Aetherspouts
Instant
For each attacking creature, its owner puts it on their choice of the top or bottom of their library.
- CMC
- 5
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Commander 2021
- Price
- $0.77
- EDHREC rank
- #2708
Aetherspouts ends a combat step entirely — every attacking creature gets tucked on top of or shuffled into its owner's library, and the attacker chooses per creature. Five mana at instant speed is the real cost, and that's steep enough that it sits behind most counterspells in proactive shells; in reactive, spell-slinging decks like Melek, Reforged Researcher it earns its slot by doubling as a tempo reset and a spell-count trigger.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Melek, Reforged Researcher
Melek, Reforged Researcher wants instants with large on-board swing, and Aetherspouts delivers both a combat wipe and a spell to copy or cascade off — putting attackers back on top of libraries while advancing Melek's spell-chaining engine is exactly the kind of double-duty the deck demands.
Eluge, the Shoreless Sea
Eluge, the Shoreless Sea cares about casting noncreature spells to grow and trigger its library-manipulation effects, so Aetherspouts fills a defensive role while keeping the spell density high enough that Eluge fires consistently.
Braids, Conjurer Adept
Braids, Conjurer Adept runs a symmetrical cheating-onto-battlefield plan, and Aetherspouts lets you punish opponents who swing with the free threats Braids handed them by sending those creatures back into the library queue rather than a graveyard where recursion could reclaim them.
Rashmi, Eternities Crafter
Rashmi, Eternities Crafter triggers off the first spell each turn, so a five-mana instant like Aetherspouts is a live Rashmi trigger on an opponent's combat step — the free cascade chance is a bonus on top of blanking an entire attack.
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 the natural home for Aetherspouts: multiplayer tables produce wide, threatening combat steps regularly, and the one-sided tucking effect punishes go-wide strategies harder than a simple bounce or destroy effect would. In Legacy and Vintage the five-mana cost is a non-starter — those formats end games before you can untap with this much mana open. Modern and Pioneer are similarly hostile; combat tricks at that price point don't compete with the format's interaction density, and no competitive shell wants to leave up five blue mana doing nothing. Aetherspouts is a Commander card through and through, and even there it belongs specifically in decks that can profitably hold up five mana — control and spell-synergy builds, not tempo or combo decks racing to end the game early.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.77 bulk tier
At $0.77, Aetherspouts sits firmly in bulk territory, which makes it an easy pickup for any blue control or spell-slinging Commander build. Bulk rares with narrow-but-genuine utility like this tend to stay at floor pricing, so there's no urgency — grab it whenever you're placing an order.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Melek, Reforged Researcher
- Eluge, the Shoreless Sea
- Braids, Conjurer Adept
- Rashmi, Eternities Crafter
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.