Cartographer's Hawk
Creature — Bird
Flying
When this creature deals combat damage to a player who controls more lands than you, return it to its owner's hand. If you do, you may search your library for a Plains card, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Starter Commander Decks
- Price
- $0.22
- EDHREC rank
- #4454
Cartographer's Hawk fetches a Plains on attack — Plains, not any land — so its ramp ceiling is real but narrow, and it bounces back to your hand when you do, resetting the loop for next combat. Kastral, the Windcrested turns that bounce into a feature: every return triggers flying-matters payoffs, making the Hawk a recursive engine rather than a one-shot accelerant.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Kastral, the Windcrested
Kastral, the Windcrested appears in over 63% of decks running Cartographer's Hawk for good reason — every time the Hawk bounces itself back to your hand after fetching a Plains, Kastral's triggers fire again, turning a modest ramp piece into a repeating value loop.
Kangee, Sky Warden
Kangee, Sky Warden wants a critical mass of flyers on board, and Cartographer's Hawk pulls double duty as a cost-efficient flying body that also thins your Plains count, keeping the flock growing without sacrificing mana development.
Sephara, Sky's Blade
Sephara, Sky's Blade reduces her own cost based on tapped flyers, and Cartographer's Hawk attacks to trigger its ability — so the same combat step that fetches a Plains also contributes to paying down Sephara's alternative cost.
God-Eternal Oketra
God-Eternal Oketra rewards replaying creatures, and Cartographer's Hawk naturally returns to hand after each successful attack trigger, generating a fresh Oketra zombie token every time you recast it.
Errant and Giada
Errant and Giada both care about creature types and evasion, and Cartographer's Hawk slots in as a cheap flying Human that recurs itself — each recast off the bounce is another trigger opportunity for the pair's copy effects.
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 | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Cartographer's Hawk is a Commander card through and through — the self-bouncing Plains-fetch loop is designed for a 40-life multiplayer game where one or two extra land drops compound over a long game. In Legacy and Vintage, where it's technically legal, it would never see play: a two-mana 1/1 that requires attacking and opponent cooperation to ramp is nowhere near the power threshold those formats demand. Oathbreaker is the one fringe case where it's legal and plausibly useful, particularly in mono-white signatures that need the extra Plains without spending slots on traditional ramp. Everywhere else — Modern, Pioneer, Standard, Pauper — it simply isn't legal, and the honest read is that it wouldn't compete there anyway.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.22 bulk tier
At $0.22, Cartographer's Hawk is bulk in price but not in function — it's a genuine role-player in white flyer decks, and that combination of cheap acquisition and real utility makes it a safe include with no financial risk. Bulk rares with consistent Commander demand tend to sit in this range indefinitely, so there's no urgency to buy in bulk, but also no reason to hesitate at this price.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.