Benalish Hero
Creature — Human Soldier
Banding (Any creatures with banding, and up to one without, can attack in a band. Bands are blocked as a group. If any creatures with banding you control are blocking or being blocked by a creature, you divide that creature's combat damage, not its controller, among any of the creatures it's being blocked by or is blocking.)
- CMC
- 1
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Foreign Black Border
- Price
- $15.00
- EDHREC rank
- #20553
Benalish Hero is a one-mana 1/1 with banding — a mechanic so opaque it sees almost no competitive play in any format. The card's ceiling is niche tribal or banding-synergy builds, and even there it rarely justifies a slot.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Benalish Hero is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, Pauper, and Oathbreaker, but legality and playability are different things. In Commander, it slots only into dedicated banding or white weenie nostalgia builds — the effect doesn't scale to 40-life multiplayer. Pauper is the kindest home on paper, where one-mana creatures get more respect, but banding provides no real combat advantage in a format defined by evasion and tempo. Legacy and Vintage have the most powerful one-drops in the game, and Benalish Hero doesn't compete.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Budget Alternatives
Cheaper options that do most of the same work
Any white one-drop with a relevant keyword — Champion of the Parish, Kytheon, Hero of Akros, or even a simple Savannah Lions variant — will do more work than Benalish Hero in nearly every context. The banding ability is the ceiling and the floor simultaneously; there's no budget alternative because the card's function has no modern equivalent worth replacing.
Price Context
Current price
$15.00 mid tier
At $15.00, Benalish Hero sits in mid-tier pricing driven almost entirely by collector and nostalgia demand, not gameplay demand. The price reflects age and scarcity from early print runs, not power — don't pay it expecting on-board value.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.