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Shalai and Hallar

Legendary Creature — Angel Elf

Flying, vigilance
Whenever one or more +1/+1 counters are put on a creature you control, Shalai and Hallar deals that much damage to target opponent.

CMC
4
Mana cost
{1}{R}{G}{W}
Color identity
GRW
Rarity
mythic
Set
March of the Machine Commander
Price
$8.22
EDHREC rank
#3789
Buy on TCGplayer
Shalai and Hallar card art
Shalai and Hallar puts a counter on every creature you control the moment a spell with a counter on it resolves — that's a board-wide anthem stapled to your spell stack, not a once-per-turn trickle. It slots cleanly into counter-centric strategies and pulls well above its weight next to bruisers like The Red Terror or token engines like Voja, Jaws of the Conclave.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Voja, Jaws of the Conclave

Voja, Jaws of the Conclave

76.1% of decks · synergy 0.69

Voja, Jaws of the Conclave draws cards and adds counters on attack — Shalai and Hallar turns every counter-laden spell in that engine into a board-wide buff, compounding Voja's natural snowball before combat even begins.

02
Bright-Palm, Soul Awakener

Bright-Palm, Soul Awakener

69.5% of decks · synergy 0.63

Bright-Palm, Soul Awakener distributes counters through combat and doubling effects, and Shalai and Hallar converts each spell with a counter into a free anthem, accelerating the board state Bright-Palm needs to close games.

03
Aragorn, Hornburg Hero

Aragorn, Hornburg Hero

47.1% of decks · synergy 0.40

Aragorn, Hornburg Hero rewards going wide with humans, and Shalai and Hallar ensures every counter-bearing spell pumps the whole army rather than a single creature.

04

Miles Morales

44.4% of decks · synergy 0.38

Miles Morales cares about putting counters on creatures at speed, and Shalai and Hallar adds a passive layer that spreads those counters across the board whenever a tagged spell resolves.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern not legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Commander is where Shalai and Hallar lives — the 100-card singleton format gives it the density of counter-synergy cards and the multiplayer board states where distributing +1/+1 counters to every creature actually closes games. In Oathbreaker the effect is real but the smaller deck size limits how reliably you can stack counters on spells before it matters. Legacy and Vintage are legal but irrelevant; a four-mana creature that pumps the board has no competitive footing in those formats, which move too fast to care. Outside those edge cases, treat Shalai and Hallar as a Commander card through and through.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

If the price is the obstacle, Inspiring Call and Hardened Scales together cover two of the three things Shalai and Hallar does — protection and counter amplification — for well under a dollar combined, though neither distributes counters board-wide on spell resolution. There is no single card that fully replicates Shalai and Hallar's trigger, so the honest budget answer is to lean on redundant counter-doublers like Branching Evolution and accept a narrower effect.

Price Context

Current price

$8.22 mid tier

At $8.22, Shalai and Hallar sits in the mid tier — expensive enough to feel in a budget build, cheap enough that it belongs in any deck where it's good. The price is justified by genuine power in counter strategies; this isn't a spec target, it's a role-player with a real job.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.