Release the Ants
Instant
Release the Ants deals 1 damage to any target. Clash with an opponent. If you win, return Release the Ants to its owner's hand. (Each clashing player reveals the top card of their library, then puts that card on their choice of the top or bottom. A player wins if their card had a greater mana value.)
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- R
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Morningtide
- Price
- $0.12
- EDHREC rank
- #26229
Release the Ants deals 1 damage to any target and, if you hit a non-land on the chaos roll, does it again — repeatedly — until you hit a land or choose to stop. The catch is that each recurrence flips the top card of your library, so the combo is real but the ceiling is probabilistic.
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 | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Release the Ants is a niche inclusion — it fits cleanly into chaos or top-of-library-manipulation strategies and can close games when the conditions are right, but it's too variance-dependent for general spellslinger builds. In Legacy and Vintage it's theoretically legal but sees no meaningful play; the formats move too fast for a conditional burn spell that can fizzle on the first flip. Modern is the same story — the card is legal but irrelevant in a format with consistent one-mana removal. Commander is the only realistic home, and even there it belongs in decks built specifically to exploit it.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.12 bulk tier
At $0.12, Release the Ants is deep bulk — you're paying for cardboard, not demand. That price is stable because the card has a narrow home and low reprint risk doesn't translate to upward pressure; pick it up freely if the strategy calls for it, but don't expect movement.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.