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 (19)

DanMcSharp on Mill It to Win It

1 month ago

Hello,

Brineborn Cutthroat is a good card, but it usually shines in decks where everything in your deck can be played at instant speed, it wouldn't be bad in this deck, but it may not be exactly what you need.

Dimir Informant is very underwhelming, if you play it for the surveil you might as well run more Emry, Lurker of the Loch instead.

Merfolk Secretkeeper should be one of your go-to card, you could go up to 4 easily. In fact, you could also run Brazen Borrower 4 times for the control aspect, which means you could also run Lucky Clover, and that would give Emry, Lurker of the Loch something relevent to bring back, since I find your other artifact choice questionable. God-Pharaoh's Statue is situational and Wand of Vertebrae is better used in decks that can make use of their top-deck, like when playing Bolas's Citadel, it's not that great for self-milling.

Speaking of go-to cards, you need 4 Drowned Secrets. Also, Overwhelmed Apprentice is excellent for you and you should run 4 as well, especially if you run Thassa, Deep-Dwelling.

Persistent Petitioners is mediocre at best unless you have 4 advisors in play, and they're your only ones. Normally a deck that runs them will run way more of them, maybe like 20~30 of them since they get around the 4 limits per deck. There's nothing stopping you from running just 4, but they won't accomplish much.

Obviously Jace, Wielder of Mysteries is a must in this deck, but you may want to consider Ashiok, Dream Render too since he can mill 20 of your cards all by himself and still exiles your opponent's graveyard.

I don't think you run enough surveil to run Enhanced Surveillance, and Kiora Bests the Sea God seems out of place since it's usually a finisher in control decks while your plan is just to mill your library. It will rarely be the card you need to stay in control until you're done milling.

Dazzling Lights is pretty underwhelming too, easily something I would take out for any of the extra mentioned above.

Btw I don't mean to sound like "Your deck is all wrong!", it's always nice to see people trying to make decks themselves, it's way too easy to just copy the top meta decks.

Hopefully these suggestions will be helpful.

Daedalus19876 on Torment of the Underworld: Kroxa EDH [PRIMER]

4 months ago

ThoAlmighty: Thanks! I've been on the fence regarding Blade of Selves here -- it doesn't help with much beyond my commander, but it's great with him.

Is Azra Oddsmaker that good without any real evasion in the deck? I've never run him personally.

And I've wanted to use Cavalier of Flame here, but it's a little awkward -- lands are usually some of the first things that get exiled to Kroxa's escape, and Neheb does the voluntary looting much better.

I'm not a huge fan of Megrim style effects -- they quickly lose value as you strip opponents' hands.

And I'm running both Codex Shredder and Wand of Vertebrae ! Redundancy, yay :)

Thanks for your thoughts!

ThoAlmighty on Torment of the Underworld: Kroxa EDH [PRIMER]

4 months ago

I'd say you want to add Blade of Selves , Azra Oddsmaker , and Cavalier of Flame from the maybeboard in exchange for Sewer Nemesis , Final Parting , and Rotting Rats . Maybe find space for Megrim -like effects as well? Also, I like Codex Shredder over Wand of Vertebrae as it can mess with top-of-the-library tutors, get something back in a pinch, and turn a Vampiric Tutor into another Entomb. Sweet deck!

multimedia on Budget Boros Tokens

9 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 ...

1 year 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

1 year ago

Wand of Vertebrae exists.

BraxTune on Bolt Heavy

1 year 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

1 year 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.