Atmosphere Surgeon
Creature — Phyrexian Wizard
Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, put an oil counter on this creature.
Remove an oil counter from this creature: Target creature gains flying until end of turn. Activate only as a sorcery.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Phyrexia: All Will Be One
- Price
- $0.13
- EDHREC rank
- #19356
Atmosphere Surgeon enters and immediately lets you exile a permanent you control to give target creature flying until end of turn — repeatable evasion stapled to a body, at instant speed if you have ways to blink or recur it. Two mana for a 2/1 with that flexibility is a reasonable rate, though the ceiling depends entirely on having cheap sacrificial permanents to feed it.
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 |
In Commander, Atmosphere Surgeon slots into blink, aristocrats, and evasion-matters builds where the sacrifice cost is a feature rather than a drawback — Brago, King Eternal and Aminatou, the Fateshifter shells can retrigger the enter effect while treating the exile clause as incidental value. In competitive formats like Modern and Legacy it's too slow and too narrow; granting flying to one creature for a turn doesn't move the needle in those environments. Pioneer is similarly uninterested. Atmosphere Surgeon is a Commander card through and through, and even there it's a role-player rather than a staple.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.13 bulk tier
At $0.13, Atmosphere Surgeon is deep bulk — easy to pick up as a throw-in or from a bargain bin. Bulk rares with narrow applications rarely climb unless a specific combo or commander breaks them out, and nothing about this card's text suggests that's imminent.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.