Wand of Vertebrae

Artifact

: Put the top card of your library into your graveyard.

, , Exile Wand of Vertebrae: Shuffle up to five target cards from your graveyard into your library.

Discussion (16)

multimedia on Budget Boros Tokens

3 months ago

Hey, interesting brew combining Goblins with Aurelia. White gives you lots of good support cards for Goblins that red doesn't offer.

This deck's budget is very low. It's going to be difficult to make any real improvements without spending an extra $15, but a $15 upgrade could do a lot for your deck. Even a $10 upgrade can help quite a bit.

Good budget ($3 or less each) cards to consider adding:

• Battlefield Forge
• Command Tower
• Needle Spires
• Open the Armory : tutor for Skullclamp .
• Frontline Medic : repeatable indestructibility for your attacking creatures. Can be reanimated with Titan or Teshar.
• Talisman of Conviction
• Commander's Sphere
• Assemble the Legion : repeatable source of tokens.
• Swords to Plowshares
• Boros Charm
• Generous Gift : instant, destroy any permanent.
• Duergar Hedge-Mage : can potentially destroy both an artifact and enchantment. Can be reanimated with Titan or Teshar.
• Faithless Looting

This could be a about $15 upgrade. Tower and Forge are two Boros dual lands that ETB (enter the battlefield) untapped which is helpful in game play. Tower is one of the best lands to play in mulicolored Commander decks. Cut Plains for these lands.

Armory gives you more opportunity to get Skullclamp because it's is by far your best repeatable source of draw because of having many sources of 1/1 Goblins. Assemble can be another repeatable source of 1/1 tokens and if not dealt with by opponents can create a lot of value over the course of turns. Adding more mana rocks that can make white mana is helpful to be able to reduce the number of Plains in the manabase.

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Cards to consider cutting:

• 6x Plains
• Sephara, Sky's Blade
• Battlegrace Angel
• Baird, Steward of Argive
• Sublime Archangel
• Archetype of Courage
• Outnumber
• Angelic Exaltation
• Aerial Assault
• Tormenting Voice
• Wand of Vertebrae
• Sigil of Valor

40 lands is a lot of lands and when you have this many basic lands it's very likely you'll get consistently land flooded which is not fun. My advice is to reduce the number of Plains. If doing this then cut the casting cost cards because white is the secondary color, red is the primary color since you need lots more red for Goblins.

In my opinion Titan and Aurelia are the only worth keeping because they're six drops which makes it easier to have double white mana available when you want to cast them. Archetype of Courage is a good card, but having consistently for a three drop is not something you should have to worry about.

heckproof on I need help replacing a ...

7 months ago

Wand of Vertebrae is a worse card, but I think it’s probably the best option if you don’t feel like splashing for Tamiyo.

rolfMTG on Jace being annoying (WotS update) self mill

7 months ago

Wand of Vertebrae exists.

BraxTune on Bolt Heavy

10 months ago

Hello my fellow planeswalkers! So if you have been following my deck closely you will see that I made a few changes to the main deck when I added the new sideboard. As the nature of the online meta has changed so have I also had to evolve.

The easiest change to make was to relocate Lava Coil to the sideboard. Against creatureless decks it would just end up being a very dead card in the hand. I could use it against my own creatures to gain a counter on Runaway Steam-Kin but that typically is not a worthy trade. Heck of a useful card though. So I upped the count to 4x and swap them in pretty regularly.

The next change was to my mana base. I popped out one Mountain and traded in a Field of Ruin . I had been messing around with Wand of Vertebrae and just never achieved a decent feel for it being functional or actually doing the job I was asking of it. Typically you would use it to help clear dead cards from the top of your library while Experimental Frenzy is active and to help stack your deck with more 'action'. I just never found it to be reliable with my setup. Perhaps it works well for other players but they arent me and I am rather discerning. The Field allows me to blow up whatever land I despise on my opponent's side, thin my own deck, shuffle my library, and bring an untapped mountain on to the field. Just... Heckin yes. Obviously with only one in the whole deck, your chances of reaching it are slim, but thats sort of the point. It doesnt distract from your overall strategy but allows for nice maneuvering when you find it.

With the extra space I had left, I installed an extra 'frenzy' and another Risk Factor . The latter just being the biggest mindgame card of the deck. Every choice is the wrong one. Blue players know what I am talking about... Lol.

Well thank you for reading my update blurb. I hope to see some of you out there rocking your own versions of this beasty. It pulled me all the way thru the Gold tiers on arena and was so good I actually went out and put this deck together on paper as well!

