Wood Elemental
Creature — Elemental
As this creature enters, sacrifice any number of untapped Forests.
Wood Elemental's power and toughness are each equal to the number of Forests sacrificed as it entered.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- G
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Legends
- Price
- $17.74
- EDHREC rank
- #29027
Wood Elemental enters as a 0/0 unless you sacrifice untapped Forests to pump it, making it a costly, sorcery-speed threat that asks you to strip your own mana base for a creature that dies to any ping. There is no competitive context in which Wood Elemental earns a slot.
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 |
Wood Elemental is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but legality and playability are different things. In Commander, the format most tolerant of pet cards and janky builds, Wood Elemental still fails on fundamentals — sacrificing untapped Forests for a vanilla creature trades card advantage and mana for a body that any removal spell erases. Legacy and Vintage have access to it but would never touch it; the power ceiling in those formats makes Wood Elemental invisible. It exists in cubes built around intentionally bad cards and nowhere else.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Budget Alternatives
Cheaper options that do most of the same work
No card truly replicates what Wood Elemental does because what Wood Elemental does is actively bad — but if the goal is a scalable green creature that grows with resource investment, Undergrowth Champion or Kalonian Tusker cost less and don't demand you destroy your own land base to function. Wood Elemental's only real successor is a different card entirely.
Price Context
Current price
$17.74 mid tier
At $17.74, Wood Elemental is priced as a collectible curiosity, not a playable card — the price reflects its age and notoriety as one of Magic's most famously unplayable cards, not any competitive demand. It holds that value among collectors who want a complete set or a conversation piece, but anyone buying Wood Elemental to put in a deck is overpaying twice.
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Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.