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Ambush Commander

Creature — Elf

Forests you control are 1/1 green Elf creatures that are still lands.
{1}{G}, Sacrifice an Elf: Target creature gets +3/+3 until end of turn.

CMC
5
Mana cost
{3}{G}{G}
Color identity
G
Rarity
rare
Set
The List
Price
$0.37
EDHREC rank
#13073
Buy on TCGplayer
Ambush Commander card art
Ambush Commander converts every Forest into a 1/1 Elf token — an immediate board presence that scales with land count and turns green's biggest resource into an army. The catch is the sacrifice clause that returns those lands to hand, which kills momentum unless you're in a deck like Yedora, Grave Gardener that wants creatures dying and lands flowing back anyway.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Yedora, Grave Gardener

Yedora, Grave Gardener

53.1% of decks · synergy 0.52

Yedora, Grave Gardener turns every nontoken creature death into a face-down Forest, which means Ambush Commander can immediately convert those Forests back into Elf tokens — a tight loop that generates board presence from your own graveyard recursion engine.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern not legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Ambush Commander is a Commander card, full stop. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but never sees play — five mana for a fragile creature that needs a board full of Forests to do anything meaningful doesn't compete in formats where the game can end on turn one or two. Commander is the natural home: green ramp decks accumulate Forests naturally, the political environment buys time to untap, and the token generation pays off in go-wide finishers. Ambush Commander works best as a value engine in the 99 rather than at the helm, where its narrow text would define the entire strategy.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.37 bulk tier

At $0.37, Ambush Commander sits firmly in bulk territory — easy to acquire as a throw-in or cheap pickup. Bulk rares with narrow homes rarely climb unless a new commander pushes the synergy into the spotlight, so don't expect much movement.

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Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.