Novice Dissector
Creature — Troll Warlock
, Sacrifice another creature: Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature. Activate only as a sorcery.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Strixhaven: School of Mages
- Price
- $0.08
- EDHREC rank
- #23177
Novice Dissector puts a +1/+1 counter on any creature — including your opponents' — at the cost of sacrificing another creature, making it a repeatable engine piece in aristocrats and counter-stacking shells rather than a standalone card. The ceiling is high when you have fodder to burn; the floor is a three-mana 3/3 that eats your own board.
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 | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Commander is where Novice Dissector earns its slot, specifically in sacrifice-matters decks that want to convert expendable tokens into stat boosts on a key threat. In Pauper it's a legal common, but the format's faster clock and lack of the Commander engine makes the three-mana investment hard to justify over cheaper sacrifice outlets. Legacy, Modern, and Pioneer are non-starters — the effect is too slow and too marginal to compete. Oathbreaker mirrors the Commander verdict: useful if your signature spell or planeswalker rewards counters or sacrifice triggers, irrelevant otherwise.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.08 bulk tier
At $0.08, Novice Dissector is deep bulk — you're picking this out of a commons box or grabbing a playset for the cost of a coffee. Bulk commons with narrow applications don't appreciate, so there's no financial angle here beyond the penny cost of slotting it in.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.