Instrument of the Bards
Legendary Artifact
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may put a harmony counter on Instrument of the Bards.
, 
: Search your library for a creature card with mana value equal to the number of harmony counters on Instrument of the Bards, reveal it, and put it into your hand. If that card is legendary, create a Treasure token. Then shuffle.
- CMC
- 1
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- G
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Adventures in the Forgotten Realms Promos
- Price
- —
- EDHREC rank
- #11489
Instrument of the Bards is a slow-burn tutor engine that accumulates harmony counters over multiple turns and cashes them in to fetch any legendary creature or planeswalker from your library — no mana cost attached to the search itself. The setup cost is real, but in a format where games go long and legendary permanents dominate the battlefield, that payoff is consistently backbreaking.
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 |
Instrument of the Bards lives in Commander, full stop. The format's longer games give it time to accumulate counters, and the density of legendary creatures worth fetching is higher there than anywhere else. In Legacy, Modern, and Pioneer it's legal but functionally invisible — those formats move too fast for a three-mana artifact that asks you to play creatures before it does anything, and the payoff only searches for legendary permanents, a narrow pool when speed and consistency define the environment. Oathbreaker offers a niche home in legendary-heavy shells where the signature spell restriction keeps tutors scarce, making Instrument of the Bards a meaningful supplement. Treat it as a Commander card that happens to have a legal line in other formats.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
unknown tier
Price data isn't available for Instrument of the Bards at the moment, so check Scryfall or TCGPlayer for the current market rate before buying. As a niche legendary-matters tutor with a narrow but devoted audience, it tends to sit at a modest price point — worth picking up if you have a deck that can fire it reliably.
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Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.