Extort MTG: How It Works, All 17 Cards, the Drain Math and an $81 Sorin Deck (2026)

Extort is the Magic: The Gathering keyword that turns spare mana into a drain. “Extort” means “Whenever you cast a spell, you may pay {W/B}. If you do, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain life equal to the total life lost this way.” The permanent with extort has to be on the battlefield when you cast the spell. You choose whether to pay when the trigger resolves, and that trigger resolves before the spell does.

Extort is the Orzhov mechanic from Gatecrash, and it is one of the smallest keywords in the game. Only 17 cards have ever had it, and 13 of those arrived in 2013. Most guides stop at “it drains one life”, which undersells it in Commander. With three opponents, one {W/B} makes the table lose 3 and you gain 3. That is 3 life lost per mana, a rate Gray Merchant only reaches at devotion 5 and Exsanguinate never reaches at all. We counted the rate, the cards and the spells that feed it.

This guide covers the extort rules, the drain math by table size, all 17 extort cards ranked by Commander play, the payoffs that multiply one trigger, the best extort commanders, legality in every format and an $80.75 budget Sorin of House Markov Commander deck that runs every extort card ever printed.

What is extort in MTG?

Extort is rule 702.101 of the Comprehensive Rules. Rule 702.101a gives the definition above, and rule 702.101b adds that multiple instances on one permanent trigger separately. The whole mechanic fits in those two lines, but four parts of them decide how it plays:

• It triggers on casting, not on resolving. The trigger goes on the stack above the spell and resolves first. Countering your spell doesn’t stop the drain.
• The payment is optional and happens on resolution. You don’t decide when you cast the spell. You decide when the trigger resolves, once per trigger, so you can see how the other players respond first.
• The cost is one hybrid mana. {W/B} can be paid with white or black mana (rule 107.4e), and with nothing else. Colorless mana can’t pay it, so Sol Ring can cast the spell but can’t pay the extort.
• It’s life loss, and it doesn’t target. Hexproof, protection and damage prevention do nothing against it, because no one is targeted and no damage is dealt.

Extort rules: 13 common situations

The Ritual row is the one worth remembering. Any mana that only appears when the spell resolves comes too late for that spell’s own extort triggers, so keep your payment in lands or rocks. Copies are the other surprise: storm counts spells for a big finish, but only the original is cast, so a storm spell fires your extort once. Cascade works the other way round, because the free spell really is cast and triggers extort again.

The extort math: what one mana buys

Extort scales with opponents, not with anything you control. It’s one of the abilities in the Comprehensive Rules that gets better at a bigger table, the same family we measured in our myriad guide. Here is what happens as you add permanents and opponents, assuming you pay for every trigger on a single spell.

The table shows the thing most people get wrong about extort: the rate never improves. Every extra permanent adds one more trigger at the same price, so at a four-player table it’s always 3 life lost per mana. A second extort permanent doesn’t make your mana stronger. It raises the ceiling on how much mana you can turn into drain per spell. That makes extort a mana sink, and the right question for a turn is how much you have left over after casting something.

The rate itself is excellent. Here is how it compares with the drain spells Commander players already run, all at a table with three opponents.

Exsanguinate gets closer to 3.00 as X grows and never gets there, because the {B}{B} is always part of the price. The catch with extort is that it needs a spell for every trigger, so its limit is how many spells you cast rather than how much mana you have. That’s why the spell pool matters. We counted every nonland card legal in a white-black Commander deck on Scryfall on 4 November 2026.

4,327 of those 12,253 cards (35%) cost two mana or less, and those are the ones that leave mana behind for triggers. The mana value 0 row includes X spells and suspend cards, so the real number of free spells is smaller, but Ornithopter, Memnite and the Baubles are all there. The last column assumes you have that many extort permanents out and a full four mana to spend, and it’s the case for building low: a two-mana spell and two triggers drains for as much as a Gray Merchant at devotion 2, and you get the spell as well.

All 17 extort cards, ranked by Commander play

This is the complete list: every card with the extort keyword on Scryfall on 4 November 2026, ranked by EDHREC deck count that day. A Scryfall search for o:extort returns an 18th result, Temporal Extortion, but that’s only its name appearing in its own text. It doesn’t have the keyword.

Three things stand out. First, the top two cards hold 75% of all extort deck slots: Blind Obedience and Crypt Ghast account for 527,539 of the 707,356 decks across the 17 cards, about seven times the next card each. Both have a strong second line. Blind Obedience makes opposing creatures and artifacts enter tapped for two mana, and Crypt Ghast doubles the mana from your Swamps, so plenty of those decks would run them without the keyword.

