Oswald Fiddlebender
Legendary Creature — Gnome Artificer
Magical Tinkering — 
, 
, Sacrifice an artifact: Search your library for an artifact card with mana value equal to 1 plus the sacrificed artifact's mana value, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle. Activate only as a sorcery.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Adventures in the Forgotten Realms
- Price
- $2.06
- EDHREC rank
- #2815
Oswald Fiddlebender is a repeatable artifact tutor stapled to a creature — tap him and sacrifice an artifact to put any artifact of exactly one higher mana value directly onto the battlefield, no mana required. The cost is real: you need a body on board, you need fodder, and summoning sickness means he doesn't move until turn three at earliest — but decks built around artifact chains treat that as a feature, not a bug, because Gandalf the White and similar engines can abuse the chain every single turn.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Gandalf the White
Gandalf the White runs Oswald Fiddlebender in over 70% of decks because Gandalf's ability to cast instants and sorceries from exile for free rewards having a dense artifact toolbox, and Oswald is the fastest way to assemble it piece by piece. The two form a self-reinforcing engine: Oswald chains up the artifact curve, Gandalf converts the board state into free spells.
Greasefang, Okiba Boss
Greasefang, Okiba Boss needs Vehicles in the graveyard and on the battlefield, and Oswald Fiddlebender provides a direct line to the specific Vehicle or artifact piece that makes the combo live. Sacrifice a cheap rock, fetch the exact Vehicle you need — it's a one-card tutor chain that turns Greasefang from inconsistent to surgical.
Osgir, the Reconstructor
Osgir, the Reconstructor doubles artifacts from the graveyard, so getting them there efficiently is half the game plan — Oswald Fiddlebender handles the other half by pulling the right piece onto the battlefield first. Together they create a loop where Oswald chains up the curve and Osgir reconstructs anything that gets sacrificed along the way.
Zirda, the Dawnwaker
Zirda, the Dawnwaker reduces activated abilities by two generic mana, which makes Oswald Fiddlebender's tap-and-sacrifice activation effectively free on artifacts that produce mana. That cost reduction turns Oswald from a once-per-turn tutor into a multi-activation engine in a single turn cycle.
Jan Jansen, Chaos Crafter
Jan Jansen, Chaos Crafter generates a stream of disposable artifact tokens, and Oswald Fiddlebender converts each one into the next link on the artifact chain. The pairing is straightforward: Jansen makes the fodder, Oswald spends it on whatever the deck needs next.
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 |
Commander is where Oswald Fiddlebender lives — 99-card singleton rewards the kind of surgical, one-of artifact tutoring he provides, and the multiplayer pace gives you the turns needed to chain activations into a game-winning board state. In Modern and Pioneer he's legal but essentially absent from competitive play; artifact combo decks in those formats want faster, less setup-dependent tools that don't require a creature to survive a full turn cycle. Legacy and Vintage have access to broken artifact infrastructure that could theoretically abuse the chain, but neither format lacks for better options, and the tap cost doesn't compete with what those formats are doing at instant speed. Oswald Fiddlebender is a Commander card through and through — evaluate him there.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$2.06 cheap tier
At $2.06, Oswald Fiddlebender sits in the cheap tier and is one of the better values in artifact-focused Commander decks given how much work a repeatable tutor does. The price is stable — he's not a bulk rare on the way down, but he's also widely printed enough that a spike is unlikely.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.