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Traveling Plague

Enchantment — Aura

Enchant creature
At the beginning of each upkeep, put a plague counter on this Aura.
Enchanted creature gets -1/-1 for each plague counter on this Aura.
When enchanted creature leaves the battlefield, that creature's controller returns this Aura from its owner's graveyard to the battlefield.

CMC
5
Mana cost
{3}{B}{B}
Color identity
B
Rarity
rare
Set
Odyssey
Price
$0.40
EDHREC rank
#24480
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Traveling Plague card art
Traveling Plague turns every creature death into a stacking -1/-1 counter tax on all creatures — and in a deck built around sacrifice outlets like Viscera Seer, you control exactly when those counters accumulate. The cost is real: it punishes your own board too, so you need a reason to be killing creatures faster than your opponents.

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

Traveling Plague is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but it only sees meaningful play in Commander where games run long enough for the counter accumulation to matter. In Legacy and Vintage, a five-mana enchantment that doesn't immediately affect the board is a non-starter — those formats end before Traveling Plague's symmetrical punishment becomes relevant. Commander is the natural home: multiplayer death triggers compound fast, and a single sacrifice loop can shrink every opposing creature to zero in one turn cycle.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.40 bulk tier

At $0.40, Traveling Plague sits firmly in bulk territory — pick it up without a second thought on price. It's an old, niche enchantment with a narrow home, so don't expect the price to move unless a high-profile combo deck pushes demand.

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Sources

Mentioned

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