Commune with Lava
Instant
Exile the top X cards of your library. Until the end of your next turn, you may play those cards.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- R
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Dragons of Tarkir
- Price
- $0.50
- EDHREC rank
- #3810
Commune with Lava is one of red's best bursts of card advantage — exile up to X cards off the top and cast them until end of your next turn, all for a scalable mana investment you can sink a full late-game hand into. Fire Lord Zuko decks run it at a 50% clip because the effect maps perfectly onto red's identity of spending big in one explosive window.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Fire Lord Zuko
Fire Lord Zuko's gameplan is built around generating and spending enormous amounts of mana in a single turn, and Commune with Lava converts that mana directly into cards you can deploy in the same burst — the synergy score of 0.49 reflects how cleanly it fits the engine.
Prosper, Tome-Bound
Prosper, Tome-Bound rewards casting spells off the top of your library with Treasure generation, and Commune with Lava hands you a multi-card window to trigger that effect repeatedly and snowball resources.
Neheb, the Eternal
Neheb, the Eternal produces mana proportional to combat damage dealt, and Commune with Lava is one of the few ways to absorb that mana spike after attacks and convert it into meaningful card advantage at instant speed.
Rowan, Scion of War
Rowan, Scion of War discounts spells based on life paid, which means a big Commune with Lava exiling multiple high-cost cards can set up a chain of discounted casts on the following turn.
Pia Nalaar, Consul of Revival
Pia Nalaar, Consul of Revival wants a wide range of artifacts and spells to sacrifice and replay, and Commune with Lava provides the card volume to keep that loop stocked through a long game.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Commune with Lava sees virtually all its play in Commander, where the combination of high mana totals, instant speed, and a full extra turn to cast exiled cards makes it a genuine engine rather than a one-off burst. In competitive Commander specifically, it tends to appear in decks that can suddenly produce six or more mana in a single window — Neheb or Prosper shells where you either flood the board afterward or generate resources to close. In Legacy, Modern, and Pioneer it's legal but ignored; faster formats don't give you the setup time to resolve a five-plus mana sorcery-like effect and live to benefit from it. The card is narrowly excellent rather than broadly playable.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.50 bulk tier
At $0.50, Commune with Lava sits firmly in bulk territory despite being a legitimate role-player in red Commander builds. The price reflects low eternal-format demand rather than power level, so it's an easy pickup that isn't going to spike.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.