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Herald's Horn

Artifact

As this artifact enters, choose a creature type.
Creature spells you cast of the chosen type cost {1} less to cast.
At the beginning of your upkeep, look at the top card of your library. If it's a creature card of the chosen type, you may reveal it and put it into your hand.

CMC
3
Mana cost
{3}
Color identity
C
Rarity
uncommon
Set
Commander Masters
Price
$6.12
EDHREC rank
#141
Buy on TCGplayer
Herald's Horn card art
Herald's Horn does two things at once: it reduces the cost of every creature in your chosen tribe by one generic mana and drips card advantage every upkeep when the top card matches. The cost is three mana and a single deckbuilding constraint — pick a tribe — and virtually every tribal deck in Commander meets that bar, from the most linear Human pile running Éowyn, Shieldmaiden to something as fringe as a Metallic Sliver shell.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Éowyn, Shieldmaiden

Éowyn, Shieldmaiden

78.0% of decks · synergy 0.72

Éowyn, Shieldmaiden wants to flood the board with Humans as fast as possible, and Herald's Horn shaves a mana off the bulk of the deck while refilling hand whenever the top card cooperates — both halves are live nearly every turn.

02
Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir

Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir

66.9% of decks · synergy 0.63

Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir cares about Knights entering the battlefield and attacking, so the cost reduction from Herald's Horn means you're deploying more Knights per turn and more triggers per combat step.

03
Admiral Brass, Unsinkable

Admiral Brass, Unsinkable

67.9% of decks · synergy 0.61

Admiral Brass, Unsinkable recurs Pirates from the graveyard, and Herald's Horn makes the initial cast of those Pirates cheaper — letting you curve out faster before the recursion engine even comes online.

04
Sethron, Hurloon General

Sethron, Hurloon General

58.5% of decks · synergy 0.54

Sethron, Hurloon General generates Minotaur tokens off every Minotaur cast, so Herald's Horn's cost reduction directly translates to more trigger opportunities on the same mana budget.

05
Ashcoat of the Shadow Swarm

Ashcoat of the Shadow Swarm

56.5% of decks · synergy 0.51

Ashcoat of the Shadow Swarm mills Rats to buff the board, and Herald's Horn feeds that plan from both ends — cheaper Rats hit the battlefield faster, and the upkeep trigger fills the graveyard as much as the hand.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

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

Commander is where Herald's Horn lives — tribal decks are one of the format's defining archetypes, games go long enough to extract multiple upkeep triggers, and three mana is an easy ask on turn two or three. The card is technically legal in Legacy and Vintage, but neither format has a tribal shell slow enough to want a three-mana do-nothing artifact that doesn't affect the board immediately. Oathbreaker is the one non-Commander format worth a mention: if your signature spell or planeswalker anchors a creature-heavy tribe, Herald's Horn performs the same role it does in Commander on a compressed timeline.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

Kindred Discovery costs more mana and draws a full card per creature rather than revealing the top, making it a strict upgrade if the budget allows — but if you're looking to go cheaper, Vanquisher's Banner fills a similar role at roughly the same price point while also pumping the team, though the three-mana cost and single-tribe requirement are identical to Herald's Horn so you're not really saving anything. For pure cost reduction without the draw, Urza's Incubator cuts tribal spells by two instead of one and runs cheaper in paper, but it abandons the card-advantage half entirely — run Herald's Horn if the tribe is dense enough that the upkeep trigger will fire consistently.

Price Context

Current price

$6.12 mid tier

At $6.12, Herald's Horn sits in the mid tier — affordable enough that cutting it for budget reasons is hard to justify when it's a staple in any tribal build. It has seen multiple printings, which keeps the price stable rather than climbing, so you're not buying into something likely to spike or crater dramatically.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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