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Grand Arbiter Augustin IV

Legendary Creature — Human Advisor

White spells you cast cost {1} less to cast.
Blue spells you cast cost {1} less to cast.
Spells your opponents cast cost {1} more to cast.

CMC
4
Mana cost
{2}{W}{U}
Color identity
UW
Rarity
rare
Set
The List
Price
$16.54
EDHREC rank
#1782
Buy on TCGplayer
Grand Arbiter Augustin IV card art
Grand Arbiter Augustin IV is a stax piece that warps games the moment it resolves — your spells cost one less, everyone else's cost one more, and that asymmetry compounds fast. The cost is a four-mana 2/3 with no immediate protection, which means it eats removal constantly; commanders like Orvar, the All-Form or Sen Triplets that can leverage it without leaning on it surviving for long get the most mileage.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Sen Triplets

Sen Triplets

41.9% of decks · synergy 0.36

Sen Triplets steals opponents' hands and then casts their spells, so Grand Arbiter Augustin IV's cost reduction directly lowers the tax on anything you're casting from exile — the two pieces turn resource denial into an active engine rather than passive slowing.

02
Lavinia, Azorius Renegade

Lavinia, Azorius Renegade

41.2% of decks · synergy 0.31

Lavinia, Azorius Renegade already punishes players who can't pay full cost for their spells; Grand Arbiter Augustin IV layers on a tax that makes Lavinia's restriction bite even harder, frequently locking opponents out of their whole turn.

03
The Archimandrite

The Archimandrite

29.9% of decks · synergy 0.28

The Archimandrite cares about Citizens, which tends to mean a go-wide White-Blue build that wants every spell to resolve cheaply and on curve — Grand Arbiter Augustin IV delivers that discount while slowing opposing answers.

05
Oloro, Ageless Ascetic

Oloro, Ageless Ascetic

21.2% of decks · synergy 0.15

Oloro, Ageless Ascetic decks tend to sit back and grind through a long game, and Grand Arbiter Augustin IV fits that posture by taxing opponents into irrelevance while Oloro accrues life and card advantage overhead.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Commander is the natural home for Grand Arbiter Augustin IV — a four-player table magnifies the tax, and the Azorius control shells that want it are well-supported in the format. It sees fringe Legacy play in Stoneblade-adjacent lists or dedicated stax builds, where the cost reduction on your own white and blue spells occasionally justifies the slot, but it competes with faster disruption and rarely tops those lists. In Vintage the card is legal but the format moves too quickly for a four-mana do-nothing-until-next-turn permanent to matter. Oathbreaker can support it but the 20-life starting total shortens games enough that the slow grind the card enables is less reliable.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

If Grand Arbiter Augustin IV is out of reach, Taxing Sliver and Aura of Silence cover the tax-opponents angle at a fraction of the price, though neither reduces your own costs. Lofty Denial and Spell Tithe aren't direct replacements but patch the same weakness — keeping opponents off key plays — for under a dollar each, at the cost of the unconditional symmetry-break that makes Grand Arbiter Augustin IV worth building around in the first place.

Price Context

Current price

$16.54 mid tier

At $16.54, Grand Arbiter Augustin IV sits in the mid tier — expensive enough to feel in a budget build, reasonable for a card that functions as the engine of an entire archetype. It has settled into this range as a Commander staple with consistent demand, and there is no meaningful cheaper printing that significantly undercuts that price.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.