Flare
Instant
Flare deals 1 damage to any target.
Draw a card at the beginning of the next turn's upkeep.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- R
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Ice Age
- Price
- $0.11
- EDHREC rank
- #25153
Flare deals 1 damage to any target for a single red mana — functional, clean, and nothing more. It's outclassed by nearly every other one-mana red spell in competitive formats, so you run it only when you've exhausted better options.
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 | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Flare is too low-impact to earn a slot — one damage doesn't kill commanders, doesn't stop combos, and doesn't threaten players. Pauper is where it sees the most legitimate consideration, where common-only card pools make every piece of cheap interaction relevant and pinpoint damage matters more at lower life totals. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but strictly worse than Lightning Bolt and its many imitators. Oathbreaker follows the same logic as Commander: the format's faster clock doesn't make one damage scale any better.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.11 bulk tier
At $0.11, Flare is deep bulk — the kind of card that costs more to ship than it's worth. That price is stable simply because demand is near zero, not because anything is propping it up.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.