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Carth the Lion

Legendary Creature — Human Warrior

Whenever Carth enters or a planeswalker you control dies, look at the top seven cards of your library. You may reveal a planeswalker card from among them and put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.
Planeswalkers' loyalty abilities you activate cost an additional [+1] to activate.

CMC
4
Mana cost
{2}{B}{G}
Color identity
BG
Rarity
rare
Set
Modern Horizons 2 Promos
Price
—
EDHREC rank
#6741
Buy on TCGplayer
Carth the Lion card art
Carth the Lion gives every planeswalker you control an extra loyalty counter on every activation — both plus and minus abilities — which is a massive compounding advantage over any game that lasts more than a few turns. The real payoff is the tutor attached to his death trigger, which fetches any planeswalker directly to hand; pair him with Teferi, Temporal Archmage and you're accelerating toward emblems and extra-turn chains faster than the table can answer. Xavier Sal, Infested Captain aside, Carth the Lion belongs in any green-black shell that treats planeswalkers as the primary engine, not a supporting role.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Xavier Sal, Infested Captain

Xavier Sal, Infested Captain

16.1% of decks · synergy 0.16

Xavier Sal, Infested Captain runs a planeswalker-dense strategy where every extra loyalty counter Carth the Lion provides translates directly into more activations per turn cycle, compressing the number of turns needed to threaten ultimates. The combination makes Xavier Sal's proliferate synergies redundant in the best way — Carth is doing the work automatically.

02

Esika, God of the Tree

14.9% of decks · synergy 0.14

Esika, God of the Tree's five-color identity means the planeswalker roster can stretch as wide as possible, and Carth the Lion's loyalty bonus scales with every walker on the board simultaneously. The extra counters pull ultimates meaningfully closer across the whole roster, not just one threat.

03
Kethis, the Hidden Hand

Kethis, the Hidden Hand

12.4% of decks · synergy 0.12

Kethis, the Hidden Hand cares about legendary permanents in the graveyard, and Carth the Lion is a legendary creature that tutors a planeswalker on death — slotting neatly into the recursion loops Kethis wants to run. The loyalty boost is secondary here; the repeatable planeswalker fetch is the reason to include him.

04
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice

Atraxa, Praetors' Voice

14.7% of decks · synergy 0.06

Atraxa, Praetors' Voice proliferates every end step, and Carth the Lion stacks on top to ensure activations are pushing loyalty totals to ultimate range within two or three turns. The synergy score is lower than the planeswalker-native commanders, but in a heavily walker-focused Atraxa build the ceiling is the same.

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 not legal
oathbreaker legal

Commander is the format Carth the Lion was designed for — a 100-card singleton environment with long enough game arcs that the loyalty accumulation actually matters, and a tutor on death that replaces itself cleanly in a format where card advantage is precious. In Legacy and Vintage he's legal but firmly unplayed; neither format has the patience for a 5-mana 4/4 whose payoff is incremental loyalty counters rather than an immediate board impact. Oathbreaker is the one non-Commander format worth flagging: if your signature spell is a planeswalker tutor, Carth the Lion as the commander or a companion piece fits precisely into how that format's rules work, and the loyalty bonus is even more potent when the game is built around a single featured walker.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

unknown tier

Current pricing data for Carth the Lion isn't available in our system — check Scryfall or your preferred retailer for the live number. Given his role as a narrow build-around for planeswalker-heavy Commander decks, he tends to sit in the mid-range singles bracket rather than spiking into staple territory, but that can shift with any new planeswalker commander release.

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Sources

Mentioned

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