Sworn Defender
Creature — Human Knight
: This creature's power becomes the toughness of target creature blocking or being blocked by this creature minus 1 until end of turn, and its toughness becomes 1 plus the power of that creature until end of turn.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Alliances
- Price
- $0.74
- EDHREC rank
- #28330
Sworn Defender turns its toughness into power and vice versa, making it a surprisingly effective blocker that scales with your board's defensive investment. Four mana for a 1/4 that becomes a 4/1 on demand is a fair rate, but narrow enough that only dedicated toughness-matters builds want it.
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 |
Sworn Defender is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but it's a Commander card through and through. In Legacy and Vintage the four-mana cost and conditional utility can't compete with the raw efficiency the formats demand. In Commander, Sworn Defender earns its slot only in dedicated toughness-matters builds — Doran, the Siege Tower and Arcades, the Strategist are the obvious homes — where the stat-swap ability creates genuine combat math problems for opponents. Outside those archetypes, a vanilla 1/4 with an activated ability is not pulling weight at the table.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.74 bulk tier
At $0.74, Sworn Defender sits in bulk territory — easy to acquire, easy to cut without regret. It's a niche card with a small but stable demand from toughness-matters builds, so the price is unlikely to move much in either direction.
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Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.