Swirling Sandstorm
Sorcery
Threshold — Swirling Sandstorm deals 5 damage to each creature without flying if there are seven or more cards in your graveyard.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- R
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Judgment
- Price
- $0.15
- EDHREC rank
- #26432
Swirling Sandstorm deals 4 damage to each non-Desert creature for three mana — a one-sided board wipe in the right shell. The catch is the threshold condition: you need five Deserts in your graveyard, which makes it a build-around, not a staple.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Swirling Sandstorm is a niche Commander card that earns its slot only in dedicated Desert-matters decks, where hitting the threshold is trivially easy and the asymmetry wrecks the table. In Pauper it's legal and theoretically interesting, but the format's fast enough that assembling five Deserts in the yard before the game ends is a serious ask. Legacy and Vintage are too hostile for a conditional sweeper at three mana with no immediate guarantee. The card has a real home, but that home is Commander — specifically, the Desert tribal shells that Alchemy of Wishes and the Amonkhet-revival designs enabled.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.15 bulk tier
At $0.15, Swirling Sandstorm is deep bulk — no surprise for a conditional sweeper with a narrow build constraint. Price stability is essentially guaranteed since nothing will spike demand unless a new Desert commander breaks out and drives casual adoption.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.