Vraska, Soul of Stone Is an 81-Cent Treasure Engine. Her Treasures Are Creatures, and the Deck Everyone Copies Is One Card From Bracket 4

Commander · by Nora Kessler · October 04, 2026

Vraska, Soul of Stone makes a Treasure every time you cast a noncreature spell, but her Treasures are creatures, so you can't spend them the turn you make them. We ran EDHREC's average Vraska deck through DeckCortex: two infinite combos she isn't part of, exactly three Game Changers, and one $62 enchantment the crowd loves that makes it Bracket 4.

You cast Brainstorm, Vraska makes a Treasure, and you reach for it to pay for the next spell. Somebody across the table says "that's a creature." They're right. Vraska, Soul of Stone costs and 81 cents, and every Treasure she makes is a 1/1 artifact creature. Creatures you just got can't tap for mana. That one rule decides how this deck plays, and most of the crowd's list is built around getting past it.

The crowd is big. On EDHREC, Vraska was the fourth most-built commander of the past week with 2,137 new lists, and her page counts 3,494 decks since the first one was saved on September 11. (EDHREC's figures are external, pulled the morning of October 4, and they move by the hour.) Reality Fracture hit shelves on October 2, so most of those decks are about to meet a real table.

We ran EDHREC's average Vraska deck through DeckCortex's combo engine and our replication of its bracket model. It found two complete combo lines, and Vraska isn't in either of them. It also found exactly three Game Changers, which is the most Bracket 3 allows. Add a fourth, the one Vraska players run most often outside the average list, and it's a Bracket 4 deck.

What Vraska actually makes

Two lines. Artifact creatures you control have vigilance. And whenever you cast a noncreature spell, you create a 1/1 colorless Sculpture Treasure artifact creature token with ", Sacrifice this token: Add one mana of any color."

Her trigger resolves before the spell that caused it, and it resolves even if that spell gets countered (that's from the release-note rulings). Counter her Brainstorm and she still gets the Sculpture. The crowd's list feeds her well: 46 of its 99 cards are noncreature spells, plus the instant side of Sink into Stupor.

Her Treasures are creatures, and that changes the turn

Sculpture is a creature type, Treasure is an artifact type, and the token is both. So the summoning-sickness rule applies. Comprehensive Rules 302.6: a creature's activated ability with in its cost can't be activated unless you've controlled that creature continuously since your most recent turn began. The same rule stops it from attacking.

In practice, a Sculpture is next turn's mana, not this turn's. On your next turn it can tap for mana, and thanks to Vraska's vigilance it can attack first and still tap for mana after combat. What it can't do is turn your first spell of the turn into the mana for your second. If you came from Treasure decks that chain spells off fresh Treasures, this is the habit to break.

The crowd's list has five ways around it. Three are single cards that work on any Sculpture:

• Urza, Lord High Artificer ($15.46) has "Tap an untapped artifact you control: Add ." That's Urza's ability, not the token's, and his official ruling says it can tap an artifact creature you haven't controlled since your turn began. Every fresh Sculpture is a blue mana right away, as long as you don't need the sacrifice. Urza is in 1,150 of the 3,494 EDHREC Vraska decks.
• Lightning Greaves ($3.61) gives haste, and a creature with haste can use its abilities right away (rule 702.10c). Equip costs , so you can move Greaves onto a fresh Sculpture and crack it. Equip is sorcery-speed, which means this works in your main phase with an empty stack, not in the middle of casting something.
• Skullclamp ($4.74) doesn't care about summoning sickness at all, because equipping is Skullclamp's ability. A 1/1 Sculpture with +1/−1 is a 2/0. It dies, and you draw two. Every noncreature spell becomes ": draw two" for as long as you have spells to cast. EDHREC counts Skullclamp in 2,287 Vraska decks, about two in three.

The other two fix the whole board. Roar of Resistance ($2.11) gives creature tokens you control haste, and Alibou, Ancient Witness (33 cents) gives your other artifact creatures haste. With either one on the battlefield, every Sculpture taps for mana the turn it arrives, no equip needed. EDHREC counts Roar in 1,435 Vraska decks and Alibou in 1,222. And if you'd rather not sacrifice them at all, Kappa Cannoneer's improvise taps artifacts to pay for it, which a fresh Sculpture can do too, since improvise isn't the token's own ability.

