Card of the Day · July 9, 2026 Format Mover
Phyrexian Altar
Artifact · Rare
EDHREC #308 Double Masters 2022
It is not a combo piece so much as the reason combo pieces get built around it, a colorless mana rock that pays with bodies instead of lands.
2X2 #311 $56.75 ▲ +$1.61 (+2.9%)
7d
Full price history & printings → Why now
Phyrexian Altar has sat near the top of every serious sacrifice deck for years, not because it does anything flashy, but because it turns a board of expendable creatures into a mana engine that survives removal.
What it does
Turns any creature you control into one mana of any color, on demand, as many times as you have creatures to feed it.
Where it shines
Aristocrats and reanimator shells where tokens, recursive creatures, or death triggers are the real resource, not the creatures themselves.
Plays well with
- A creature that keeps returning from the graveyard gives the altar a renewable source of mana instead of a one-time payment.
- Paired with Pitiless Plunderer and a spare nontoken creature, the two altars support a sacrifice and reanimation loop that keeps generating value.
- Every creature fed to the altar for mana also triggers a drain, turning the sacrifice cost into direct damage and life gain.
The catch
It does nothing without expendable bodies on board, and in a creature-light deck it is just an artifact that taxes you a creature per mana.
Ranked in
RANKED The 19 Best Marvel Super Heroes Commanders Ranked See where Phyrexian Altar ranks in our Best Marvel Super Heroes Commanders: All New Legends Ranked