Orchard Elemental
Creature — Elemental
Council's dilemma — When this creature enters, starting with you, each player votes for sprout or harvest. Put two +1/+1 counters on this creature for each sprout vote. You gain 3 life for each harvest vote.
- CMC
- 6
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- G
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Conspiracy: Take the Crown
- Price
- $0.13
- EDHREC rank
- #18256
Orchard Elemental lands as a 4/4 to 6/6 depending on whether your opponents let you grow it, and that conditional sizing is exactly the problem — you're paying six mana for a body whose ceiling requires opponent cooperation. In the one niche where it earns its slot, Círdan the Shipwright decks, the vote manipulation and council's dilemma text generate meaningful political texture, but most tables will lowball the vote and leave you with a medium creature for a premium price.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Círdan the Shipwright
Círdan the Shipwright leans into vote-based cards as a political engine, and Orchard Elemental fits that shell because the life-gain mode pressures opponents into genuinely difficult decisions — vote for counters and Orchard Elemental grows into a real threat, vote for life and you're accelerating Círdan's resource game either way.
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 | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Orchard Elemental is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, Pauper, and Oathbreaker, but Legacy and Vintage don't want a six-mana vanilla-adjacent creature when those formats end games on turns one and two. Pauper is where Orchard Elemental is actually ineligible by rarity, so that legality flag is nominal. Commander is the only realistic home, and even there it's a niche include — council's dilemma cards live or die by table politics, and six mana is a steep ask for a creature that opponents can kneecap with a low vote. Oathbreaker is possible in the same political shell as Commander, but the smaller starting life total and faster pace make the life-gain mode less punishing.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.13 bulk tier
At $0.13, Orchard Elemental is deep bulk — the kind of card you pull from a commons box, not a store shelf. That price reflects real demand: it sees play in a narrow slice of political Commander decks and nowhere else, so don't expect it to move.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.