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Worms of the Earth

Enchantment

Players can't play lands.
Lands can't enter the battlefield.
At the beginning of each upkeep, any player may sacrifice two lands of their choice or have this enchantment deal 5 damage to that player. If a player does either, destroy this enchantment.

CMC
5
Mana cost
{2}{B}{B}{B}
Color identity
B
Rarity
rare
Set
The Dark
Price
$7.34
EDHREC rank
#27095
Buy on TCGplayer
Worms of the Earth card art
Worms of the Earth shuts down all land play — yours included — until someone sacrifices a creature or takes 5 damage to break it, making it one of the most oppressive stax pieces in black. The catch is symmetry: unless you're running Avacyn, Angel of Hope or building around landless plans, you're locking yourself out too.

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

Worms of the Earth is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but Commander is where it sees virtually all of its play. In Legacy and Vintage, dedicated land-destruction and stax strategies exist but Worms' symmetry and the condition to break it make it harder to deploy reliably against fast combo decks. In Commander it thrives because the multiplayer political pressure of breaking the enchantment is real — no single opponent wants to spend a creature or 5 life on behalf of the table — and the format's slower clock gives you time to exploit the lock. Oathbreaker is a niche consideration, mostly relevant if your signature spell generates mana outside the land system.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

There's no true budget replacement for Worms of the Earth — its combination of total land shutoff and a taxed break condition is unique. Contamination comes closest in black stax shells, converting a single creature into a full mana-disruption lock, though it requires upkeep maintenance and hits the same symmetry problem Worms of the Earth does without the opponent-pays-to-break framing.

Price Context

Current price

$7.34 mid tier

At $7.34, Worms of the Earth sits in the mid tier — accessible but not a throwaway inclusion. It's a Reserved List card with no reprint path, so the price floor is unlikely to drop; if stax strategies stay popular in Commander, $7 is probably the low end of where this sits long-term.

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Sources

Mentioned

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