Sword of Once and Future
Artifact — Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has protection from blue and from black.
Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, surveil 2. Then you may cast an instant or sorcery spell with mana value 2 or less from your graveyard without paying its mana cost. If that spell would be put into your graveyard, exile it instead.
Equip 
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- C
- Rarity
- mythic
- Set
- March of the Machine
- Price
- $4.28
- EDHREC rank
- #4582
Sword of Once and Future gives the equipped creature protection from blue and black, then rewards each combat connection with a Surveil 2 and a free instant or sorcery cast from your graveyard — that's card advantage and recursion stapled onto a damage trigger. At three to cast and two to equip, Mirko, Obsessive Theorist is the natural home, but any blue-black creature that connects regularly turns this into an engine.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Mirko, Obsessive Theorist
Mirko, Obsessive Theorist mills opponents and cares deeply about instants and sorceries in graveyards, so Sword of Once and Future's Surveil 2 plus free spell cast on each connect directly fuels Mirko's gameplan — you're filling yards and recasting spells in the same combat step.
Ratonhnhaké꞉ton
Ratonhnhaké꞉ton is built around equipping and attacking, so Sword of Once and Future slots in as both a protection piece and a sustained value engine that keeps the hand full while the beatdown plan runs.
Tetsuo, Imperial Champion
Tetsuo, Imperial Champion cares about having an Equipment attached to attack profitably, and Sword of Once and Future delivers the blue and black protection Tetsuo needs to push through blockers while the Surveil trigger sets up the graveyard for future plays.
Kellan, the Fae-Blooded
Kellan, the Fae-Blooded tutors Equipment directly onto the battlefield, making Sword of Once and Future a consistent turn-three threat that pairs the protection suite with spell recursion on a commander that was already looking to connect every turn.
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 Sword of Once and Future does its best work — 99-card singleton means every Surveil 2 is genuinely filtering, and the free instant or sorcery cast off a combat connection is the kind of incremental advantage that compounds over a long game. In Modern and Legacy, the competition from other Swords is stiff and the protect-from-blue-and-black combination covers fewer relevant threats than protect-from-white-and-black or protect-from-fire-and-ice, which limits its constructed upside. Pioneer is legal but the format lacks the recursive shells that make the spell-cast trigger shine. Outside Commander, treat it as a fringe option at best.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$4.28 cheap tier
At $4.28, Sword of Once and Future sits in the budget tier for a Sword cycle member, well below the $20–$40 tags on the format staples. That price reflects its narrower protection pairing — it's not leaving this range unless blue-black protection becomes significantly more relevant in competitive formats.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Mirko, Obsessive Theorist
- Ratonhnhaké꞉ton
- Tetsuo, Imperial Champion
- Kellan, the Fae-Blooded
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.