Siege Veteran
Creature — Human Soldier
At the beginning of combat on your turn, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature you control.
Whenever another nontoken Soldier you control dies, create a 1/1 colorless Soldier artifact creature token.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- The Brothers' War
- Price
- $0.45
- EDHREC rank
- #7923
Siege Veteran turns every Soldier death into a free +1/+1 counter and a token — two engines for the price of one three-drop. Pair it with Nim Deathmantle and you have a recursive loop that Commander Mustard decks exploit immediately, and the floor without any combo is still a steady stream of board presence.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Commander Mustard
Commander Mustard gives all Soldiers haste, so every token Siege Veteran produces is an attacker the same turn it enters — the counter accumulation and the token generation both run at full speed from turn three onward.
Myrel, Shield of Argive
Myrel, Shield of Argive floods the board with Soldier tokens on attacks, and Siege Veteran converts each of those tokens into a replacement threat the moment anything dies, keeping the army self-replenishing even through sweepers.
Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon
Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon generates a wave of tokens on each attack, giving Siege Veteran a constant death trigger feed — every combat step that ends with trades or blocks translates directly into counters and more bodies.
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 | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Siege Veteran is squarely a Commander card — a three-mana enchantment-adjacent creature needs a critical mass of Soldiers and repeated death triggers to pay off, and only Commander's singleton singleton-60+ card counts and long games provide that consistently. In Modern and Pioneer, Soldier tribal exists but tempo-oriented builds rarely want a three-drop that does nothing the turn it enters unless creatures are already dying. Legacy has the raw card power to ignore it entirely. Commander is where Siege Veteran finds its real home: token-generating Soldier commanders run it in roughly half their lists, and the combination of a free token plus a free counter on each death is genuinely difficult to replicate at the same mana cost.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Nim DeathmantleAshnod's AltarSiege Veteran
Infinite death triggers; Infinite ETB; Infinite LTB; Infinite sacrifice triggers
View on Commander Spellbook ↗Price Context
Current price
$0.45 bulk tier
At $0.45, Siege Veteran sits firmly in bulk rare territory despite showing up in half of all Commander Mustard and Myrel, Shield of Argive lists. That price reflects casual-only demand rather than competitive crossover, so it's unlikely to spike unless a high-profile Soldier commander warps the metagame — pick up copies freely without worrying about the price floor.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.