Sabotage Strategist
Creature — Vedalken Ranger
Flying, vigilance
Whenever one or more creatures attack you, those creatures get -1/-0 until end of turn.
Exhaust — 
: Put three +1/+1 counters on this creature. (Activate each exhaust ability only once.)
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Aetherdrift
- Price
- $0.08
- EDHREC rank
- #24320
Sabotage Strategist draws you a card whenever you connive — meaning it rewards the connive trigger itself, not just the discard — turning any connive-matters build into a self-sustaining card engine. The cost is that it does nothing outside that synergy cluster, so you run it because your deck already wants to connive repeatedly, not to enable conniving from scratch.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Sabotage Strategist is a role-player in dedicated connive decks — the 100-card format gives you enough connive sources to make the draw trigger fire consistently, and the extra card advantage compounds over a long game. In 1v1 formats like Modern and Pioneer, connive synergies exist but the card competes with more efficient two-drops, so it only earns a slot in decks fully committed to the mechanic. Legacy and Vintage have no interest — the raw power bar is too high for a 2/1 that needs support to do anything. Standard is where Sabotage Strategist is most at home when connive cards are in the format pool, since the synergy density is higher relative to the competition.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.08 bulk tier
At $0.08, Sabotage Strategist is deep bulk — pick up as many copies as you need without a second thought. Bulk rares with narrow mechanical niches rarely climb unless a new connive payoff pushes the archetype into competitive relevance, so treat this as a cheap enabler, not a spec.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.