My Top 10 Graveyard Hate Cards for Commander
It feels rare these days to run into a Commander deck that doesn’t use the graveyard at least a little bit, and this isn’t likely to change any time soon. Almost every set that comes out includes powerful new ways to abuse the graveyard and it can feel daunting to fight back because many graveyard strategies are resilient or difficult to interact with. So what exactly are the best ways to fight back against graveyard decks?
You’ve probably seen cards such as Relic of Progenitus, Bojuka Bog, or even Scavenging Ooze. You might even be running these cards in your Commander decks right now. If you are, maybe you’re wondering what other cards you can play to help stem the tide against graveyard decks. In this article, I’m going to list some of my favorite anti-graveyard cards. Some of them even have upsides beyond simply stopping graveyard strategies. Isn’t that exciting? I don’t want to keep you waiting, so let’s get right to the list!
Author’s note: You don’t have to run graveyard hate in your decks if you really don’t want to, but a lot of these cards are effective in a variety of different situations and they can save your bacon when you’re up against more than just reanimated beaters!
Calamity’s Wake
Urza’s sorrow after he detonated the Sylex tells me that he was secretly a graveyard player in Commander.
This spell caught my eye because of its potential to stop manual storm and combos that rely on noncreature spells while also annihilating graveyards to prevent them from being abused. You can use it against greedy self-mill decks that are looking to reanimate a bunch of creatures and it’s even efficient enough to see play in higher power tables where cards such as Underworld Breach are mainstays.
The downsides of Calamity’s Wake are that it’s useless against creature-based strategies and it also exiles the graveyard of the person who cast it. The latter issue means that decks that are looking to utilize the graveyard heavily will probably want to avoids this card, but many other decks will find this to be a great addition. As it’s an instant and not a permanent on the battlefield, this spell is harder to play around than most of the other cards on this list.
Containment Priest
Despite the fact that this card was originally designed for Commander and first appeared in the Forged in Stone precon, I’ve almost never seen anyone other than myself cast this card. If you’re playing a deck that isn’t looking to cheat creatures into play or flicker them, this card can even be completely one-sided. The low cost makes it an efficient way to put a stop to tons of strategies that rely on shenanigans to generate a ton of value.
The floor of this card is a sneaky blocker, but the ceiling can be quite high. Since Containment Priest has flash, you can often catch people by surprise and put a stop to mass reanimation or even take most of the punch out of a huge Genesis Wave by preventing creatures from entering the battlefield. It also hamstrings the popular Winota, Joiner of Forces and prevents her from snowballing out of control.
Dauthi Voidwalker
I love Tempest block so I appreciate the reference, but I definitely don’t remember many cards from back then that had this much rules text.
This card does a whole lot for a very low cost. You get an unblockable creature, a catch-all for cards entering graveyards, and the ability to sacrifice it to play a card belonging to an opponent that was exiled with a void counter on it. It’s basically impossible to compete with the incredible efficiency of this card. I’m hardly surprised that this has become one of the most played black cards in recent years.
The one weakness is that opponents might be able to access some of the same spells as you if they also play a Dauthi Voidwalker, because it only looks for cards belonging to opponents that have a void counter on them. This also means that you can recur this creature later on to access those spells again if necessary. That aside, this card almost feels like an auto-include in places where high-power graveyard strategies are a dominant presence.
Drannith Magistrate
One of the only things that Drannith Magistrate can’t stop is online discourse about Commander.
It’s impossible to call this a simple graveyard hate card with a straight face. This is an asymmetrical card that prevents spells from being cast by your opponents unless those spells were cast from their hands. This includes spells cast from graveyards, exile, and also commanders from being cast from the command zone. That adds up to a card that has sparked a lot of discussion online, but we’ll save that debate for another day.
Drannith Magistrate can easily become a target of the table’s ire and it likely won’t stick around for too long if your opponents all want it gone. That’s a risk that you’ll have to take if you want to shut down everything from cascade to flashback. Notably, this card does not stop reanimation or other means of cheating things into play without casting them. It’s still difficult to argue against the effectiveness of a card like this one that simply shuts off so many things for such a low cost.
Endurance
Green isn’t always the best at interacting with things on the stack, so a versatile creature like this is a welcome tool to help stop graveyard decks from spiraling out of control. You can cast this creature for its evoke cost to put a stop to an opponent’s shenanigans at instant speed putting all of the cards in their graveyard on the bottom of their library. You can also cast it as a surprise blocker with reach, which might not be irrelevant!
Sending someone’s hard-earned graveyard back to their library can be a back-breaking play against reanimator decks, Underworld Breach, or even Thassa’s Oracle, as your opponent will often have too many cards in their library to win the game after putting their graveyard back into their library! You can also use it to save your own graveyard in a pinch, including Endurance if you stack the triggers correctly.
