Honored Hydra
Creature — Snake Hydra
Trample
Embalm 
(, Exile this card from your graveyard: Create a token that's a copy of it, except it's a white Zombie Snake Hydra with no mana cost. Embalm only as a sorcery.)
- CMC
- 6
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- G
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Pioneer Masters
- Price
- —
- EDHREC rank
- #16951
Honored Hydra puts a 6/6 trample body on the board for six mana, then offers to do it again for just three if you can get it into the graveyard — that embalm cost is the whole story. Under Gargos, Vicious Watcher, where Hydra spells trigger free fights and the battlefield fills with green bodies, that efficiency compounds fast.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Gargos, Vicious Watcher
Gargos, Vicious Watcher turns every Hydra spell into a removal trigger, and Honored Hydra gives you two cracks at that engine — cast it for the fight, embalm it for another. At 11% inclusion across Gargos lists, it's one of the more consistent role-players in the archetype.
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 |
Commander is where Honored Hydra actually earns a slot — the embalm clause is tailor-made for a format where graveyard recursion matters and a 6/6 trample token is hard to ignore at three mana. In competitive 60-card formats like Modern and Pioneer, six mana for a vanilla-ish creature is too slow and the embalm setup too fragile against efficient interaction. Legacy gives it room to exist on paper but not in practice; the power ceiling there makes a trampler without immediate impact a non-starter. Stick to Commander, specifically Hydra tribal or token-centric shells where the embalm token closing out a game is a real plan.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
unknown tier
Current pricing data isn't available for Honored Hydra, so check Scryfall or TCGPlayer for live numbers before buying. Historically it's been a bulk rare, so even without a price tag it's almost certainly an easy pickup.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Gargos, Vicious Watcher
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.