Crystal Carapace
Enchantment — Aura
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +3/+3 and has ward 
.
Cycling (, Discard this card: Draw a card.)
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- G
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- March of the Machine
- Price
- $0.09
- EDHREC rank
- #14075
Crystal Carapace staples a relevant protection keyword onto a creature for two mana, then converts that enchantment into a mana filter the turn it resolves. The setup cost is real — the creature has to survive long enough to make the filtering matter — but in enchantress or protection-matters builds, that's a feature, not a bug.
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 | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Crystal Carapace is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, Pauper, and Oathbreaker, but it's realistically a Commander and Pauper card. In Commander, the mana-filtering rider makes it playable in five-color enchantress shells or any deck that wants to dome a keyword onto a key creature without just running a Swiftfoot Boots; the fact that it replaces itself as a mana rock is what separates it from strictly worse aura options. In Pauper, the common slot is crowded with efficient auras, and Crystal Carapace competes poorly against ones that close games faster. In Modern and Legacy, two mana for a conditional keyword and a one-time filter effect is nowhere near rate — those formats don't have time for it.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.09 bulk tier
At $0.09, Crystal Carapace is deep bulk — the kind of card you pull from a common box rather than order individually. The price reflects its narrow playability; it won't appreciate unless an enchantress commander breaks out and drags every marginal aura up with it.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.