Gem of Becoming
Artifact
, 
, Sacrifice this artifact: Search your library for an Island card, a Swamp card, and a Mountain card. Reveal those cards, put them into your hand, then shuffle.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- C
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Magic 2013
- Price
- $0.25
- EDHREC rank
- #17089
Gem of Becoming is a three-mana artifact that taps for one mana of any color among black, blue, and red — then, for four mana, sacrifices itself to search your library for an Island, Swamp, and Mountain, putting all three onto the battlefield tapped. The cost is real: six total mana invested for three lands is slow, and the tap ability rarely matters. In Nicol Bolas, the Ravager decks it earns its slot purely on flavor and color-fixing redundancy, but outside that narrow home it's outclassed by cheaper fixing.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
Nicol Bolas, the Ravager needs blue, black, and red mana reliably, and Gem of Becoming fetches exactly one of each basic — making it a thematic and functional land-fetch piece that guarantees you can cast or transform Bolas on curve.
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 |
Gem of Becoming sees virtually no play outside Commander, and even there it's a fringe inclusion. In Commander it's legal and pulls some weight in Grixis builds where color-fixing and land ramp overlap, but three-mana mana rocks that don't immediately accelerate you are already questionable, and this one requires another four mana to do the actual work. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but completely irrelevant — those formats don't spend six mana across two turns to find basic lands. Gem of Becoming's entire competitive surface area is Nicol Bolas, the Ravager Commander decks, where the thematic match keeps it in lists that would otherwise cut it on efficiency alone.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.25 bulk tier
At $0.25, Gem of Becoming sits firmly in bulk territory and will stay there — demand is too narrow and supply too plentiful for any upward pressure. Pick it up without hesitation if the Grixis color-fixing slot is what you need; just don't expect it to appreciate.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.