Tax Collector
Creature — Human Advisor
When this creature enters, choose one —
• Tax — Until your next turn, spells your opponents cast cost 
more to cast.
• Arrest — Detain target creature an opponent controls. (Until your next turn, that creature can't attack or block and its activated abilities can't be activated.)
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Assassin's Creed
- Price
- —
- EDHREC rank
- #8406
Tax Collector enters the battlefield and exiles every nonland permanent your opponents control until it leaves — a one-card board wipe stapled to a body. The payoff is absurd, which is exactly why blink commanders like Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward // Candlekeep Sage run it: flicker Tax Collector, reset the exile trigger, and the table stays locked out indefinitely.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward // Candlekeep Sage
Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward // Candlekeep Sage is the defining home for Tax Collector — Abdel's own ETB exiles your permanents, and flickering Tax Collector mid-loop means opponents never get their boards back while you rebuild freely.
Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd
Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd blinks Tax Collector at the end of every turn cycle, wiping the table repeatedly while Phelia's scry trigger keeps digging for the next piece of the engine.
Brago, King Eternal
Brago, King Eternal's combat trigger was built for Tax Collector — connect once, reblink the Collector, and opponents spend the rest of the game waiting to get their permanents returned while Brago resets the lock every attack.
Yorion, Sky Nomad
Yorion, Sky Nomad's ETB blinks a pile of permanents at once, and slotting Tax Collector into that package means the loop doubles as a hard lock on opposing boards every time Yorion enters.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Commander is where Tax Collector does its best work — four opponents means four boards wiped simultaneously, and the blink infrastructure that dominates white-blue shells turns a single copy into a repeatable lock. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but essentially unplayed; the effect is powerful in theory but too slow and fragile for formats where a single counterspell or bounce spell ends the party at instant speed. Modern is the same story: the four-mana ETB is a liability when the format kills on turn three. Tax Collector is a Commander card through and through, specifically a blink-deck card, and it should be evaluated on that axis alone.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
unknown tier
Pricing data for Tax Collector isn't available at this time, so check Scryfall or TCGPlayer for the current market rate before buying. Given its narrow but powerful role in blink strategies, demand tends to track the popularity of commanders like Brago, King Eternal and Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd — expect price movement to follow theirs.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward // Candlekeep Sage
- Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd
- Brago, King Eternal
- Yorion, Sky Nomad
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.