Demonic Consultation

Premodern-legal editions of Demonic Consultation — old-border printings plus any period-appropriate foil promos (Arena/Judge, through Scourge). Hover to preview an edition on the card; click to select it.

Ice Age

1995·iceuncommon

Selected

Old-border editions + pre-Scourge promo foils (Arena/Judge). Modern-frame reprints (8th Edition onward) exist but are not period-appropriate printings.

Why It's Banned

For a single black mana, Demonic Consultation is an unconditional tutor that fetches any card in your deck, paid for by exiling the top six cards and then exiling every other card revealed until you hit the one you named. In Premodern's slower, interaction-based metagame, that one-mana consistency lets combo decks assemble their kill (most notably via storm/Doomsday-adjacent engines and reanimator setups) far too reliably, collapsing the variance that keeps non-blue tutoring honest. The trivial cost makes the format's answers irrelevant because the combo player simply finds the missing piece on turn one or two.

First printed in Ice Age (1995), Demonic Consultation became infamous in Vintage and Legacy as a near-free black tutor that powers cantrip-and-combo shells. Premodern, a community format spanning Fourth Edition through Scourge, included it on the banned list at the format's founding precisely to deny combo decks that level of cheap, deterministic consistency.

Trivia & Lore

• Demonic Consultation debuted in Ice Age (June 1995) as a single-black-mana ({B}) instant illustrated by Rob Alexander, printed at uncommon (#121) with no flavor text on the original.
• Demonic Consultation was never placed on the Reserved List, which is why Wizards can still reprint it in paper: it has appeared in Mystery Booster 2 (#181) and the Secret Lair 30th Anniversary Countdown Kit / 'An Encyclopedia of Magic' (SLC #4), in addition to the Magic Online-only Masters Edition II (#85) in 2008.
• The DCI restricted Demonic Consultation in Type 1/Vintage effective October 1, 2000 (announced September 1, 2000), at the same time as Necropotence. The stated reasoning was that in a format where all the other tutor cards were restricted, Demonic Consultation stood out as a powerhouse.
• Erik Lauer was the first deckbuilder to settle on running four copies each of Necropotence and Demonic Consultation, using Consultation as a one-mana engine to consistently find Necropotence early; the archetype became known as 'Lauerpotence.'
• Because the spell exiles your whole library (rather than making you lose) when the named card is never revealed, the modern combo names a card not in your deck to deliberately empty the library, then wins on the spot with Thassa's Oracle for three total mana ({B} plus {U}{U}).
• Wizards designer Gavin Verhey publicly riffed on the line, tweeting: 'You're casting Demonic Consultation to exile your library so you can win with Thassa's Oracle. You get to name any card that isn't in your library. What card are you naming?' Per the card's official ruling, the named card must actually exist in Magic.

Critical Rulings