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Thunderblust

Creature — Elemental

Haste
This creature has trample as long as it has a -1/-1 counter on it.
Persist (When this creature dies, if it had no -1/-1 counters on it, return it to the battlefield under its owner's control with a -1/-1 counter on it.)

CMC
5
Mana cost
{2}{R}{R}{R}
Color identity
R
Rarity
rare
Set
Eventide
Price
$0.75
EDHREC rank
#13460
Buy on TCGplayer
Thunderblust card art
Thunderblust hits the board as a 7/1 trampler that kills almost anything it touches — and if you sacrifice it before the end-step dies-to-itself trigger, you get the persist counter reset and do it again. Viscera Seer and similar free sac outlets are the unlock; without one, Thunderblust is a one-shot punch that costs you a card. Zilortha, Strength Incarnate makes the damage assignment math irrelevant for your other creatures, but Thunderblust's power is already in the sacrifice loop, not the combat step.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Zilortha, Strength Incarnate

Zilortha, Strength Incarnate

41.9% of decks · synergy 0.41

Zilortha, Strength Incarnate's ability to assign combat damage equal to a creature's toughness rather than power is the wrong read on why it runs Thunderblust — the real engine is that Zilortha decks already pack the sacrifice infrastructure to loop persist creatures, and Thunderblust's 7 power means it closes games quickly when the loop goes live.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

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

Thunderblust is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but it has never found a competitive home outside of Commander. In Legacy and Vintage the bar for a six-mana creature is extinction-level, and a 7/1 that kills itself doesn't meet it. Modern is the same story — six mana, no immediate protection, no resilience against a Path to Exile. Commander is where Thunderblust actually functions: the format's slower clock gives you time to assemble a free sac outlet, and the 40-life total means a single persist loop can threaten multiple players at once.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.75 bulk tier

At $0.75, Thunderblust sits firmly in bulk territory despite being the centerpiece of a functional combo loop. The price reflects its narrow role — it only matters in dedicated persist or sacrifice builds — so don't expect it to climb, but picking up copies for under a dollar is straightforward.

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Sources

Mentioned

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