Circling Vultures MTG Card

Mana cost
Converted mana cost	1
Rarity	Uncommon
Type	Creature — Bird
Abilities	Flying
Released	1997-06-09
Set symbol
Set name	Weatherlight
Set code	WTH
Power	3
Toughness	2
Number	64
Frame	1997
Layout	Normal
Border	Black
Illustred by	Una Fricker

Key Takeaways

Circling Vultures enables powerful graveyard strategies, maximizing death-triggered and reanimation tactics.
While offering instant speed versatility, reliance on black mana may limit its deck compatibility.
Its ability to self-discard suits grave-centric decks, but it’s vulnerable to graveyard disruption.

Text of card

Flying During your upkeep, remove the top creature card in your graveyard from the game or bury Circling Vultures. If Circling Vultures is in your hand, you may discard it. Play this ability as an instant.

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Circling Vultures possesses a unique ability allowing you to discard it from your hand to place it directly into your graveyard. This can strategically set up your graveyard for cards that benefit from creatures in that zone or trigger abilities for an advantage.

Resource Acceleration: This card can contribute to resource acceleration by enabling graveyard mechanics. In decks that capitalize on death-triggered abilities or reanimation, it effectively becomes an enabler by accelerating your game plan without occupying a slot on the battlefield.

Instant Speed: The ability to discard Circling Vultures at instant speed gives the player flexibility during the game. It can be done in response to an opponent’s actions or end of turn, making it a surprisingly versatile card when managing resources or reacting to the opponent’s strategy.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Circling Vultures requires a card to be discarded in order to be played from the graveyard. This self-milling strategy can backfire if you’re not holding excess or expendable cards, potentially leaving you with fewer options.

Specific Mana Cost: The casting requirements of Circling Vultures demand black mana, thereby restricting its integration to decks that run swamps or have access to mana fixing. Its utility may not be maximized in a multicolored deck not focused on black mana.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: Although its graveyard ability can be a form of resourceful recycling, the obligation to have exclusive black mana to initially cast Circling Vultures from one’s hand may be cumbersome compared to other one-mana creatures with similar or better abilities.

Reasons to Include Circling Vultures in Your Collection

Versatility: Circling Vultures offers a unique edge for graveyard-centric decks. It can be discarded at any time to beef up your graveyard, making it a superb fit for strategies involving reanimation or delve mechanics.

Combo Potential: This card has great synergy with effects that capitalize on creatures entering the graveyard from anywhere—working well with abilities like undying or dredge, thus paving the way for powerful combos.

Meta-Relevance: In a game state where the graveyard is an extension of your hand, Circling Vultures excels. It’s particularly effective in formats where it’s crucial to stock the graveyard rapidly for various potent interactions.

How to Beat the Circling Vultures

Circling Vultures is one of those cards that can rapidly become a nuisance in Magic: The Gathering, especially in graveyard-centric strategies. Its ability to self-recycle by discarding it from the hand offers a recurring defense that can be hard to permanently clear from the board. And unlike other creatures, the Vultures can hit the battlefield in a flash at zero cost, making them a potent response during an opponent’s turn.

Contending with this avian adversary requires a strategic approach. Graveyard hate cards like Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void can completely neuter its recyclability, ensuring that once it’s gone, it stays gone. Exiling effects are also particularly effective; cards such as Path to Exile offer a one-way ticket out of the game for these pesky creatures, rendering their return ability moot. Additionally, imposing card-discard penalties with spells like Mind Rot can disrupt your opponent’s hand, potentially stripping away their Vultures before they can ever take flight.

While Circling Vultures thrives on the synergy within a self-milling deck, recognizing and targeting the card’s key strength—its revival from the graveyard—is the clear path to overcoming this feathery foe. Thus, with the right sideboard choices and timely interventions, ensuring the Vultures’ circling comes to a halt is within any savvy player’s grasp.

Cards like Circling Vultures

Circling Vultures stands out in Magic: The Gathering as a unique creature card with a specialized graveyard interaction. While it can be compared to creatures like Nightscape Familiar, which also offers graveyard benefits, Circling Vultures is distinct in its ability to be discarded directly from a player’s hand to the graveyard at any time. This self-discard mechanic is not present in Nightscape Familiar, which instead reduces the cost of certain spells.

Another similar card is Putrid Imp, which allows a player to discard cards to gain threshold, a different but related graveyard utilization. Unlike Circling Vultures, Putrid Imp can become a threat on its own with the ability to gain flying. Grave Scrabbler operates in the same realm by also enabling card discard, but it focuses on returning creatures from the graveyard to your hand, rather than providing an offensive presence on the board as Circling Vultures does when conditions are right.

The direct comparison reveals that while there are other cards with graveyard synergies, Circling Vultures offers an immediate and repeatable self-discard capability, uniquely supporting decks that thrive on graveyard strategies, and providing a notable edge in creature-heavy formats.

Cards similar to Circling Vultures by color, type and mana cost

Stone-Throwing Devils - MTG Card versions

Foulmire Knight // Profane Insight - MTG Card versions

Champion of the Perished - MTG Card versions

Nezumi Shadow-Watcher - MTG Card versions

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Circling Vultures 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 Circling Vultures and other MTG cards:

Continue exploring other sealed products in Amazon
See MTG Products

Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Circling Vultures has restrictions

Format	Legality
Commander	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Paupercommander	Restricted
Oathbreaker	Legal
Premodern	Legal
Vintage	Legal
Duel	Legal
Predh	Legal

Rules and information

The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Circling Vultures 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	Circling Vultures’s discard ability is a static ability, not an activated ability. Although it acts like an activated ability that says “Discard Circling Vultures: Nothing happens,” it is not one and cards like Pithing Needle or Abeyance won’t prevent you from being able to discard it.
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	If the creature is no longer on the battlefield when the ability resolves, you may still perform the action if you want.
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.
2008-04-01	When the ability resolves, you choose whether to sacrifice the creature or perform the other action. If you can’t perform the other action, then you must sacrifice the creature.