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Tainted Remedy

Enchantment

If an opponent would gain life, that player loses that much life instead.

CMC
3
Mana cost
{2}{B}
Color identity
B
Rarity
rare
Set
Magic Origins
Price
$7.17
EDHREC rank
#6647
Buy on TCGplayer
Tainted Remedy card art
Tainted Remedy turns every life-gain effect an opponent controls into a damage source, and Beacon of Immortality becomes a one-card kill at instant speed. Three mana, one enchantment, and the entire healing-matters archetype flips against itself — that's the whole pitch.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Mister Negative

Mister Negative

55.0% of decks · synergy 0.53

Mister Negative's ability to invert counters extends naturally into a Tainted Remedy shell, where flipping life gain into life loss fits the deck's core philosophy of making good things bad for opponents — Tainted Remedy shows up in over half of all Mister Negative lists for exactly this reason.

02
Mogis, God of Slaughter

Mogis, God of Slaughter

13.0% of decks · synergy 0.12

Mogis, God of Slaughter is a tax-and-attrition commander, and Tainted Remedy closes the loop: opponents who gain life to offset Mogis's damage now take additional damage instead, accelerating a game plan that was already designed to grind life totals to zero.

03
Mathas, Fiend Seeker

Mathas, Fiend Seeker

12.7% of decks · synergy 0.12

Mathas, Fiend Seeker puts bounty counters on opponents' creatures that reward them with card draw and life gain — Tainted Remedy converts that life gain into a liability, punishing opponents for collecting the very bounties Mathas hands out.

04

Liliana, Heretical Healer

11.6% of decks · synergy 0.11

Liliana, Heretical Healer operates in black life-drain and reanimator territory where incidental life gain from aristocrats and death triggers is common on both sides of the table — Tainted Remedy ensures any healing in the room punishes opponents rather than padding their cushion.

05
Kambal, Consul of Allocation

Kambal, Consul of Allocation

13.6% of decks · synergy 0.11

Kambal, Consul of Allocation already drains life whenever opponents cast noncreature spells, and Tainted Remedy doubles down by punishing any healing those opponents might use to recover, tightening the life-total vice from two directions at once.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

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

Tainted Remedy is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but it's almost exclusively a Commander card in practice. In competitive 1v1 formats, three mana for a conditional enchantment that requires opponents to gain life is too slow and too parasitic — Modern and Pioneer have faster, more reliable ways to close games. Commander is where Tainted Remedy earns its slot: multiplayer tables are full of incidental life gain from fetchlands, Soul Warden effects, and commander abilities, and the politics of a four-player game mean the enchantment can sit in play long enough to matter. Oathbreaker can support it in the right life-gain-heavy metas, but the card's true home is 100-card singleton.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

There is no direct budget replacement for Tainted Remedy — the effect of converting life gain into damage is unique to it and a handful of pricier cards. Evelyn, the Covetous and similar drain-and-punish permanents can approximate the life-loss pressure in Rakdos shells, but they don't flip opposing life gain the way Tainted Remedy does; if the combo application with Beacon of Immortality is the goal, there's no substitute under a dollar that replicates it.

Price Context

Current price

$7.17 mid tier

At $7.17, Tainted Remedy sits in mid-tier pricing — expensive enough to feel like a deliberate purchase, cheap enough that it belongs in any deck built around its effect. It's a single-printing niche enchantment with a loyal combo audience, so the price reflects steady demand rather than spike speculation.

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Sources

Mentioned

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