Tocasia's Onulet MTG Card
| Mana cost | |
| Converted mana cost | 5 |
| Rarity | Common |
| Type | Artifact Creature — Construct |
| Abilities | Unearth |
| Released | 2022-11-18 |
| Set symbol | |
| Set name | The Brothers' War |
| Set code | BRO |
| Power | 4 |
| Toughness | 4 |
| Number | 39 |
| Frame | 2015 |
| Layout | Normal |
| Border | Black |
| Illustred by | Eddie Mendoza |
Key Takeaways
- Tocasia’s Onulet facilitates artifact synergy, gaining advantage when artifacts are played or sacrificed.
- Sacrificing the Onulet at instant speed offers mana boost and strategic gameplay flexibility.
- While beneficial, it demands artifact sacrifice and careful deck integration due to mana specificity.
Text of card
When Tocasia's Onulet leaves the battlefield, you gain 2 life. Unearth (: Return this card from your graveyard to the battlefield. It gains haste. Exile it at the beginning of the next end step or if it would leave the battlefield. Unearth only as a sorcery.)
Card Pros
Card Advantage: Tocasia’s Onulet can be a strategic way to regulate artifact synergy, allowing you to gain potential card advantage through effects that trigger when artifacts enter the battlefield or are sacrificed.
Resource Acceleration: Sacrificing Tocasia’s Onulet provides additional mana, which may be pivotal for casting more impactful spells or using activated abilities sooner than your opponents expect.
Instant Speed: Though Tocasia’s Onulet itself is not an instant, its sacrifice ability can be used at instant speed. This gives you the flexibility to react to your opponent’s actions or optimize your own strategy during their turn.
Card Cons
Discard Requirement: The Tocasia’s Onulet card necessitates sacrificing an artifact as part of its activation cost. This requirement could pose a strategic setback when your board is lacking in expendable artifacts.
Specific Mana Cost: This card’s casting necessitates one generic and one blue mana, which can potentially complicate its integration into multi-colored decks not heavily invested in blue mana sources.
Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a total cost of two mana for a creature that only offers a minimal benefit upon death, it falls short when compared to other cards at similar mana points that provide immediate or more impactful advantages.
Reasons to Include in Your Collection
Versatility: Tocasia’s Onulet proves to be a flexible addition to various deck archetypes. Its ability to act as both an artifact and creature makes it a multi-faceted component that can easily fit into artifact-centric strategies or decks focused on synergies with creature death triggers.
Combo Potential: This card offers great combo potential as it provides life gain upon death, which can be strategically maximized in decks that repeatedly sacrifice or recycle creatures. It pairs well with effects that trigger on artifact or creature death, adding layers of complexity and synergy to your plays.
Meta-Relevance: In environments where games tend to stretch into the long-haul, Tocasia’s Onulet can serve as a crucial life buffer. Against aggressive decks, it can contribute to your sustainability on the board, making it a tactful defensive tool within the current meta landscape.
How to beat
Tocasia’s Onulet is a card that might seem benign but can be tricky in Magic: The Gathering decks built around artifact strategies. Despite its ability to provide a small life cushion upon being sent to the graveyard, it’s a creature with vulnerabilities that can be exploited. A key tactic in overcoming Tocasia’s Onulet is to use removal spells that exile rather than destroy, such as Path to Exile or Silent Gravestone for graveyard interference, preventing any life gain.
Another strategy is to employ artifact hate cards that are abundant in the game. These spells, often found in red or green decks, like Shatter or Naturalize, can readily dispose of Tocasia’s Onulet before its death-trigger has any significant impact. An alternative approach is to ignore the Onulet altogether and focus on pressuring your opponent with an aggressive board state, making the life gain from the Onulet negligible. Control decks can also keep Tocasia’s Onulet in check by countering key spells that would capitalize on its presence, effectively neutralizing the threat it poses.
With these strategies in mind, players can find effective paths to neutralize the benefits Tocasia’s Onulet provides and maintain a competitive edge in their matchups.
Cards like Tocasia's Onulet
Exploring the multifaceted world of artifact creatures within Magic: The Gathering reveals Tocasia’s Onulet as a noteworthy inclusion. It bears a resemblance to Solemn Simulacrum, affectionately known by players as ‘Sad Robot’, which also offers a beneficial exit effect. Tocasia’s Onulet provides life gain upon leaving the battlefield, a trait shared with the ‘robot,’ although the latter card additionally allows a land fetch when it enters play and draws you a card when it departs.
