Vindicate
Sorcery
Destroy target permanent.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- BW
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- The List
- Price
- $0.43
- EDHREC rank
- #1150
Vindicate answers any permanent on the board — creature, enchantment, planeswalker, land — for three mana at sorcery speed, and that breadth is the whole point. Ardbert, Warrior of Darkness decks lean on it specifically because hitting any permanent type aligns with Ardbert's attrition gameplan; the sorcery timing is the only real cost.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Ardbert, Warrior of Darkness
Ardbert, Warrior of Darkness runs Vindicate because his gameplan revolves around grinding down opponents through permanent destruction, and no other three-mana spell covers as wide a target range — creature, enchantment, planeswalker, or land — in one card.
Y'shtola, Night's Blessed
Y'shtola, Night's Blessed is a Esper-adjacent value commander who needs flexible answers, and Vindicate's unconditional permanent removal slots cleanly into a suite that can't afford blind spots against problematic lands or enchantments.
Urza, Chief Artificer
Urza, Chief Artificer plays Vindicate as a failsafe against the permanents his artifact threats can't attack through — opposing stax pieces, enchantment-based prison effects, and planeswalkers that would otherwise stabilize the board.
G'raha Tia, Scion Reborn
G'raha Tia, Scion Reborn runs Vindicate because a reanimation-focused commander needs unconditional interaction that handles whatever the graveyard plan can't race, including problematic lands that accelerate opponents past the setup window.
Merieke Ri Berit
Merieke Ri Berit decks lean on Vindicate to clean up whatever the theft plan leaves behind — when you've stolen the best creature, you still need a clean answer to the enchantments and planeswalkers your opponents are building around.
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 Vindicate does its best work: one answer that covers every permanent type matters most in a singleton format where you can't guarantee the right answer draws against an unknown threat. In Legacy, Vindicate sees fringe play in midrange Orzhov and Abzan shells that can afford the three-mana investment and value the land-destruction angle as a game-closing threat. Modern has enough faster and more efficient options — Anguished Unmaking at the same cost with instant speed, or Assassin's Trophy for two — that Vindicate rarely earns a slot there. Vintage barely registers it given the speed of the format. Vindicate is absent from Pioneer, Standard, and Pauper by legality, so Commander remains its primary home by a wide margin.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.43 bulk tier
At $0.43, Vindicate is firmly bulk — one of the cheapest unconditional catch-all answers in Commander, which makes it hard to justify cutting for anything in the same price range. The price reflects availability from multiple printings, not a lack of demand; it goes in a wide range of decks and stays there.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.