Aerial Predation
Instant
Destroy target creature with flying. You gain 2 life.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- G
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Return to Ravnica
- Price
- $0.10
- EDHREC rank
- #19740
Aerial Predation destroys a flying creature and gains you 2 life for three mana at instant speed — clean, unconditional, and immediately impactful. The catch is the restriction: it does nothing against the ground game, which makes it a sideboard-level answer rather than a maindeck staple.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Aerial Predation is a narrow answer in a format full of Dragons, Angels, and sphinxes, but green already has better options — Plummet costs one less and does the same job without the life gain mattering. Pauper is where Aerial Predation sees the most legitimate play, since flying threats dominate the format and every point of life gain has more incremental weight in 20-life games. In Legacy, Modern, and Pioneer the card is legal but irrelevant — those formats demand more efficient interaction and rarely want a three-mana sorcery-speed-adjacent instant that blanks against non-flyers. Stick to Pauper if you want to run it competitively.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.10 bulk tier
At $0.10, Aerial Predation is pure bulk — you're paying for cardboard, not scarcity. That price is stable by default; there's no demand pressure that would move it in either direction.
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Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.