Grafdigger’s Cage
The groans of the graveyard player when you cast this are usually preferable to those of their freshly raised undead legions.
For just a single mana in any color identity, you can turn off creature reanimation and green battlefield tutors such as Eldritch Evolution. It also stops the casting of spells from graveyards and libraries. Poor Bolas’s Citadel! The low mana cost makes it an effective target for a Whir of Invention to catch opponents by surprise and stop them from making explosive graveyard plays.
I’m actually surprised that I don’t see this card more often in Commander because it’s equal parts efficient and effective. I can only guess that it’s down to the card being completely symmetrical, since most decks seem to want to use the graveyard in some way. If you’re playing one of the rare decks that isn’t stopped by this card, you’ll likely be consistently satisfied with the return on your investment.
Lion Sash
I love this card in my Heliod, Sun-Crowned cEDH deck, but imagine how gross it would be if it also gained life like Scavenging Ooze!
White’s answer to Scavenging Ooze, this equipment creature can quickly grow in size and turn sideways to chip away at life totals. You can also reconfigure it onto your commander or an evasive creature to pump up commander damage or make it easier to get big damage through. Since it’s an equipment, it’s also trivial to tutor it up in white with cards like Stoneforge Mystic and Open the Armory.
If you’ve attached Lion Sash to one of your other creatures, it will even survive a creature board wipe because it won’t revert back to being a creature until after the board wipe has resolved! This can help it stick around to keep putting in work exiling enemy creatures that were put into the graveyard by that same board wipe. If you’re playing with equipment and need some extra graveyard hate, this is likely the best option.
Rest in Peace
Don’t worry. The dog is just resting after some heavy play. Lucy is a dog owned by a Wizards employee, as are all of the other subjects depicted in this Secret Lair.
As graveyard hate goes, this card is the nuclear option. When it enters the battlefield, it exiles all graveyards and it makes sure that nothing is able to enter the graveyard again until it leaves the battlefield. This makes it a back-breaking obstacle for decks that rely on death triggers or self-mill. This card is also part of a famous combo with Helm of Obedience, allowing you to exile a player’s entire library with a single activation due to the archaic wording on some older cards.
It is important to note that this card is completely symmetrical. In fact, it will even exile itself if it gets destroyed. This isn’t always a big deal, as the initial exile is often a good enough reason to cast this enchantment. Just don’t plan on recurring it later. If you’re not planning to use your own graveyard at all, you can slam down Rest in Peace with impunity and take solace in the fact that you’ve slowed down the graveyard apocalypse.
Soul-Guide Lantern
For a number of reasons, this is one of the most versatile cards on this list. You can cast Soul-Guide Lantern and eliminate a problem card right away when it enters the battlefield. After that, you can either save it for later if you might need to exile graveyards or you can cycle it and draw a card. I’ve found it to be a very desirable target for cards such as Sevinne’s Reclamation and Sun Titan, since you might need it later if graveyards start to fill up again.
I add this card to most of my casual Commander decks because it’s almost never a bad draw due to its low cost and flexibility. You can even fetch it up with Urza’s Saga if you’re up against graveyard decks and need to find some early intervention against cards such as Entomb or Buried Alive. I consider this the closest thing to an auto-include for casual Commander among all of the graveyard hate cards on my list.
Unlicensed Hearse
When you’re done robbing graves, you can drive this thing right into an opponent’s face for big damage!
If you like to deal with problematic cards as they come, this might be the artifact for you. You can tap it every turn to exile up to 2 cards from the same graveyard and it can eventually become a gigantic creature if you crew it after you’ve exiled enough cards. Being a vehicle also means that it will survive most board wipes, after which it can start exiling creatures that you don’t want to see again!
Unlicensed Hearse has been a notable card in other formats, so I definitely expect it to make a splash in Commander once more people catch on. It should even appeal to people who like to turn big creatures sideways during combat. While I’m not the biggest fan of vehicles in Magic, this card is a notable exception and one of the very best repeatable graveyard hate cards around.
Honorable Mentions
We made it through my top 10 faster than I expected, so I’ll throw in a few honorable mentions. Ashes of the Abhorrent is a neat enchantment that stops spells and activated abilities in the graveyard, while also allowing you to fight back against cards like Blood Artist with its life gain ability. Ashiok, Dream Render is a great way to stop tutors and can be activated to exile graveyards as necessary. Weathered Runestone is a more expensive Grafdigger’s Cage that also stops a wider variety of permanents, giving it applications against cards like Goblin Engineer and Replenish.
Thanks for sticking with me. This concludes my list of my top graveyard hate cards for Commander. I hope that you’ll consider a few of these cards for your own decks. Are there any cards that you think that I’ve missed? You can let us know on Twitter! We’d love to hear from you. If you’d like to check out more PlayEDH content, you can find more articles here or tune into the PlayEDH Radio 903.1 podcast here.
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