Cavernous Maw
Land — Cave
: Add 
.
: This land becomes a 3/3 Elemental creature until end of turn. It's still a Cave land. Activate only if the number of other Caves you control plus the number of Cave cards in your graveyard is three or greater.
- CMC
- 0
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- C
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- The Lost Caverns of Ixalan
- Price
- $0.23
- EDHREC rank
- #14155
Cavernous Maw enters as a land that can later become a creature — a 4/4 that exiles the top card of an opponent's library each time it deals combat damage to them. The cost is real: you're spending four mana to animate it and a land drop on a body that trades with most midrange creatures, so run it only if your deck specifically rewards land-creature synergies or needs reach in grindy games.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Cavernous Maw occupies a niche as a low-opportunity-cost threat in decks that animate lands or care about creature-lands — the exile trigger can slowly strip a single opponent's library in a long game, but it won't move the needle at a table of four. In constructed formats like Standard, Pioneer, and Modern, creature-lands live or die by how efficiently they attack and block, and a four-mana activation for a 4/4 with no immediate protection or evasion is too slow in most competitive shells. Legacy and Vintage largely ignore it for the same reason — the activation cost alone prices it out of the turn structure those formats demand.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.23 bulk tier
At $0.23, Cavernous Maw is deep bulk — you're not paying for power, you're paying for a slot. It's unlikely to appreciate unless a land-animation commander breaks out and pulls creature-lands along with it.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.