Field Marshal
Creature — Human Soldier
Other Soldier creatures get +1/+1 and have first strike. (They deal combat damage before creatures without first strike.)
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Secret Lair Drop
- Price
- $10.30
- EDHREC rank
- #8515
Field Marshal turns every Soldier in play into a 3/3 with first strike — that's not a small buff on a board of twenty tokens, it's a clock. At three mana in a color that already floods the board, it earns its slot in any Soldier build running Commander Mustard or similar.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Commander Mustard
Commander Mustard's entire game plan is assembling a critical mass of Soldiers and punching through — Field Marshal gives that mass first strike and a +1/+1 baseline, which turns a wide board into a brick wall that also kills in two attacks.
Myrel, Shield of Argive
Myrel, Shield of Argive locks down opponents on their turn and generates Soldier tokens in volume; Field Marshal converts that token flood into a first-strike army that wins combat against nearly anything.
Darien, King of Kjeldor
Darien, King of Kjeldor produces Soldiers in response to damage taken, which means Field Marshal's buff scales directly with how aggressively opponents attack — the more they swing in, the more dangerous your board gets.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Commander is Field Marshal's home: Soldier tribal is a real archetype there, the singleton rule means the anthem effect is never redundant, and three mana is easy to hit on curve. In Legacy and Vintage it's technically legal but sees no competitive play — those formats move too fast for a three-mana lord that doesn't generate immediate card advantage. Modern is the most plausible non-Commander context, where Soldier strategies occasionally surface, but Field Marshal competes with a crowded lord slot and rarely makes the cut. Skip Pioneer and Standard entirely; it's not legal there.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Budget Alternatives
Cheaper options that do most of the same work
Vanquisher's Banner and Adaptive Automaton both cost less and grant similar anthem effects to a chosen creature type, though neither provides first strike, which is Field Marshal's defining edge in combat. If the first-strike clause matters less than the buff, Daxos, Blessed by the Sun or Unified Front offer cheaper ways to pump Soldiers — but if you're building a Soldier deck that wants to win combat rather than just go wide, Field Marshal is the card you're cutting around, not cutting.
Price Context
Current price
$10.30 mid tier
At $10.30, Field Marshal sits in the mid-tier range — meaningful enough to feel in your wallet but not a barrier to entry for a focused Soldier build. It holds price because it's the definitive Soldier lord with no direct reprint in recent high-volume sets, but it's not the kind of card you speculate on; you buy it when you're building the deck.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.