Arms Race
Enchantment
: You may put an artifact card from your hand onto the battlefield. That artifact gains haste. Sacrifice it at the beginning of the next end step.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- R
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- The Brothers' War
- Price
- $0.07
- EDHREC rank
- #21268
Arms Race puts a +1/+1 counter on every creature on the battlefield — yours and everyone else's — for one mana, and Meticulous Excavation aside, there are very few ways to squeeze that much stat inflation onto a table for a single blue mana. The catch is symmetry: you need a reason to want the counters more than your opponents do, or you're just funding their gameplan.
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 | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Arms Race is a Commander card through and through — the symmetry that makes it awkward in one-on-one formats becomes a political tool across three opponents, and commanders that scale on +1/+1 counters turn it into a one-mana engine piece. In Legacy, Modern, and Pioneer it's too slow and too charitable to see real play; those formats punish symmetrical effects that don't immediately win the game. Oathbreaker shares enough of Commander's multiplayer texture that the same synergy-dependent builds apply, though the smaller deck size makes consistency easier.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Arms RaceMeticulous ExcavationZirda, the DawnwakerBoommobile
Infinite damage; Infinite colored mana that can only be spent to activate abilities
View on Commander Spellbook ↗Price Context
Current price
$0.07 bulk tier
At $0.07, Arms Race is deep bulk — buy a playset for the cost of a pack of gum. Don't expect that to change unless a counter-synergy commander breaks into the mainstream spotlight and spikes demand overnight.
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Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.