Silverback Elder
Creature — Ape Shaman
Whenever you cast a creature spell, choose one —
• Destroy target artifact or enchantment.
• Look at the top five cards of your library. You may put a land card from among them onto the battlefield tapped. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.
• You gain 4 life.
- CMC
- 5
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- G
- Rarity
- mythic
- Set
- Dominaria United
- Price
- $7.20
- EDHREC rank
- #2042
Silverback Elder turns every creature spell into a ramp spell, a removal spell, or a life cushion — on a 5/7 body that survives most board wipes by sheer size. The five-mana ask is real, but any green creature deck that can consistently cast spells will generate value immediately; Defiler of Vigor and Kibo, Uktabi Prince both push the trigger count high enough that Elder pays for itself the turn it lands.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Kibo, Uktabi Prince
Kibo, Uktabi Prince floods the board with Banana tokens that each trigger Silverback Elder when they hit play as creatures, turning a single Kibo activation into a ramp-or-removal chain that compounds every combat step.
Nikya of the Old Ways
Nikya of the Old Ways locks out non-creature spells, so every card in the deck is a creature — Silverback Elder converts that constraint into a continuous stream of land fetches or artifact/enchantment hits with zero overhead.
Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
Ruric Thar, the Unbowed taxes opponents for every non-creature spell while Silverback Elder rewards you for playing exclusively creatures, so the two lock opponents in a vice — pay life for their spells, watch you ramp and wipe their boards for free.
Volo, Guide to Monsters
Volo, Guide to Monsters copies creatures on cast, doubling every trigger Silverback Elder sees; one creature spell becomes two ETBs' worth of value, and Silverback Elder's three-mode ability means you almost always have a relevant target.
Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma
Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma reduces the cost of large creatures, letting you chain multiple creatures in a single turn and stack that many Silverback Elder triggers — the combination of cost reduction and incremental advantage makes the top end of big-green decks feel nearly unstoppable.
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 |
Commander is where Silverback Elder lives — 100-card singleton games go long enough that its cumulative value across five or ten creature spells dominates, and the lack of a damage-based win condition doesn't matter when you're pulling ahead on mana and board state simultaneously. In Modern and Pioneer it's legal but essentially invisible: five mana for a creature with no immediate board impact and no protection is too slow for formats where the game is often decided by turn four. Legacy and Vintage have access to it but would never touch it — the power ceiling in those formats makes Silverback Elder's incremental payoff irrelevant. Oathbreaker is the one alternative format where it occasionally shows up, slotted into green creature-dense signatures where the trigger density is high enough to matter.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Defiler of VigorCloudstone CurioSilverback Elder
Infinite ETB; Infinite lifegain; Infinite lifegain triggers; Infinite LTB; Infinite storm count; Near-infinite landfall triggers; Put all lands from your library onto the battlefield tapped; Infinite +1/+1 counters on creatures you control
View on Commander Spellbook ↗Budget Alternatives
Cheaper options that do most of the same work
Temur Sabertooth and Beast Whisperer cover adjacent ground for under $2 combined — Sabertooth generates value by bouncing and replaying creatures to retrigger ETBs, while Beast Whisperer converts each creature cast into a card rather than a land or removal effect. Neither replicates the three-mode flexibility that makes Silverback Elder so resilient across different board states, but if the deck's primary need is card velocity rather than land insurance or spot removal, Whisperer in particular closes most of the gap at a fraction of the cost.
Price Context
Current price
$7.20 mid tier
At $7.20, Silverback Elder sits at the high end of mid-tier staples — expensive enough that budget builders will feel it, cheap enough that any serious green creature deck should just run it. The inclusion rate across Kibo and creature-heavy commanders suggests demand stays steady, so this is a buy-and-play price, not a wait-for-a-reprint price.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.