Eager First-Year
Creature — Human Wizard
Magecraft — Whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, this creature gets +1/+0 until end of turn.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Strixhaven: School of Mages
- Price
- $0.05
- EDHREC rank
- #26680
Eager First-Year is a one-mana 1/1 that replaces itself by tutoring a sorcery — innocuous on its face, but the real reason it sees play is Chain of Smog: the two form an infinite loop that wins on the spot in any deck that rewards spell casting or graveyard accumulation. It's a combo enabler wearing a college student's body, and that's the only reason it belongs in a deck.
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 |
Eager First-Year is a Commander card first and almost exclusively. Outside of a dedicated Chain of Smog shell, a one-mana 1/1 that fetches a sorcery is too slow and too narrow to compete in Legacy, Vintage, or Pauper, where raw card quality sets the bar. In Modern and Pioneer it sees effectively zero play for the same reason — the loop requires specific pieces, and those formats lack the redundancy or payoff density that makes assembling it consistent. In Commander, it earns its slot precisely because the format rewards resilience: one copy of each piece is all you need, the combo kills the table, and the card costs a dollar in both mana and real money.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Chain of SmogEager First-Year
Infinitely powerful creature until end of turn; Infinite magecraft triggers
View on Commander Spellbook ↗
Chain of AcidEager First-Year
Infinitely powerful creature until end of turn; Infinite magecraft triggers
View on Commander Spellbook ↗Price Context
Current price
$0.05 bulk tier
At $0.05, Eager First-Year is deep bulk — the kind of card you grab as a throw-in. Price stability is likely; nothing about the card's role changes without an errata, and combo pieces this specific rarely spike unless the format bans something adjacent.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.