Monastery Swiftspear
Creature — Human Monk
Haste
Prowess (Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, this creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.)
- CMC
- 1
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- R
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- The List
- Price
- $0.52
- EDHREC rank
- #7286
Monastery Swiftspear hits the table for one mana and grows every time you cast a spell — in a format where a single turn can involve five or six spells, that's a creature that ends games. The Archimandrite aside, any Commander deck built around a stream of instants and sorceries should be asking whether this one-drop belongs in the 99.
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 | banned |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Monastery Swiftspear carries one restriction worth noting: it's banned in Pauper, where a one-mana prowess threat with haste proved too efficient for the commons-only environment. Everywhere else — Modern, Pioneer, Legacy, Vintage — it's fully legal and a genuine staple in spell-heavy aggro shells. Commander gives it a pass because 40 life and four opponents dilute the threat of a single one-drop; here it's a role-player in a larger engine rather than a format-warping weapon.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
The Archimandrite
The Archimandrite builds around a party of Monks, Wizards, Clerics, and Warriors, and Monastery Swiftspear is a Monk that gets exponentially better as the spell-slinging the deck already wants to do stacks up — haste means it attacks the turn it lands, often already pumped.
Balmor, Battlemage Captain
Balmor, Battlemage Captain gives every creature +1/+0 and trample whenever you cast an instant or sorcery, which means Monastery Swiftspear is collecting two separate pump triggers — prowess from its own ability and the Balmor buff — on the same spell.
Narset, Enlightened Exile
Narset, Enlightened Exile rewards casting instants and sorceries by exiling the top card and potentially casting it free, and Monastery Swiftspear turns every one of those cast triggers into a +1/+1 pump — the more spells Narset chains, the larger Swiftspear gets mid-combat.
Bria, Riptide Rogue
Bria, Riptide Rogue cares about connecting with combat damage and casting spells, so Monastery Swiftspear's haste ensures it attacks immediately while its prowess trigger fires on the cheap cantrips and enablers the deck already runs to set up Bria's connive payoffs.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.52 bulk tier
At $0.52, Monastery Swiftspear sits firmly in bulk territory — easy to pick up as a throw-in at any card shop or in a cheap online order. Multiple printings have kept the price stable at this floor, so there's no urgency, but there's also no reason to wait.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.