Etched Monstrosity
Artifact Creature — Phyrexian Golem
This creature enters with five -1/-1 counters on it.
, Remove five -1/-1 counters from this creature: Target player draws three cards.
- CMC
- 5
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- BGRUW
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Modern Masters 2015
- Price
- $0.26
- EDHREC rank
- #23213
Etched Monstrosity enters as a 10/10 for five mana — one of the best stats-per-mana ratios in the game — but arrives with five -1/-1 counters that gut it to a 5/5 until you pay five mana of all five colors to remove them and draw three cards. That activation cost is the entire conversation: in a five-color deck it's a backbreaking value swing, and in anything else it's a vanilla 5/5 that costs five.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Etched Monstrosity is a Commander card first and almost exclusively. Five-color commanders — particularly those that reward drawing cards or care about +1/+1 and -1/-1 counter manipulation — get full value out of both halves, and the five-color activation is trivially enabled by a healthy mana base. In Legacy and Vintage it's strictly unplayable; those formats don't want a five-mana creature that needs another five-mana investment to become a threat. Modern has no shell that wants it either — the payoff doesn't compete with what those formats do at the same point on the curve. Etched Monstrosity lives and dies in Commander, and only in the right Commander build.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.26 bulk tier
At $0.26, Etched Monstrosity is deep bulk — the price of a throw-in, not a purchase. It holds that floor because demand is narrow: only five-color Commander decks can use it, and even there it competes with flashier options at the same slot.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.