Plague Beetle
Creature — Insect
Swampwalk (This creature can't be blocked as long as defending player controls a Swamp.)
- CMC
- 1
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Urza's Legacy
- Price
- $0.15
- EDHREC rank
- #20972
Plague Beetle is a one-mana 1/1 with landwalk — specifically swampwalk — which means it's unblockable against roughly half the Commander tables you'll sit down at, and irrelevant against the other half. The effect is too conditional to justify a slot in any serious list.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Plague Beetle is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Vintage, Pauper, and Oathbreaker, but format legality is doing most of the heavy lifting here — it sees essentially no competitive play in any of them. In Pauper it's at least cheap enough to consider in a hyper-aggressive black aggro shell, but better one-drops exist. In Commander, swampwalk is meta-dependent to the point of uselessness: you either hit a Swamp-heavy player and connect for one, or you have a 1/1 that does nothing. There is no shell where Plague Beetle is the right call.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.15 bulk tier
At $0.15, Plague Beetle is deep bulk — the kind of card that lives in a common box at your local game store. Don't expect that price to move; demand is essentially nonexistent, and it will stay in this tier indefinitely.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.