Hornet Nest
Creature — Insect
Defender (This creature can't attack.)
Whenever this creature is dealt damage, create that many 1/1 green Insect creature tokens with flying and deathtouch. (Any amount of damage a creature with deathtouch deals to a creature is enough to destroy it.)
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- G
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- The List
- Price
- $0.73
- EDHREC rank
- #2914
Hornet Nest turns every damage source aimed at it into a swarm of 1/1 deathtouch flyers — the bigger the hit, the bigger the army. The three-mana cost is trivial for what it demands from opponents: either ignore it and watch the tokens accumulate, or spend removal on a 0/2. Engines like Warstorm Surge and commanders like Zask, Skittering Swarmlord push it from defensive oddity to genuine win condition.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Zask, Skittering Swarmlord
Zask, Skittering Swarmlord cares about Insects dying and entering the battlefield, so every token Hornet Nest produces is both a threat and a card-draw trigger waiting to happen. The synergy rate north of 65% in Zask lists reflects how cleanly the Nest slots into the engine.
Grist, the Hunger Tide
Grist, the Hunger Tide mills Insects and rewards you for having them, and Hornet Nest delivers deathtouch flyers on demand whenever anything pokes it. The two cards share the same tribal identity and turn incidental damage into fuel for Grist's mill-and-reanimate gameplan.
Wayta, Trainer Prodigy
Wayta, Trainer Prodigy's fight-based gameplan is exactly what Hornet Nest wants — forced combat damage to the Nest scales directly with the power of whatever creature Wayta picks a fight with, flooding the board with tokens. The higher the opponent's creature's power, the more deathtouch flyers you get out of a single activation.
Fynn, the Fangbearer
Fynn, the Fangbearer converts every deathtouch combat damage into poison counters, so the 1/1 flyers Hornet Nest generates are each a poison clock the moment they connect. Nearly 15,000 Fynn decks have noticed that a board full of deathtouch tokens closes games faster than almost any other token package.
Xira, the Golden Sting
Xira, the Golden Sting puts Insect tokens onto opponents as a political tool, and Hornet Nest adds to that tribal critical mass while protecting itself with a punishing damage trigger. The two together create a board state where attacking into your side is actively dangerous.
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 |
Hornet Nest is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, and Oathbreaker. In Commander it's at its best — multiplayer tables mean more attackers, more damage-based removal, and more opportunities to convert a single Nest into a dozen tokens in a single turn cycle. In competitive 60-card formats like Modern and Legacy, the three-mana 0/2 is too slow and too passive; it requires opponents to cooperate by dealing non-lethal damage, which they rarely will when they can just kill it or ignore it. Pioneer sees it occasionally in janky combo shells, but it's never a mainstay. The card's natural home is Commander and Oathbreaker, where the chaos of the table does the work for you.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Halana, Kessig RangerAshnod's AltarHornet Nest
Infinite death triggers; Infinite ETB; Infinite LTB; Infinite sacrifice triggers
View on Commander Spellbook ↗Price Context
Current price
$0.73 bulk tier
At $0.73, Hornet Nest sits squarely in bulk territory — easy to pick up without any budget consideration. The price is stable given the card's narrow but loyal Commander audience; it won't spike dramatically, but it won't crater further either.
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Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.