Second, the keyword nearly vanished after 2013. Gatecrash brought 11 cards and Dragon’s Maze 2, and then nothing for nine years. Since then it has come back one card at a time: Life Insurance (New Capenna Commander, 2022), Sorin of House Markov (Modern Horizons 3, 2024), Syndicate Heavy (Ravnica: Clue Edition, 2024) and The Kingpin of Crime (Marvel Super Heroes, 2026). Third, almost all of them are cheap. Fourteen of the 17 cost under 50 cents at their cheapest printing, so a full set costs very little once you have Crypt Ghast, Blind Obedience and Sorin.

Pontiff of Blight is the odd one out: the only card that gives extort to other permanents. It has extort itself and gives every other creature you control extort, on top of any they already have. Because multiple instances trigger separately, a Tithe Drinker next to Pontiff triggers twice. Six mana for a 2/7 is a real cost, but a board of tokens with Pontiff out can spend all your mana on every spell. Our devotion guide covers the other half of what Crypt Ghast does for mono-black decks.

The payoffs: one trigger, several effects

Each paid extort trigger makes each opponent lose life and gains you life, so it counts for both “whenever you gain life” and “whenever an opponent loses life” cards. The gain is a single event, even with three opponents: you gain 3 life once, so a “whenever you gain life” card triggers once. The loss is one event per opponent, so a “whenever an opponent loses life” card triggers three times. Scryfall lists 67 Commander-legal cards with “whenever you gain life” in white, black or colorless, and 13 of those also have a line about losing life.

The stack adds up quickly. With Sanguine Bond and Marauding Blight-Priest out, one {W/B} in a four-player game costs the table 9 life: 3 from extort, 3 from the Priest and 3 from the Bond on one target. And the famous two-card combo starts here too. With Sanguine Bond (or Vito) and Exquisite Blood on the battlefield, any extort payment wins the game unless someone answers. An opponent loses life, Blood gains you that much, Bond makes a target opponent lose that much, and it loops until every opponent is out. See our best lifegain cards guide for the wider pool.

Best extort commanders

Only two legal commanders have extort themselves. The rest of this list doesn’t have the keyword, but each one turns the life gain into something. Deck counts are from EDHREC on 4 November 2026.

Oloro has by far the most decks, though it isn’t an extort deck first. It’s three colors of life gain and control, with extort as one option. For a deck that really is built on the keyword, Sorin is the clear pick: two mana, in the right colors, with the keyword in the command zone, and the flip condition is exactly what extort does. EDHREC’s lists for Sorin include Blind Obedience, Crypt Ghast and Sanguine Bond. Browse the community deck gallery for more white-black lists.

Is extort legal in Standard, Modern and Commander?

Extort isn’t an evergreen keyword, so it rarely appears in new sets. Counts are from Scryfall on 4 November 2026. None of the 17 cards are banned or restricted anywhere.

Pauper is worth a second look. Six commons with extort is a real set in a format of cheap spells, and Tithe Drinker gives you lifelink on a two-drop as well.

Budget Sorin of House Markov extort deck ($80.75)

Sorin of House Markov costs {1}{B} for a 1/4 with lifelink and extort. At the beginning of each of your postcombat main phases, if you gained 3 or more life this turn, he transforms into a planeswalker that still has extort. Sorin, Ravenous Neonate makes Food at +2, deals damage equal to the life you gained this turn at -1, and steals a creature at -6. In a four-player game a single paid extort trigger meets the condition, so he can flip the turn you cast him: cast another spell before combat, pay for the trigger, and he transforms in your postcombat main phase.

• Every extort card in the game. All 17, Sorin included: 15 creatures and 2 enchantments. Crypt Ghast and Blind Obedience are the two most expensive of them, and they account for $18.03 of the total.
• Cheap spells to fire them. 35 of the 64 nonland cards cost two mana or less, and five cost 0: Memnite, Ornithopter, Mishra’s Bauble, Urza’s Bauble and Everflowing Chalice. The average mana value is 2.63.
• Seven cards that turn life gained into life lost. Sanguine Bond, Marauding Blight-Priest, Starscape Cleric, Cliffhaven Vampire, Epicure of Blood, Defiant Bloodlord and Vizkopa Guildmage.
• Spells that cast twice. Lingering Souls and Unburial Rites both have flashback, so each is two spells and two rounds of triggers from one card.
• Ramp and draw. Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Orzhov Signet, Talisman of Hierarchy, Fellwar Stone, Mind Stone, Everflowing Chalice and Wayfarer’s Bauble; Phyrexian Arena, Sign in Blood, Night’s Whisper, Read the Bones, Damnable Pact, Dawn of Hope, Well of Lost Dreams and Exemplar of Light.
• Removal. Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Fatal Push, Mortify, Anguished Unmaking, Disenchant, Vindicate and Feed the Swarm, plus Kaya’s Wrath as the one sweeper. Exsanguinate is the finisher when you have a lot of mana.

