Expand the Sphere
Sorcery
Look at the top six cards of your library. Put up to two land cards from among them onto the battlefield tapped and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order. If you put fewer than two lands onto the battlefield this way, proliferate a number of times equal to the difference. (Choose any number of permanents and/or players, then give each another counter of each kind already there.)
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- G
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Phyrexia: All Will Be One
- Price
- $0.17
- EDHREC rank
- #4833
Expand the Sphere puts a land into play tapped and proliferates — two effects on one card that poison-counter and counter-stacking decks are happy to pay four mana for. It's not efficient by ramp standards, but the proliferate rider is real value, and Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa runs it in over half its lists for exactly that reason.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa
Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa is built around stacking poison counters, and Expand the Sphere's proliferate trigger accelerates every opponent toward ten simultaneously while also fixing mana — that dual function is why it shows up in more than half of all Ixhel lists.
Ezuri, Stalker of Spheres
Ezuri, Stalker of Spheres triggers off proliferate itself, so Expand the Sphere doesn't just advance the board state — it draws a card off Ezuri's ability while also ramping, making it one of the most efficient single cards the deck can run.
Vishgraz, the Doomhive
Vishgraz, the Doomhive wants poison counters on opponents as early as possible to pump its Mite tokens, and Expand the Sphere's proliferate nudges those counters upward while smoothing the mana needed to keep the token engine running.
Fynn, the Fangbearer
Fynn, the Fangbearer converts deathtouch damage into poison counters, and Expand the Sphere gives the deck a way to proliferate those counters toward lethal without needing to connect in combat again — useful in a deck that otherwise has no built-in proliferate.
Agent Frank Horrigan
Agent Frank Horrigan cares about poison and toxic synergies, and Expand the Sphere slots in as a ramp spell that pulls double duty by proliferating counters the deck is already working to accumulate.
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 |
Expand the Sphere is a Commander card — full stop. The four-mana ramp slot is brutally competitive in every 60-card format, and a tapped land plus a one-shot proliferate doesn't clear the bar in Modern, Pioneer, or Legacy, where dedicated ramp spells either cost less or do far more. In Commander, the calculus shifts: proliferate is a meaningful keyword when multiple players are accumulating counters across dozens of permanents, and the incidental land drop justifies the cost in shells built around Atraxa-lineage commanders. Oathbreaker is the one other format where poison-counter strategies are coherent enough to make the proliferate relevant, though the card still competes with cheaper options there.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.17 bulk tier
At $0.17, Expand the Sphere is deep bulk — you're picking it out of a common box or grabbing a playset for under a dollar. That price is stable; there's no scarcity pressure on a widely printed proliferate uncommon, and its ceiling is capped by the narrow decks that want it.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.