Sting, the Glinting Dagger
Legendary Artifact — Equipment
Equipped creature gets +1/+1 and has haste.
At the beginning of each combat, untap equipped creature.
Equipped creature has first strike as long as it's blocking or blocked by a Goblin or Orc.
Equip 
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- C
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth
- Price
- $1.95
- EDHREC rank
- #1569
Sting, the Glinting Dagger puts a poison counter on any creature it damages and copies itself onto Legendary creatures — most relevantly, it turns Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker into a copy engine that tags every token with poison before they vanish at end of turn. The cost is that it demands a Legendary wielder and two mana to equip, so in slower builds or outside the Legendary-creature theme, it underperforms a generic equipment.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Kelsien, the Plague
Kelsien, the Plague pings creatures to grow itself, and Sting, the Glinting Dagger turns every ping into a poison delivery — one counter per creature hit means opponents on reduced life totals can be finished through poison before Kelsien's power gets tall enough to swing for lethal.
The Beamtown Bullies
The Beamtown Bullies puts creatures from opponents' graveyards into play attacking, and Sting, the Glinting Dagger equips for free onto any Legendary among them — that free attach clause means any stolen Legendary attacker arrives already armed and poisoning the defending player.
Jhoira, Ageless Innovator
Jhoira, Ageless Innovator churns artifacts into play and is herself Legendary, so Sting, the Glinting Dagger enters the battlefield already eligible to copy onto her without paying the equip cost — it slots into the artifact-storm engine without asking for extra mana.
Red Death, Shipwrecker
Red Death, Shipwrecker is Legendary and hits players and permanents repeatedly, making Sting, the Glinting Dagger a free-attach threat that stacks poison counters alongside Red Death's forced-sacrifice pressure for a two-axis clock.
Captain Sisay
Captain Sisay tutors Legendary permanents directly onto the battlefield, and Sting, the Glinting Dagger is Legendary itself — Sisay can fetch it as a toolbox piece, and because she's Legendary the equip is free the moment it lands.
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 |
Commander is where Sting, the Glinting Dagger earns its slot — the free-equip-to-Legendary clause is trivially active in a format built around Legendary commanders, and the poison-counter rider adds a parallel win condition that opponents can't always race. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but essentially unplayed; Voltron or equipment strategies in those formats have access to faster, more efficient options and rarely want a conditional equip cost. Oathbreaker is the one non-Commander 60-card-adjacent format worth a mention: your oathbreaker is always Legendary and always in the command zone, so Sting, the Glinting Dagger enters ready to equip for free every time it hits the battlefield.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror BreakerBloodthirsterSting, the Glinting Dagger
Infinite combat damage; Infinite combat phases; Infinite creature tokens with haste; Infinite death triggers; Infinite ETB; Infinite LTB; Infinite sacrifice triggers
View on Commander Spellbook ↗Price Context
Current price
$1.95 cheap tier
At $1.95, Sting, the Glinting Dagger sits in the budget equipment tier — cheap enough to include speculatively in any Legendary-heavy build without meaningful financial commitment. It's a bulk-rare price for a card with real synergy depth, so it holds value as long as Kelsien and similar commander archetypes stay popular.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.