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Moxonomy

Eaten Alive

SorceryBlack mana

Unconditional exile in black comes at a price, and this card writes that price into the casting cost rather than the effect. Black has historically paid for permanent removal in life (Vindicate-style clean answers live in white) or in restriction (edict effects that let the opponent choose, destruction that dodges regeneration but not indestructibility). The wrinkle here is a bimodal additional cost: sacrifice a creature and the exile costs a single black mana, or keep your board and pay 3 generic manaBlack mana on top of the base Black mana for five mana total. That split makes the card two different tools depending on the deck. In a sacrifice shell with fodder to spare, it is among the cheapest ways black has to answer an indestructible threat or a planeswalker outright; in a deck with nothing to feed it, it settles into a five-mana catch-all that still hits both permanent types cleanly. The design lets one card serve the grinding aristocrats deck and the fair midrange deck without printing two cards, and it pays for exile (the tightest removal in the game: no recursion, no regeneration, no indestructibility loophole) by asking you to spend a creature you were probably going to lose anyway. The tension it resolves is black's long discomfort with cheap, no-strings exile: hand it out only to the deck already built to sacrifice, and charge everyone else the full toll.

Eaten Alive (mid)
MID · #99common
Pricing
Normal: $0.25
Foil: $0.22
Oracle Text

Rules text

As an additional cost to cast this spell, sacrifice a creature or pay 3 generic manaBlack mana. Exile target creature or planeswalker.
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
Legal
Pioneer
Legal
Modern
Legal
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
Legal
Brawl
Legal
Historic
Legal
Alchemy
Legal
Timeless
Legal
Standard Brawl
Legal
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
N/A
PreDH
N/A
Pauper Commander
Legal
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
Legal
Penny Dreadful
N/A
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
Legal
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
Legal
TLR
Legal
Printings elsewhere

Other printings

5 sets
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