Learning to pilot this one well can definitly help you develop as a player. Great for newbs and pros alike!

Kjartan on Shapeshifter Surveil Deck

11 months ago

Cutting you deck down to 60 cards would be a huge improvement. You have a lot of underpowered cards, so cutting your deck down to minimum size would make you get to your best cards more consitantly.

Rescue could go. With this few (good) etb triggers, it's not going to be that impactful, and you don't want to bounce your artifacts. (Or it could just become an Unsummon if you got one)

Ceremonious Rejection Seems very specific, but you do surveil a lot, and the card is pretty good, so it may be fine, but I'm not loving it. (Or is it a meta thing?)

Realmwright doesn't seem too useful. I guess it can help you cast Dread Shade, but that's pretty niche.

Amulet of Safekeeping also seems a tad too specific to be good, unless it's a meta thing, (but again, surveil help you get rid of it easily).

Wand of Vertebrae Is probably too RNG to be any good.

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With the boosters you've opened, I'm willing to bet you've got some Dimir Guildgates or even Watery Graves, and a couple fixers would be a great addition to the mana base.

Also, I'm sure you've got some Discovery / Dispersal, which is one of the greatest survel cards.

Osbert on Muldrotha Infinite Recursion

11 months ago

I see a lot of huge mana cards and only 7 sources of ramp, and not even abusable ramp....

Llanowar Elves, Birds of Paradise, Elvish Mystic, Farhaven Elf, Wood Elves, Song of Freyalise, Coiling Oracle, Growing Rites of Itlimoc  ^Flip, World Shaper, Reclamation Sage all becomes considerably more powerful when you can reuse their body via Skullclamp, Birthing Pod, Grave Pact, Ashnod's Altar, or Phyrexian Altar and have the upside of being reused from grave if they are thrown off for an effect or destroyed for being too powerful. Also note that most of those effects are elf based and thus an elf tribal game plan is very potent.

If you don't like mana dorks then at least don't pay full price for your big creatures. Cheat them into play with Reanimate Dead, Necromancy, Journey to Eternity  ^Flip's flip side, etc.

Claws of Gix also can help eat any permanent you want. Extra spicy when combined with your commander and Winter Orb to basically lock your opponents out of playing. Might be too spicy but is a consideration. If you want more of the stax effects why not include Plaguecrafter, Fleshbag Marauder, Merciless Executioner, Grave Pact, Dictate of Erebos, Smokestack, and a few other similar effects to the list of cards. Don't be afraid to run a Mimic Vat also and just stick one of these edict creatures under it allowing for instant speed interaction.

Find a few more ways to fuel your grave. Perpetual Timepiece works great but Wand of Vertebrae is quite weak. Search for Azcanta  ^Flip, Life from the Loam, Altar of Dementia, Greater Good, Grisly Salvage, Scapeshift, and anything with dredge you want to stick in all fuel your grave while serving dual purposes of drawing cards or sacrificing your permanents.

Play cards that play into your game plan of fueling graveyard plays. Elephant Grass and Mystic Remora are good options as ignoring the cumulative upkeep makes them very powerful. The Gitrog Monster is a fantastic ramp and draw engine.

Lastly, play redundancy. Your opponents are going to know your game plan and are not going to want you to have Muldrotha every turn. Crucible of Worlds & Ramunap Excavator for land recursion and ramp via fetchlands. Glissa, the Traitor is niche but can be a solid artifact recursion engine when paired with Grave Pact effects. Archaeomancer & Spellseeker are super abusable (and cost less mana than Scribe of the Mindful.)

Quadsimotto on Mono Black Lich artifacts

11 months ago

It lost 1-2. The third game was really close. Game one i got stalled on turn two and never saw another land. Yours trounced mine with a lich and removal. Game two was semi close but I decked you out with two drowned secrets a glimpse and the next turn a glimpse that was used out of the GY with a mission briefing. Game three saw removal going both ways. Id get a lich out on your side and then use removal from mine to take it out. Id get out a spybug on my side only to have it killed by a chupa, it went back and forth. One lonely little drowned secrets and some glimpses got me through again. Me with 9 life remaining you with one card left and only able to swing in for 7. So decked twice. Perhaps some Wand of Vertebrae in the sideboard? Or something along the lines of recursion.

Hexaflexagon on goblin frenzy!

1 year ago

I agree with BoyToy here. You need some type of removal. Have you tried replacing the Wand of Vertebrae you have for Lava Coil? You could also try splashing White for removal such as Conclave Tribunal and Ixalan's Binding and lord effects such as Radiant Destiny.