Osseous Exhale
Instant
As an additional cost to cast this spell, you may behold a Dragon. (You may choose a Dragon you control or reveal a Dragon card from your hand.)
Osseous Exhale deals 5 damage to target attacking or blocking creature. If a Dragon was beheld, you gain 2 life.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Tarkir: Dragonstorm
- Price
- $0.09
- EDHREC rank
- #17040
Osseous Exhale destroys a creature or planeswalker outright — no toughness check, no protection clause to dodge — and scales the cost down by how much life you've lost this game. In life-loss-heavy Commander decks, it regularly costs one or two mana, making it one of the more efficiently costed unconditional removal spells available.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Osseous Exhale is at its best in black decks that bleed themselves deliberately — Phyrexian mana payoffs, Necropotence-style draw engines, and life-payment synergies can turn this into one-mana unconditional removal by the midgame. Outside of Commander, the card is legal across every major format but faces stiff competition: in Modern and Pioneer, unconditional removal at instant speed is the baseline expectation, and Osseous Exhale is a sorcery that requires setup to match the efficiency of staples already in those pools. In Pauper it stands out more, since unconditional removal at common is rare and the life-loss condition is easier to engineer in dedicated shells.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.09 bulk tier
At $0.09, Osseous Exhale is deep bulk — pick it up in any common lot without a second thought. Bulk removal with a scaling cost rarely climbs unless it breaks into a competitive format, so expect the price to stay flat.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.