Vexed by the Puzzlebox

I cannot begin to explain how much I love this card. Since the first day I found this a few months ago, I have tried my best to include it in almost every single deck. Vexing Puzzlebox first appeared in Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate. I was just getting back into magic very casually at that time and bought some of that set, but never found this hidden gem. 

For me, having a 3 cost mana rock which has another cool ability tied to it is just <chef's kiss> to me. This one not only gives you a cool ability but instantly sparked an idea for a deck based around rolling dice. As you see when you use the mana rock ability you add one mana of any color and then roll 1d20 and place a number of counters on the Puzzlebox based on what is rolled. Now you would think that would stop there, but it doesn't, two other parts of this card are VERY important. 

"Whenever you roll one or more dice, put a number of charge counters on this artifact equal to the result." - wait, so you mean anytime I roll dice I get to add counters to this card?  Well I know that the sets Baldur's Gate and Forgotten Realms had dice rolling in them, but were there other sets? I found out that the answer was indeed yes. Looking around I found that Fallout also had some dice rolling mechanics in there, specifically their whole set of mana rocks called Bobbleheads. There are 7 bobbleheads in Fallout; Agility, Charisma, Endurance, Intelligence, Luck, Perception and Strength. Looking at those names it really makes me think we are playing a TTRPG and making up a character. Specifically the Luck Bobblehead has you roll a number of d6's equal to the number of bobbleheads you have in play. That's at least 1 but could be up to at least 7 (there are ways to copy artifacts and doing so on some of these could be real fun). So lets say you have five of those in play, when you figure out the average of 3.5 per rock, you are looking at adding 18 (rounded up from 17.5) counters on your puzzlebox every round (could be more often if you have Unwinding Clock in play). Not only that, but you also have a good chance of getting treasure tokens when you roll an even number on those d6s. 

Now there are many ways to modify these dice rolls, things like Barbarian Class, Wyll, Blade of Frontiers and others. Not to mention one of my favorite mechanics in MTG right now, Proliferate (Choose any number of permanents and/or players, then give each another counter of each kind already there.) Throw these cards into a Jeska (RUW) deck, these counters could really build up fast. Blue has some great cards that I use in commander decks that have card draw and proliferate on them so that color makes sense, red for the above listed cards and white because it rounds out Jeska and also has some proliferate cards itself. 

All these counters lead us to the second half of the card "{T}, Remove 100 charge counters from this artifact: Search your library for an artifact card, put that card onto the battlefield, then shuffle." Once you get to 100 counters, you get to tap the artifact and search your library for an artifact card AND PUT IT DIRECTLY INTO PLAY! I can't emphasize that too much. When I first read this my mind said put it into hand, as into play just seemed wrong to me, but no, it is into play. This is great for digging out more mana rocks, or large artifact creatures (looking at you Walls of Ba Sing Se). 

I will be posting a commander deck list that shows how I have managed to completely break this system and turns out to be quite powerful especially once it gets running.

So that's all for this post, I am done professing my love for one of my favorite cards, I love you Vexing Puzzlebox and I plan to make sure out love lasts forever and that you appear in at least 85% of all commander decks I make.