Image courtesy of Scryfall.com
Rarity Across Prints: Mycosynth Wellspring
When you think of ramp—that cherished MTG impulse to accelerate your mana and your plans—Mycosynth Wellspring slides into the conversation with a quiet confidence. This colorless artifact, priced at a lean {2} mana, wears rarity as a badge of practicality rather than hype. Its normal, nonfoil printing in Commander 2021 cements its status as a reliable workhorse for artifact-heavy decks and land-fixers alike. The card’s journey from its original appearances to its Commander 2021 reprint offers a neat lens on how Wizards of the Coast approaches distribution for staples in commander culture 🧙🔥💎.
First, consider the card’s fundamental nature: an artifact, colorless, with a straightforward but powerful trigger. The text reads, in essence, “When this artifact enters or is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, you may search your library for a basic land card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle.” That combination—low mana cost, reliable land-fetching, and a trigger that can fire from both ETB and death—gives it a unique niche. It’s not a flashy rare that turns the game on a single flashy line; instead, it quietly multiplies the options you have, especially in a format where resource management and tutoring for land types are routinely pivotal. Its rarity as common means it’s accessible to a broad swath of players, a deliberate design choice that supports both new players and lengthy EDH icons alike 🎲🎨.
Print History and Distribution
Mycosynth Wellspring holds a layered print story: it’s designated as a common card in Commander 2021, and it’s explicitly marked as a reprint. That “reprint” tag signals more than a single run; it marks the card as a staple that designers want to keep circulating across sets to maintain deckbuilding reliability. In Commander, where players juggle colors, colorsless options like Wellspring get a special spotlight precisely because they’re broadly usable across many archetypes—artifact builds, blink strategies, and even stacks-style decks that rely on trigger-heavy sequencing 🧙🔥.
The card’s nonfoil finish in this particular print further underscores its role as a budget-friendly staple. For collectors, that often translates into a steady but unglamorous market presence rather than a spike in price tied to scarcity. The documented market values show the USD price hovering around a few dimes to a quarter, with EUR prices in the mid-to-low range. In other words, Wellspring remains the kind of card you pick up en masse for a weaponized toolbox of mana and inevitability, not a chase mythic that demands a premium. That dynamic—common rarity, nonfoil, wide legality—closely mirrors the card’s practical mission on the battlefield ⚔️.
Set Context: Commander 2021 and the Rarity Narrative
Commander 2021 (set code c21) leaned into five-color commander chaos and the joy of brewing. Mycosynth Wellspring slots into a long-running tradition of using colorless artifacts to bend the land economy in favor of tempo and plan-building. The flavor text—“The oil created the mycosynth. The mycosynth created New Phyrexia.”—reminds us that even a simple tutor engine sits inside a broader mythic current about creation, transformation, and the messy birth of power. The card’s artwork by David Rapoza micro-narrates that lineage through metallic oil and fungal motifs, a visual metaphor for how Wellspring quietly reshapes the board with a single trigger. In every Commander group, you’ll see Wellspring used not as a flashy centerpiece but as a dependable support actor that unlocks your color fixing and ramp pacing 💎🎨.
Rarity, Print Runs, and the Collector’s Perspective
- Rarity: Common. This label signals broad accessibility and a focus on utility over scarcity. In modern MTG markets, common artifacts like Wellspring are the workhorses of budget decks and intro-to-Commander lists.
- Print Run & Reprints: Reprinted in Commander 2021, helping ensure wide availability and consistent play across leagues and casual tables. Reprints in Commander sets are a deliberate market signal: if a card plays well in multi-player formats, Wizards keeps it in print to support community engagement and deck-building variety 🧙♂️.
- Nonfoil: The current print is nonfoil, keeping costs down for players who want to pick up multiple copies for different decks or commanders without inflating their collection budget ⚔️.
- Legalities: It’s broadly legal—Modern, Legacy, Commander, and several other formats—making it a flexible tool for players across the spectrum. This wide legal footprint enhances its print stability as a staple, rather than a niche choice.
- EDH Rec and Popularity: With an EDHREC rank around the low thousands, it’s a recognizable though not ubiquitous pick in EDH lists. It’s the kind of card you’re glad to draw into when you’ve got a land-heavy plan running in the late game, rather than a must-answer early disruption.
Deckbuilding and Gameplay Implications
From a design lens, Wellspring’s trigger condition—entering the battlefield or moving to the graveyard from the battlefield—opens interesting deck-building avenues. You can pair it with sacrifice outlets or blink effects to repeatedly tutor for basic lands, enabling robust mana fixing and splash-color strategies without relying on fetchlands that clog the mana base in multiplayer formats. In the commander scene, where the average game can tilt on a single topdeck, Wellspring provides a reliable backup plan: fetch a basic land when you need it most, or ensure you don’t stall out after a key artifact is removed from the battlefield. The card rewards thoughtful timing, not brute force, and that’s a hallmark of many evergreen staples in Commander 2021’s print run 🧙♀️🎲.
Flavor meets function here: the card’s very existence is a nod to the way the Phyrexian saga twists creation into addiction—land as resource, oil as catalyst, and Wellspring as the quiet engine enabling ongoing growth. If you’re building around artifact synergies or a mana-dense, land-rich board state, this is a card you’ll want to consider early in the pecking order. And if you’re chasing a casual win with a big-blow plan, Wellspring’s ability to fetch a basic land can unlock color options that power an unstoppable combo or a robust late-game engine 🧙🔥.
Flavor, Art, and the Cultural Pulse
David Rapoza’s illustration emphasizes the paradox of beauty and industrial strength—oil, metal, and fungal life entwined in a way that feels both ancient and futuristic. The flavor text anchors that sense of mythic science: ancient oil birthing a new phyrexial world, a reminder that in MTG’s multiverse, even pragmatic cards hum with a story-laden energy. For collectors and players who like their cards with a story, this is a perfect example of how a common artifact can carry a deep sense of world-building and lore, enriching the ritual of drafting and the post-game musings that happen around a kitchen table or a tournament table alike 🎨⚔️.