Growing Ranks
Enchantment
At the beginning of your upkeep, populate. (Create a token that's a copy of a creature token you control.)
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- GW
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Pioneer Masters
- Price
- —
- EDHREC rank
- #4745
Growing Ranks doubles your best token every upkeep — at four mana it's a slow build, but in a deck that's already making populate targets worth copying, the compounding effect gets out of hand fast. Ghired, Conclave Exile is the poster commander for this card because both abilities speak the same language: find your biggest token, make another one.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Ghired, Conclave Exile
Ghired, Conclave Exile populates on attack, and Growing Ranks populates on upkeep — together they're producing two free copies of your largest token every turn cycle, turning a single Rhino token into a board that demands an immediate answer.
Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
Trostani, Selesnya's Voice gains life equal to the power of each creature token that enters, so every populate trigger from Growing Ranks is also a life swing — the deck wants as many populate effects as it can stack, and this is one of the cleanest.
Anikthea, Hand of Erebos
Anikthea, Hand of Erebos turns enchantments in graveyards into creature tokens, giving Growing Ranks large, meaningful targets to copy rather than incidental 1/1s — the enchantment synergy also means Growing Ranks itself fits naturally into the deck's theme.
Brenard, Ginger Sculptor
Brenard, Ginger Sculptor creates Golem token copies of creatures that die, and Growing Ranks populates those Golems for free each upkeep, letting the deck rebuild and compound after any board wipe.
Ghired, Mirror of the Wilds
Ghired, Mirror of the Wilds cares about having the greatest power on the board and copies spells when that condition is met, so Growing Ranks' job is to keep a massive token in play — the more reliably you maintain a big token, the more spell-copy triggers fire.
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 | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Growing Ranks is a Commander card almost by definition — a four-mana enchantment with a once-per-turn, once-per-upkeep payoff simply doesn't have the speed competitive constructed formats demand. In Modern and Pioneer it's legal but irrelevant; token strategies in those formats close games on turns three and four, not by accumulating value over five upkeep steps. Commander is where it belongs: multiplayer games go long, you have three opponents' worth of time to populate, and the power ceiling on what you're copying (Ghired's 4/4 Rhinos, giant Golems, enchantment creatures) is dramatically higher than anything a 60-card format typically puts on the board. Oathbreaker could theoretically support it in a dedicated populate shell, but the 20-life clock keeps the format faster than Growing Ranks wants.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
unknown tier
Pricing data isn't currently available for Growing Ranks, so check Scryfall or TCGPlayer for the live number before buying. As a casual Commander staple with a narrow home — populate decks almost exclusively — it tends to sit in the low-to-mid bulk range, though demand from Ghired builds keeps it from hitting true floor prices.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.