The plain Treasures in the list don't have this problem. Storm-Kiln Artist makes a regular Treasure token whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery, and that one taps the turn you get it.

She's a Wizard

The second creature type on Vraska is the one the crowd noticed:

Wizard's Staff equips to a Wizard for , and it makes each of the equipped creature's triggered abilities trigger an additional time. On Vraska, every noncreature spell makes two Sculptures instead of one. It isn't a copy, so each trigger resolves on its own. The Staff also gives her prowess. It's a $3.32 card from The Hobbit, and EDHREC counts it in 2,032 Vraska decks, the most popular new card on her page.

Two Sculptures per spell is where the token payoffs start to matter. Mister Fantastic, Reed Richards (25 cents) draws a card whenever one or more tokens you control enter. Skullclamp has two bodies to eat instead of one.

What the crowd's list costs

At the cheapest paper printing of every card, EDHREC's average Vraska list comes to $934.64. Mox Opal is $238.55 of that, a quarter of the deck on its own. The next most expensive cards are Deflecting Swat ($72.83), Fierce Guardianship ($61.68) and Smothering Tithe ($53.71). The commander is 81 cents.

If you're building on a budget, Mox Opal goes first. A Vraska deck makes artifacts all game, so Opal turns on easily, but it's a zero-mana rock in a deck that already has Sol Ring, three Talismans and two Signets. Cut it and you've saved a quarter of the bill.

Two combos, and Vraska is in neither

The list we tested is EDHREC's average Vraska deck as it stood on the morning of October 4. You can open the current version on EDHREC's average-deck page. It updates daily, so today's version may differ from ours by a few cards.

DeckCortex's engine finds two complete lines in it, and they're nearly the same combo:

Gleaming Splendor + Smothering Tithe + Xorn (or Elspeth, Storm Slayer). Gleaming Splendor has ": Two target players each draw a card." Smothering Tithe makes you a Treasure whenever an opponent draws, unless that player pays . Xorn adds an extra Treasure whenever you'd create Treasure, and Elspeth doubles every token you'd create.

1. Pay : two opponents each draw a card.
2. Smothering Tithe triggers twice. With Xorn or Elspeth out, that's four Treasures.
3. Spend three of them on the next activation. You're up one Treasure each time around.
4. Repeat until you have as much mana as you want, then point the activation at yourself to draw as many cards as you like.

There's a condition, and Commander Spellbook writes it down: "At least two opponents cannot pay for Smothering Tithe's trigger." Every Tithe trigger offers them the . If they pay, you get nothing. So the loop runs once your opponents are tapped out, which in practice means your own turn after they've spent their mana. The Treasures here come from Tithe, so they're plain Treasures, not Sculptures, and you can use them right away.

Vraska isn't part of it, since activating Gleaming Splendor isn't casting a spell. Take out Smothering Tithe or Gleaming Splendor and the engine finds zero lines. Taking out both Xorn and Elspeth does the same, but Xorn is also one of the list's best Treasure cards. One note on how common this is: the average list is EDHREC's synthetic "most common 99". Gleaming Splendor is in 1,064 of the 3,494 Vraska decks and Smothering Tithe in 1,043, so roughly three in ten real decks have each piece. Spellbook tags both lines "Powerful", its Bracket 3+ tier.

Exactly three Game Changers

Our replication of DeckCortex's bracket-fit model puts the crowd's list at Bracket 3 as a floor. The combos don't decide that, since the model allows complete lines in Bracket 3. The Game Changers do. The list has three: Smothering Tithe, Enlightened Tutor and Fierce Guardianship. Bracket 3 allows up to three. Commander Spellbook's estimator agrees and calls it "Powerful".

So the list sits right on the line, and the next card the crowd likes to add is a Game Changer:

It isn't in the average list, but EDHREC counts it in 932 of the 3,494 Vraska decks. Only Smothering Tithe is more common among the Game Changers on her page. Add it and the list has four. Our replication of DeckCortex's model moves the floor to 4. Spellbook's estimate goes from "Powerful" to "Ruthless", its Bracket 4+ tier. One $62.74 enchantment does it, and you'd probably add it for the card draw without thinking about brackets at all.

