Swarm Guildmage
Creature — Elf Shaman
, 
: Creatures you control get +1/+0 and gain menace until end of turn. (They can't be blocked except by two or more creatures.)
, : You gain 2 life.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- BG
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Guilds of Ravnica
- Price
- $0.09
- EDHREC rank
- #21495
Swarm Guildmage trades raw power for consistent, repeatable utility — pumping a creature or giving your whole board trample for three mana at instant speed is real reach in token and go-wide strategies. The cost is that both abilities require black and green mana respectively, so it punishes shaky mana bases and does little outside those archetypes.
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 |
Swarm Guildmage lives almost exclusively in Commander, where the game goes long enough for its activated abilities to fire multiple times and where token swarms are a reliable archetype. In competitive 60-card formats like Modern or Legacy it's simply too slow and too conditional — a two-mana 2/2 with no enter-the-battlefield effect and no immediate board impact doesn't make the cut when those formats demand efficiency on every card. Pioneer players have the same problem: the card asks for a board state that faster decks will punish before it pays off. Oathbreaker is the one other format where it could see fringe play, but only under a Golgari token commander where the second ability converts a wide board into a lethal swing.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.09 bulk tier
At $0.09, Swarm Guildmage is deep bulk — the kind of card you pick up as a throw-in or grab from a bulk bin without thinking twice. There's no meaningful upward price pressure here; it sees narrow enough play that demand will stay flat.
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Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.