Skip to content
Moxonomy

Marauding Sphinx

Creature — Sphinx Rogue3 generic manaBlue manaBlue mana

Sphinxes have always been the archetype's librarians: big flying walls that arrange the top of your deck while the ground war rages beneath them. This one gets there by a route no earlier sphinx had access to, hijacking a keyword built for aggression. Crime triggers on interacting with an opponent's stuff, and most payoffs for it reward you for shooting things down or picking through what they've lost. Here the same trigger points inward, at your own library: the first time each turn you commit a crime, you surveil 2 with no further cost. That turns crime from a combat-and-burn keyword into a card-selection engine any interactive deck runs almost by accident, because the interaction you were casting anyway now filters your next two draws. The 3/5 body is built to keep the engine ticking. Vigilance means the sphinx can attack without tapping, so it stays back to block on the same turn, and it never trades pressure in the air for defense of it, and ward 2 generic mana taxes the cheap removal that would otherwise happily swap for a five-mana investment. That ward matters more here than on most creatures: the surveil engine is worth nothing if the sphinx dies before it collects, so the tax is less a combat consideration than the price of protecting a recurring trigger. A control-flavored answer to a fundamentally aggressive mechanic, doing quietly on the top of your library what its keyword was designed to do loudly on the battlefield.

Marauding Sphinx (otj)
OTJ · #56uncommon
Pricing
Normal: $0.11
Foil: $0.11
Oracle Text

Rules text

Flying, vigilance, ward 2 generic mana Whenever you commit a crime, surveil 2. This ability triggers only once each turn. (Targeting opponents, anything they control, and/or cards in their graveyards is a crime.)
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
Legal
Pioneer
Legal
Modern
Legal
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
N/A
Brawl
Legal
Historic
Legal
Alchemy
N/A
Timeless
Legal
Standard Brawl
Legal
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
N/A
PreDH
N/A
Pauper Commander
N/A
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
Legal
Penny Dreadful
N/A
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
Legal
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
Legal
TLR
N/A
Quick navigation
move selectesc close