Three traps we checked before listing. Sol Ring, Mind Stone and Everflowing Chalice make colorless mana, which casts spells but can’t pay extort, so the deck’s payments come from its lands and colored rocks; we also cut Orzhova, the Church of Deals from the first draft because it taps for colorless. Crypt Ghast only doubles Swamps, which is why the mana base has 17 Swamps against 9 Plains. And Life Insurance is symmetrical: every nontoken creature that dies, anyone’s, costs you 1 life and makes a Treasure. A Treasure can pay extort, so it usually works out well, but count it before you cast Kaya’s Wrath at low life. The deck validated clean on Scryfall: 100 cards, all within Sorin’s white-black identity, all Commander legal, 36 lands. Before you buy it, run it through our free MTG deck analyzer for the curve and mana base.

The ten most expensive cards:

Upgrades if you have the budget: Exquisite Blood ($40.64) is the one to add first, because with Sanguine Bond it turns any extort payment into the winning loop. Bloodthirsty Conqueror ($37.44) does the same job on a creature, Enduring Tenacity ($12.50) is a sturdier Sanguine Bond, and Vito ($10.02) is a cheaper one. Prices are Scryfall’s cheapest regular printing on 4 November 2026, and you can check any of them in our MTG card finder.

How to beat extort

• Pressure their mana. Extort needs mana left over after the spell, so taxes and land destruction cut the number of triggers they can pay for.
• Remove the permanents, not the spell. Counterspells do nothing against extort, because the trigger resolves first. Destroy or exile the extort creatures, and hit Blind Obedience and Life Insurance with enchantment removal.
• Watch for Pontiff of Blight. It’s the one card that turns a board of small creatures into a large drain. It’s a 2/7, so plan on exile or a sweeper over damage.
• Answer the payoff first. One trigger at a time is slow. Sanguine Bond and Exquisite Blood are what end the game, so save your enchantment removal for those.
• Stop your own life total changing. A card like Platinum Emperion means you can’t lose life to extort, and the extort player gains nothing from you.

Extort FAQ

What does extort mean in MTG?

Whenever you cast a spell, you may pay {W/B}. If you do, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain life equal to the total lost (rule 702.101a).

Does extort stack?

Yes. Each permanent with extort triggers separately, and each trigger has its own payment. A permanent with two instances triggers twice (rule 702.101b). The price per trigger doesn’t drop, though, so more extort raises how much you can spend per spell, not how much each mana does.

Can you pay extort more than once per trigger?

No. You may pay {W/B} a maximum of one time for each extort trigger. You decide when the trigger resolves.

Does extort work if the spell is countered?

Yes. The trigger goes on the stack above the spell and resolves first, and it resolves even if the spell is then countered.

Does extort target?

No. It affects each opponent, so hexproof and protection don’t stop it.

Does extort trigger on copies?

No. A copy of a spell isn’t cast (rule 707.10), so storm copies and Twincast don’t trigger it. Spells you cast for free, like a cascade hit, do trigger it.

Can you pay extort with colorless mana?

No. {W/B} is a hybrid symbol and needs either white or black mana (rule 107.4e). Sol Ring’s mana can’t pay it.

Is extort damage or life loss?

Life loss. Damage prevention and protection don’t apply, and it doesn’t count as dealing damage for cards that care about that. You gain only as much life as the opponents actually lost.

Is extort good in Commander?

Yes, and it’s much better than in a two-player game. With three opponents, each {W/B} means 3 life lost and 3 gained, a rate most drain spells don’t match. It needs cheap spells to keep firing, and it does the most when paired with cards like Sanguine Bond.

What is the best extort card?

By play, Blind Obedience (264,973 Commander decks on EDHREC on 4 November 2026) and Crypt Ghast (262,566). For a dedicated deck, Pontiff of Blight gives the most triggers and Sorin of House Markov is the best commander.