Swooping Talon
Creature — Bird Soldier
Flying
: This creature loses flying until end of turn.
Provoke (Whenever this creature attacks, you may have target creature defending player controls untap and block it if able.)
- CMC
- 6
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Legions
- Price
- $0.15
- EDHREC rank
- #29457
Swooping Talon is a five-mana 3/4 flier that lets you tap it to give a target creature -X/-0 until end of turn, where X is Swooping Talon's power — a repeatable soft-lock on one attacker or blocker each turn. The cost is that you're spending five mana for a body that does nothing the turn it enters and demands you leave it untapped to matter.
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 | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Swooping Talon is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but competitive Legacy and Vintage don't touch it — five mana for a tap-down effect is nowhere near those formats' power curve. Commander is the only realistic home, and even there Swooping Talon competes against cheaper, more reliable tapping effects and evasion payoffs. Oathbreaker is theoretically viable but faces the same problem: the format moves fast enough that a five-mana do-nothing-immediately creature rarely earns its slot.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.15 bulk tier
At $0.15, Swooping Talon is deep bulk — you're not paying for power, you're paying for cardboard. Don't expect the price to move; there's no competitive demand and no casual breakout context that would change that.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.