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Karn's Touch

Instant

Target noncreature artifact becomes an artifact creature with power and toughness each equal to its mana value until end of turn. (It retains its abilities.)

CMC
2
Mana cost
{U}{U}
Color identity
U
Rarity
rare
Set
Mercadian Masques
Price
$0.45
EDHREC rank
#25837
Buy on TCGplayer
Karn's Touch card art
Karn's Touch turns any artifact on the battlefield into a creature until end of turn, which is the entire reason to run it — it enables combo kills through Aetherflux Reservoir and similar payoffs that care about creatures or life totals rather than static permanents. The cost is real: it's a sorcery, it doesn't generate card advantage, and it does nothing without the right pieces already in play.

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

Karn's Touch is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but it's a Commander card through and through — the 100-card singleton format gives you enough redundant artifact payoffs to make the temporary creature conversion meaningful. In Legacy and Vintage, the effect is too narrow and too slow to compete for a spell slot when those formats have faster, more resilient combo infrastructure. Oathbreaker can support it in the same artifact-combo shells you'd find in Commander, just compressed. Anywhere outside those four formats, it's not legal.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.45 bulk tier

At $0.45, Karn's Touch is deep bulk — you're not paying a premium for a niche enabler. It holds that price floor comfortably as long as it sees fringe combo play, but don't expect movement; cards this situational rarely climb without a breakout tournament moment.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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