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Battle Hymn

Instant

Add {R} for each creature you control.

CMC
2
Mana cost
{1}{R}
Color identity
R
Rarity
rare
Set
Secret Lair Drop
Price
$19.99
EDHREC rank
#1713
Buy on TCGplayer
Battle Hymn card art
Battle Hymn converts a wide creature board into a burst of red mana for one mana — the payoff scales directly with your token count, so in the right deck it reads 'add ten mana' at instant speed. Wort, the Raidmother can conspire it for free, and any deck looking to chain spells through Pili-Pala-style loops wants this on the short list.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Wort, the Raidmother

Wort, the Raidmother

52.8% of decks · synergy 0.51

Wort, the Raidmother's conspire ability copies Battle Hymn without extra cost, effectively doubling the mana burst every time you cast it — that redundancy is the engine that makes Wort's storm turns go infinite.

02
Zada, Hedron Grinder

Zada, Hedron Grinder

64.0% of decks · synergy 0.50

Zada, Hedron Grinder naturally amasses a token army before going off, and Battle Hymn cashes that army in for the red mana needed to keep copying spells through Zada's trigger chain.

03
Magnus the Red

Magnus the Red

47.3% of decks · synergy 0.44

Magnus the Red churns out tokens proportional to instants and sorceries cast, so Battle Hymn both rewards the tokens it generates and fuels the next spell in the same turn cycle.

04
Krenko, Mob Boss

Krenko, Mob Boss

50.7% of decks · synergy 0.37

Krenko, Mob Boss can produce a ludicrous number of Goblins in a single activation, and Battle Hymn turns that headcount directly into the mana needed to activate Krenko again or close out the game.

05
Muxus, Goblin Grandee

Muxus, Goblin Grandee

45.7% of decks · synergy 0.32

Muxus, Goblin Grandee floods the board with Goblins on resolution, and Battle Hymn converts that sudden wide presence into enough mana to cast a second threat or trigger another piece of the combo.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

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

Commander is where Battle Hymn earns its keep — 100-card singleton token strategies regularly field twenty-plus creatures before going off, turning a one-mana spell into a double-digit mana surge that other formats can't replicate at that scale. In Pauper it sees fringe play in token storm shells, where its common printing matters and the ceiling is lower but the cost is still correct. Legacy and Vintage have the raw speed to assemble token boards, but both formats offer stronger mana acceleration that makes Battle Hymn redundant rather than essential. Oathbreaker mirrors Commander's logic in a compressed game state, so the same go-wide commanders that want it there want it here too.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

Rituals that don't care about creatures — Pyretic Ritual, Desperate Ritual — cost less than a dollar and produce fixed mana without needing a board, which makes them more consistent in early turns but strictly worse once you're sitting on ten tokens. If the goal is creature-count-dependent mana, Skirk Prospector offers a similar conversion rate in Goblin decks by sacrificing rather than tapping, trading the card for a permanent and dodging Battle Hymn's sorcery-speed limitation in exchange for requiring Goblins specifically.

Price Context

Current price

$19.99 mid tier

At $19.99, Battle Hymn sits in the mid tier — meaningful money for a one-mana ritual, but the price reflects its scarcity and narrow high-demand home rather than any inflated speculation. It holds value in dedicated token-storm Commander builds and is hard to replace at the same efficiency, so the cost is justified if the deck plan centers on it.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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