"Circle of Affliction" is a black enchantment spell printed as an uncommon for the Magic the Gathering expansion set known as "Planar Chaos." This is a rather interesting card in which it does not need to be used as a sideboard. When playing against any deck, you can use Circle of Affliction and punish your opponents. In an extended format, you can combine this with the abilities of other cards and make an opponent suffer for trying to mess with you.

The converted mana cost for Circle of Affliction is two. You are going to need one black mana and one colorless mana to play Circle of Affliction. For what Circle of Affliction can do, the converted mana cost is worth it. If you can bring this card onto the battlefield early in the game, then Circle of Affliction most definitely helps you out as a result. Keep in mind that Circle of Affliction is an enchantment spell. It means a simple spell such as "Disenchant" or "Naturalize" will send Circle of Affliction to the graveyard.

What does Circle of Affliction do in the first place?

As soon as you play it, you choose a color. Whenever a source of that color deals damage to you, you may pay one colorless mana. If you do, the target player loses one point of life and you gain one point of life. This is a good defensive card to use if an opponent decides to try anything funny with you. However, you will need mana open in order to be able to utilize the potential of Circle of Affliction.

If you are going up against an opponent that is playing red, you play Circle of Affliction and choose red. Whenever you get damaged from a red source, you pay mana to make your opponent lose life points. Since you do not have to tap Circle of Affliction, you can pay the cost as many times as you want as long as you have the mana. In a multicolored deck, you simply need to pick one color and hope the opponent deals damage from a source that shares that color.

In a pure black deck, you can use "Sanguine Bond" and "Wound Reflection." By gaining that point of life, you can use Sanguine Bond to make the opponent lose another point of life. At the end of the turn, Wound Reflection doubles the life points that your opponent loses. Say that your opponent dealt damage to you with a source of the chosen color and you decided to pay five mana, you would make the opponent lose five points of life. You gain five points of life. Sanguine Bond makes an opponent lose another five points of life. That equals to ten points of life that the opponent loses. At the end, Wound Reflection makes the opponent lose an extra ten points of life for a total of twenty points.

Overall, Circle of Affliction is pretty interesting for the most part. Alone, it does not have much effect. With certain cards that can work with those abilities, Circle of Affliction can be quite useful.

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