for four mana at instant speed. Pair it with Maralen of the Mornsong to lock players out of searching entirely, or drop it alongside Zo-Zu the Punisher to punish the land drops they do sneak through.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Zo-Zu the Punisher

Zo-Zu the Punisher

19.9% of decks · synergy 0.17

Zo-Zu the Punisher taxes every land drop, and Stranglehold removes the one safety valve opponents have — fetching basic lands to hit their curve cleanly. Together they create a soft prison where players are either missing mana or bleeding life for finding it.

02
Ruric Thar, the Unbowed

Ruric Thar, the Unbowed

6.3% of decks · synergy 0.05

Ruric Thar, the Unbowed punishes noncreature spells, which naturally pressures the instant and sorcery tutors that power up blue and black strategies. Stranglehold closes the backdoor by hitting the remaining artifact and creature-based search effects Ruric Thar can't reach.

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

Stranglehold is a Commander card first and nearly exclusively — the tutors and fetch-heavy land packages it hates on are most prevalent in 100-card singleton, and a four-mana enchantment needs a target-rich environment to justify its slot. In Legacy and Vintage it's technically legal but competes with faster, cheaper hate pieces and rarely sees play outside of fringe red prison builds. Oathbreaker shares enough of Commander's tutor density that Stranglehold is playable there too, particularly in aggressive red shells that want to end the game before opponents rebuild.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

No single card replicates both halves of Stranglehold, but Mindlock Orb covers the tutor-shutoff at a fraction of the price and is worth considering if the extra-land-drop clause rarely matters in your meta. If you're primarily worried about fetch lands and ramp, Ruination or Blood Moon address the mana base more aggressively — though both are harder to build around than the clean enchantment Stranglehold provides.

Price Context

Current price

$7.70 mid tier

At $7.70, Stranglehold sits in mid-tier territory — expensive enough to feel like a deliberate include, cheap enough that it belongs in any red deck that cares about disruption. It's been reprinted enough to keep the price accessible, and its Commander demand is steady rather than spiking, so current price is a reasonable baseline.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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