Frost Bite
Snow Instant
Frost Bite deals 2 damage to target creature or planeswalker. If you control three or more snow permanents, it deals 3 damage instead.
- CMC
- 1
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- R
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Kaldheim
- Price
- $0.20
- EDHREC rank
- #19973
Frost Bite is a conditional Lightning Bolt — deal 3 damage for one mana if you control a Snow permanent, 2 damage otherwise. The Snow clause is easy enough to satisfy that the floor of 2 damage rarely matters, making this one of the cleanest cheap burn spells in formats that allow it.
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 |
Frost Bite earns its slot in Pauper Snow lists, where the format's density of Snow basics makes the 3-damage mode trivially consistent and one-mana removal is at a premium. In Modern, it competes with Lightning Bolt directly — if you're not in a Snow shell, Bolt is the pick, but dedicated Snow-aggro builds run Frost Bite as copies five through eight. Commander is where Frost Bite struggles most: 3 damage rarely kills a commander, and single-target burn that doesn't scale with the format's life totals or board states is a hard sell at any mana cost. Legacy and Vintage have enough raw efficiency elsewhere that Frost Bite only appears as a Snow-synergy piece, not a staple.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.20 bulk tier
At $0.20, Frost Bite is deep bulk — grab a playset without thinking twice. Demand is narrow enough that the price is unlikely to spike outside a breakout Snow archetype in a major format, so treat it as a cheap role-player rather than a pickup with upside.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.