Lightning Dart
Instant
Lightning Dart deals 1 damage to target creature. If that creature is white or blue, Lightning Dart deals 4 damage to it instead.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- R
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Invasion
- Price
- $0.15
- EDHREC rank
- #27937
Lightning Dart deals 1 damage to any target for one mana with the upside of cycling for another mana — functional, but narrow. In most formats it's outclassed by anything that scales better, so you're running it only in specific recursion or cycling synergy shells.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Lightning Dart is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but banned out of the formats where it might actually see play through sheer card-pool depth. In Commander it occupies a strict niche: ping-based strategies that need cheap, recurrable damage sources, or cycling decks that want cheap cantrip-adjacent pieces. Legacy and Vintage have access to every one-mana spell ever printed, so Lightning Dart never competes there outside of fringe combo applications. Oathbreaker mirrors Commander in practice — viable only if your signature spell or commander specifically rewards one-damage pings or cycling triggers.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.15 bulk tier
At $0.15, Lightning Dart is deep bulk — you'll find it in a commons box before you'd bother ordering it. Price stability is essentially guaranteed at this floor, but that's not an endorsement; it's just the nature of cards nobody is speculating on.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.