Stonebinder's Familiar
Creature — Spirit Dog
Whenever one or more cards are put into exile during your turn, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature. This ability triggers only once each turn.
- CMC
- 1
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Strixhaven: School of Mages
- Price
- $0.16
- EDHREC rank
- #19362
Stonebinder's Familiar enters as a 1/1 and grows into a legitimate threat every time an exiled card leaves exile — an effect that scales hard in the right shell. The payoff is real, but it does nothing on its own, so you need a deck built around exile synergies to justify the slot.
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 Stonebinder's Familiar has the most room to operate, since exile-matters strategies — Prosper, Tome-Bound, Narset, Enlightened Master, and white blink-and-exile builds — generate the repeated triggers it needs to snowball. In Modern and Pioneer it's too conditional for competitive play; exile is common, but reliably turning exiled cards into a counter engine requires a deck built around the effect rather than incidentally using it. Legacy and Vintage have access to more powerful exile engines, but Stonebinder's Familiar is too slow and low-impact for those formats' threat density. Oathbreaker mirrors the Commander use case on a smaller scale and is the other home where exile-centric signatures can make it consistent.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.16 bulk tier
At $0.16, Stonebinder's Familiar is pure bulk — grab a copy without a second thought if you're building around exile. Bulk rares with narrow synergy triggers rarely climb unless they find a breakout Commander pairing, so don't expect the price to move.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.