Flailing Manticore
Creature — Manticore
Flying, first strike
: This creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn. Any player may activate this ability.: This creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn. Any player may activate this ability.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- R
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Mercadian Masques
- Price
- $0.44
- EDHREC rank
- #29256
Flailing Manticore lands as a 5/5 flying first striker for four mana — a genuinely above-rate body — but the drawback clause, which lets any opponent pay 1 to give it -1/-1 until end of turn at any point, means it will get taxed or neutralized the moment it threatens to matter. The ceiling is real; the table will make sure you never reach it.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Flailing Manticore is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, and sees essentially no play in any of them. In Commander, a 5/5 flier with first strike is a fine statline, but the open-table nature of the format means three opponents can collectively drain its power to irrelevance for just a handful of mana — often before it deals a single point of combat damage. Legacy and Vintage have redundant options that come without drawbacks, so Flailing Manticore never competes there. It's a bulk rare that falls short in every environment it's technically allowed to enter.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.44 bulk tier
At $0.44, Flailing Manticore sits firmly in bulk territory, and there's no pressure driving that price upward. It doesn't slot into any competitive strategy, so $0.44 is roughly where it stays.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.