Bone Dancer MTG Card


Bone Dancer - Weatherlight
Mana cost
Converted mana cost3
RarityRare
TypeCreature — Zombie
Released1997-06-09
Set symbol
Set nameWeatherlight
Set codeWTH
Power 2
Toughness 2
Number62
Frame1997
LayoutNormal
BorderBlack
Illustred byScott Kirschner

Key Takeaways

  1. Bone Dancer generates card advantage by animating opponents’ creatures, enhancing your battlefield.
  2. It uses opponents’ graveyards for resource acceleration, maintaining card presence in hand.
  3. Resurrected creatures may offer instant speed effects, adding a surprise element in battle.

Text of card

: Put the top creature card of defending player's graveyard into play under your control. Bone Dancer deals no combat damage this turn. Use this ability only if Bone Dancer is attacking and unblocked and only once each turn.


Card Pros

Card Advantage: The Bone Dancer excels in generating card advantage by reanimating creatures directly from your opponent’s graveyard. This not only increases your battlefield presence but also disrupts your opponent’s plans by utilizing their resources.

Resource Acceleration: With Bone Dancer, you effectively turn your opponent’s graveyard into an extension of your hand. This unique form of resource acceleration allows you to deploy threats without expending your own cards, conserving your hand for other strategies and maneuvers.

Instant Speed: Although Bone Dancer itself does not operate at instant speed, the creatures it resurrects can provide instant speed effects if they have abilities like Flash. This allows you to surprise opponents with unexpected blockers or effects during their turn, providing a tactical edge in battle.


Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Bone Dancer requires you to have a creature card in your graveyard to use its ability, potentially limiting its effectiveness if your graveyard is not well-stocked.

Specific Mana Cost: Bone Dancer’s casting cost demands two specific mana types, which can be restrictive for multi-colored decks that may experience mana constraints.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: At a total of three mana including two black, Bone Dancer’s activation cost can be quite steep, especially considering it must tap to use its ability, potentially hindering your tempo.


Reasons to Include Bone Dancer in Your Collection

Versatility: Bone Dancer fits into a variety of deck types, particularly those centered around graveyard manipulation or creature-based strategies. Its ability to reanimate creatures directly into play gives deck builders creative ways to exploit this dynamic.

Combo Potential: Its unique talent for resurrecting creatures from an opponent’s graveyard can be paired with sacrifice outlets or death-triggered effects for powerful and often unexpected combos.

Meta-Relevance: In metagames heavy with creature-based tactics, this card is not only disruptive by pilfering from enemy graveyards but can also turn an opponent’s strength into your advantage.


How to beat

Bone Dancer is a unique creature card with the ability to orchestrate an army from opponents’ graveyards in MTG. Its strength lies in zoning in on the fallen creatures and putting them to use on your side of the battlefield. To effectively counteract this strategy, a player needs to focus on graveyard management. Cards like Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void can prove invaluable as they prevent cards from hitting the graveyard in the first place, leaving the Bone Dancer without resources to exploit.

Additionally, instant speed removal like Swords to Plowshares can exile the Bone Dancer before its ability triggers. Exiling the target ensures it won’t be recycled later. Tactical card play is crucial; holding up mana for interaction instead of overextending on one’s own turn can keep the Bone Dancer in check. Silent Gravestone is another card to consider as it shields your graveyard by preventing cards from being targeted by opponents. By maintaining control over both graveyards, a player can dance around Bone Dancer’s abilities and maintain the upper hand in the game.


Cards like Bone Dancer

Bone Dancer makes its presence known within the undead-themed decks of Magic: The Gathering. It shares the battlefield with cards like Reassembling Skeleton, another creature that brings the relentless theme of the undead to life. Unlike Reassembling Skeleton which can be returned to the battlefield from the graveyard at any time by paying mana, Bone Dancer’s ability triggers when it successfully deals combat damage, allowing you to put a creature from an opponent’s graveyard onto the battlefield under your control.

Grave Digger also comes into play in this realm, as it retrieves a creature from your graveyard to your hand when it enters the battlefield. While Grave Digger offers a more controlled and predictable outcome, Bone Dancer affords a potentially more impactful gain by taking control of an opponent’s creature directly. Furthermore, consider the card Animate Dead, an enchantment that also brings back creatures from any graveyard to the battlefield, but with the downside of giving the reanimated creature a slight debuff.

Positioning in this subtle dance of necromancy, Bone Dancer offers a unique angle, providing an aggressive strategy to reanimate and utilize opponent’s creatures. It offers an exciting dynamic to reanimation strategies, creating opportunities for unexpected plays and on-the-fly deck manipulation.

Reassembling Skeleton - MTG Card versions
Animate Dead - MTG Card versions
Reassembling Skeleton - MTG Card versions
Animate Dead - MTG Card versions

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Royal Assassin - MTG Card versions
El-Hajjâj - MTG Card versions
Plague Rats - MTG Card versions
Frozen Shade - MTG Card versions
Scathe Zombies - MTG Card versions
Sorceress Queen - MTG Card versions
Wall of Bone - MTG Card versions
Lost Soul - MTG Card versions
Mindstab Thrull - MTG Card versions
Mischievous Poltergeist - MTG Card versions
Strongarm Thug - MTG Card versions
Razortooth Rats - MTG Card versions
Ghastly Remains - MTG Card versions
Lord of the Undead - MTG Card versions
Deepwood Ghoul - MTG Card versions
Dross Prowler - MTG Card versions
Nim Lasher - MTG Card versions
Nim Abomination - MTG Card versions
Vesper Ghoul - MTG Card versions

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Bone Dancer MTG card by a specific set like Weatherlight, 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 Bone Dancer and other MTG cards:

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Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Bone Dancer has restrictions

FormatLegality
CommanderLegal
LegacyLegal
OathbreakerLegal
PremodernLegal
VintageLegal
DuelLegal
PredhLegal

Rules and information

The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Bone Dancer card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.

Date Text
2008-04-01 If an effect or rule puts two or more cards into the same graveyard at the same time, the owner of those cards may arrange them in any order.
2008-04-01 Players may not rearrange the cards in their graveyards. This is a little-known rule because new cards that care about graveyard order haven’t been printed in years.
2008-04-01 Say you’re the owner of both a permanent and an Aura that’s attached to it. If both the permanent and the Aura are destroyed at the same time (by Akroma’s Vengeance, for example), you decide the order they’re put into your graveyard. If just the enchanted permanent is destroyed, it’s put into your graveyard first. Then, after state-based actions are checked, the Aura (which is no longer attached to anything) is put into your graveyard on top of it.
2008-04-01 The last thing that happens to a resolving instant or sorcery spell is that it’s put into its owner’s graveyard. —Example: You cast Wrath of God. All creatures on the battlefield are destroyed. You arrange all the cards put into your graveyard this way in any order you want. The other players in the game do the same to the cards that are put into their graveyards. Then you put Wrath of God into your graveyard, on top of the other cards.
2008-04-01 The “top” card of your graveyard is the card that was put there most recently.
2013-04-15 An ability that triggers when something “attacks and isn’t blocked” triggers in the declare blockers step after blockers are declared if (1) that creature is attacking and (2) no creatures are declared to block it. It will trigger even if that creature was put onto the battlefield attacking rather than having been declared as an attacker in the declare attackers step.

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