Going the other way takes more work. Cutting Smothering Tithe alone kills both combos, but the floor stays at 3 because Enlightened Tutor and Fierce Guardianship are still there. Cutting all three Game Changers still leaves a 3, because of fast mana: the model allows one fast-mana card in Bracket 2, and the list has two (Mox Opal and Lotus Petal). Cut Lotus Petal as well and the floor finally drops to 2. Spellbook calls that version "Exhibition", its lowest tag. Combo counts and floors are signals, not the final bracket, and we've written about why.

cEDH already found her

DeckCortex's tournament data already has eight Vraska lists. The first is dated September 19, two weeks before the paper release (tournament organizers set their own rules on new cards). The best finishes so far are second place at a 12-player event and sixth of 31 at a TopDeck.gg tournament on September 26. Eight lists is a tiny sample, and one of them comes from a casual league, so this tells you what competitive players build, not how well it does.

What they build is the crowd's engine with the brakes off. Seven of the eight run Smothering Tithe and Xorn, six run Gleaming Splendor, and seven also run Rhystic Study, the fourth Game Changer. Mister Fantastic is in all eight and Skullclamp in seven. Urza is in none of them. Here's the sixth-place list:

Rules you'll get asked about at the table

• Sculptures are summoning sick. They can't tap for mana or attack the turn they're created (rule 302.6), unless they have haste: Roar of Resistance, Alibou or Lightning Greaves. Next turn they can do both, and vigilance lets them do both on the same turn.
• Vraska's trigger doesn't need the spell to resolve. Her token arrives first, even if the spell is countered.
• Urza can tap a fresh Sculpture. His ability taps the artifact as a cost, and his ruling allows summoning-sick artifact creatures.
• Lightning Greaves works only in your main phase. Equip is sorcery-speed, even at .
• Untapping isn't the same as haste. Jeskai Ascendancy untaps your creatures when you cast a noncreature spell, but an untapped Sculpture you got this turn still can't tap for mana.
• Wizard's Staff doubles triggers, not tokens. Each extra trigger resolves on its own. Doublers like Elspeth, Storm Slayer then double each one.
• Smothering Tithe asks every time. Each draw is a separate trigger, and an opponent can pay for any of them. A player who draws several cards at once draws them all before deciding how many times to pay (Tithe's ruling).

The decision

| You want | Change | Cost (cheapest printings) | Complete lines | DeckCortex floor | Spellbook estimate | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | The crowd's list | Nothing | $934.64 | 2 | 3 | Powerful | | The same deck, no combos | − Smothering Tithe (a basic in its place) | $880.93 | 0 | 3 | Powerful | | A Bracket 2 table | − Smothering Tithe, − Enlightened Tutor, − Fierce Guardianship, − Lotus Petal | $751.75 | 0 | 2 | Exhibition | | The crowd's favorite add | + Rhystic Study (an Island out) | $997.38 | 2 | 4 | Ruthless |

If your table plays at Bracket 3, the crowd's list is honest as it stands. Just don't add Rhystic Study and keep calling it a 3. If you don't want the Tithe loop at all, cutting Smothering Tithe removes it and still leaves you the best part of the deck, which is Vraska, Wizard's Staff and a pile of Sculptures that become cards through Skullclamp and mana through Urza. Bracket 2 costs four cuts, and the deck still works without them.

Whichever version you build, plan your turns around the rule from the first paragraph: this turn's Sculptures are next turn's mana. Then rebuild your list in DeckCortex before your next game and run the scan. The engine lists every complete line in your 100, and the bracket fit shows you which card puts you over the line before anyone at the table has to ask.

Data notes: The crowd's list is EDHREC's average Vraska, Soul of Stone deck as served on the morning of October 4, 2026; average lists change during the day. EDHREC ranks, deck counts and inclusion counts are external figures retrieved October 4, 2026. Card prices are Scryfall paper-aggregate asks retrieved October 4, 2026, using the cheapest paper printing of each card; Reality Fracture cards are brand new and their prices move daily. Combo lines come from DeckCortex's spellbook engine on the exact lists described, with removed cards replaced by basic lands or by the named card. The combo condition and steps come from Commander Spellbook's published catalogue. The bracket floor is our deterministic replication of DeckCortex's bracket-fit model: a lower bound, not a final 1–5 bracket. The Spellbook estimate comes from Commander Spellbook's public bracket estimator on October 4, 2026; it is Spellbook's reading, not Wizards'. The cEDH lists are decklist appearances in DeckCortex's tournament data from September 19 to October 3, 2026 (n = 8). Rules references are to the Comprehensive Rules effective September 25, 2026, and the official card rulings.