Tetravus
Artifact Creature — Construct
Flying
This creature enters with three +1/+1 counters on it.
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may remove any number of +1/+1 counters from this creature. If you do, create that many 1/1 colorless Tetravite artifact creature tokens. They each have flying and "This token can't be enchanted."
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may exile any number of tokens created with this creature. If you do, put that many +1/+1 counters on this creature.
- CMC
- 6
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- C
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Fourth Edition Foreign Black Border
- Price
- $8.32
- EDHREC rank
- #22887
Tetravus puts six power across four bodies for six mana, and its ability to move +1/+1 counters on and off the Tetravites at will makes it a persistent engine for any deck that cares about counters entering and leaving creatures. The Sage of Hours interaction — stripping counters off Tetravites to trigger extra turns — is the reason it shows up at all in competitive Commander lists.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Tetravus is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but Legacy and Vintage have no interest in a six-mana artifact that doesn't win the game immediately. Commander is the only format where Tetravus earns its slot — specifically in decks that generate value from counter manipulation, token production, or both. In Oathbreaker the same logic applies on a smaller scale, though the 60-card, 20-life format punishes slow six-drops even harder than Commander does.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Budget Alternatives
Cheaper options that do most of the same work
Tetravus fills a niche role — a self-contained counter redistribution engine on a flying body — and no single card replicates that cleanly on the cheap. Hangarback Walker comes closest for counter-focused decks, trading the Tetravite recursion loop for a scalable entry cost and a death trigger that floods the board with fliers.
Price Context
Current price
$8.32 mid tier
At $8.32, Tetravus sits in mid-tier pricing for a card with narrow, combo-specific demand. It holds that price because the Tetravites counter-stripping interaction is genuinely unique rather than because it sees broad play, so copies are unlikely to get cheaper without a reprint.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Sage of Hours
- Cathars' Crusade
- Time Sieve
- Doubling Season
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.