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The Blackstaff of Waterdeep

Legendary Artifact

You may choose not to untap The Blackstaff of Waterdeep during your untap step.
Animate Walking Statue — {1}{U}, {T}: Another target nontoken artifact you control becomes a 4/4 artifact creature for as long as The Blackstaff of Waterdeep remains tapped. Activate only as a sorcery.

CMC
1
Mana cost
{U}
Color identity
U
Rarity
rare
Set
Adventures in the Forgotten Realms
Price
$0.22
EDHREC rank
#19339
Buy on TCGplayer
The Blackstaff of Waterdeep card art
The Blackstaff of Waterdeep turns any nonland artifact you control into a mana rock — equip it, tap for colorless, then untap with the equipped permanent's ability to generate net mana. The ceiling is infinite mana with Basalt Monolith, and the floor is still relevant: one mana to equip means the engine comes online fast.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern legal
pioneer legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Commander is the correct home for The Blackstaff of Waterdeep — the format's longer game and artifact-synergy commanders give it room to matter, and the Basalt Monolith loop is a genuine win condition rather than a cute trick. In Legacy and Vintage, cheaper and more powerful mana engines make it irrelevant; the equip cost and tap requirement are too slow against decks operating on turns one and two. Modern and Pioneer are legal but similarly inhospitable — artifact combo decks there have more efficient redundancy and don't need a one-mana equip step in their line. Play The Blackstaff of Waterdeep in Commander and nowhere else.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.22 bulk tier

At $0.22, The Blackstaff of Waterdeep is deep bulk — you're paying almost nothing for a card with a real combo line in it. Bulk rares with infinite-mana combos attached don't tend to spike hard, but this one has stayed cheap because the Basalt Monolith package has plenty of redundancy at similar price points.

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Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.