Another parallel can be drawn with Myr Retriever, which instead of giving life, returns another artifact from your graveyard to your hand. This can be a valuable recursion, especially in artifact-centric decks. However, unlike Tocasia’s Onulet, Myr Retriever doesn’t contribute to your life points, a factor that could tip the scale in longer, grindy matches.
Assessing these artifacts collectively showcases Tocasia’s Onulet as a card that strategically fits into decks that benefit from incremental life gain and sacrifice mechanics. Its inclusion in an MTG deck can offer a significant advantage, subtly influencing the game’s dynamics through life point adjustments while synergizing with other artifacts.
Cards similar to Tocasia's Onulet by color, type and mana cost
Where to buy
If you're looking to purchase Tocasia's Onulet MTG card by a specific set like The Brothers' War, there are several reliable options to consider. One of the primary sources is your local game store, where you can often find booster packs, individual cards, and preconstructed decks from current and some past sets. They often offer the added benefit of a community where you can trade with other players.
For a broader inventory, particularly of older sets, online marketplaces like TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom and Card Market offer extensive selections and allow you to search for cards from specific sets. Larger e-commerce platforms like eBay and Amazon also have listings from various sellers, which can be a good place to look for sealed product and rare finds.
Additionally, Magic’s official site often has a store locator and retailer lists for finding Wizards of the Coast licensed products. Remember to check for authenticity and the condition of the cards when purchasing, especially from individual sellers on larger marketplaces.
Below is a list of some store websites where you can buy the Tocasia's Onulet and other MTG cards:
- eBay
- TCG Player
- Card Kingdom
- Card Market
- Star City Games
- CoolStuffInc
- MTG Mint Card
- Hareruya
- Troll and Toad
- ABU Games
- Card Hoarder Magic Online
- MTGO Traders Magic Online
See MTG Products
Legalities
Magic the Gathering formats where Tocasia's Onulet has restrictions
| Format | Legality |
|---|---|
| Standard | Legal |
| Historicbrawl | Legal |
| Historic | Legal |
| Legacy | Legal |
| Paupercommander | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Gladiator | Legal |
| Alchemy | Legal |
| Pioneer | Legal |
| Commander | Legal |
| Modern | Legal |
| Pauper | Legal |
| Future | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
| Duel | Legal |
| Explorer | Legal |
| Brawl | Legal |
| Timeless | Legal |
Rules and information
The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Tocasia's Onulet card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.
| Date | Text |
|---|---|
| 2022-10-14 | Activating a card's unearth ability isn't the same as casting that card. The unearth ability is put on the stack, but the card is not. Spells and abilities that interact with activated abilities (such as Defabricate's second mode) will interact with unearth, but spells and abilities that interact with spells (such as Scatter Ray) will not. |
| 2022-10-14 | At the beginning of the next end step, a permanent returned to the battlefield with unearth is exiled. This is a delayed triggered ability, and it can be countered by effects such as Defabricate that counter triggered abilities. If the ability is countered, the permanent will stay on the battlefield and the delayed triggered ability won't trigger again. However, the replacement effect will still exile the permanent if it eventually leaves the battlefield. |
| 2022-10-14 | If a permanent returned to the battlefield with unearth would leave the battlefield for any reason, it's exiled instead—unless the spell or ability that's causing the permanent to leave the battlefield is actually trying to exile it! In that case, it succeeds at exiling it. If that spell or ability later returns the card to the battlefield (as Static Net might, for example), the permanent card will return to the battlefield as a new object with no relation to its previous existence. The unearth effects will no longer apply to it. |
| 2022-10-14 | If you activate a card's unearth ability but that card is removed from your graveyard before the ability resolves, that unearth ability will do nothing as it resolves. |
| 2022-10-14 | Unearth grants haste to the permanent that's returned to the battlefield (even if it's not a creature card). However, neither of the "exile" abilities is granted to that permanent. If that permanent loses all its abilities, it will still be exiled at the beginning of the next end step, and if it would leave the battlefield, it is still exiled instead. |