Lay Down Arms
Sorcery
Exile target creature with mana value less than or equal to the number of Plains you control. Its controller gains 3 life.
- CMC
- 1
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Love Your LGS 2024
- Price
- —
- EDHREC rank
- #9963
Lay Down Arms exiles a creature and removes all counters from it — permanent, clean, no graveyard trigger — as long as you control enough Plains to meet its condition. The catch is that Plains count, not just white mana, so it's a strong role-player in mono-white and heavy-white builds and a liability in anything splashing white.
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 |
In Commander, Lay Down Arms is a conditional one-mana removal spell, and that condition tightens in a four-color world — you'll routinely hit the Plains threshold in mono-white or Orzhov, but a Jeskai or five-color deck will miss it embarrassingly often. In Modern, it saw real play in white-heavy aggro as a near-zero-cost answer that keeps the curve intact. Pioneer gives it a similar home in white devotion shells. Legacy and Vintage have Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares, so Lay Down Arms doesn't compete there.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
unknown tier
Pricing data isn't available for Lay Down Arms at the moment, so check Scryfall or TCGPlayer for the current market rate. Given its conditional nature, it typically sits in budget territory unless a competitive white-heavy archetype is actively driving demand.
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Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.