Shining a Light on Soul-Guide Lantern
If you were to ask me what to pick something that I think is severely overlooked by most Commander players, I would probably have to pick anti-graveyard cards. Graveyard strategies are so powerful these days that almost every deck in the format leans into using the graveyard at least a little bit. There’s basically no reason not to, because most players don’t run many cards to stop you from treating it like a second hand.
I’ve seen exactly one Farewell cast to only remove graveyards and it was absolutely the right decision at the time.
Sure, you might see cards such as Bojuka Bog or Farewell with some regularity, but—in addition to the fact that the latter is usually played as an all-modes nuclear option to clear out everything rather than just a piece of graveyard hate—these cards are also restricted by color identity. This means that other colors may be left searching for answers elsewhere when it comes to problems from beyond the grave.
This Uncommon artifact from Theros Beyond Death might be the only card aside from Sol Ring that I think is truly an auto-include for basically any Commander deck.
Enter Soul-Guide Lantern. It’s cheap in both real-world and Magic terms and it can be included in decks of any color as an effective way to protect yourself from graveyard strategies. It comes down, exiles a thing from a graveyard, and can exile more things if you tap and sacrifice it. If you don’t need to deal with anything else, you can also use it to draw a card for one mana when you tap and sacrifice it. Very efficient!
Did I mention that it’s one-sided? You get to keep your graveyard!
With all of the tools available nowadays, pretty much any Commander deck can be a graveyard deck if you try hard enough and there’s very little reason not to try.
Every single color has its own style of graveyard recursion, in addition to colorless options that can be played in any deck. These are just some of the things that you might run into during a Commander game that will be a lot less threatening if you’ve already eliminated a potential recursion target and you have a rattlesnake on board to deter future efforts. It never hurts to be prepared for the worst!
I have to admit that I was tempted to put the textless version of Urza’s Saga in the article to see how many people remember what it does. Sanity prevailed this time.
You can also fetch it with Urza’s Saga. Sure, you might want to fetch something more exciting but there will definitely be games where you see something get dumped into the graveyard early and feel almost certain that it will be a problem later. I’ve never felt like my deck was worse off for having it as an option to tutor directly onto the battlefield in addition to other more popular targets.
Agatha’s Soul Cauldron is one of my favorite cards ever printed because it lets you get up to some serious shenanigans regardless of your deck’s color identity.
If you you want something else that’s versatile and can fit into almost any deck, my top pick would be Agatha’s Soul Cauldron. Often played as a combo piece, this card is equally at home as a value graveyard hate card that can steal activated abilities from creature cards exiled by it. Unfortunately, this card isn’t even close to budget-friendly because it’s a popular Mythic Rare that’s never been reprinted.
These are far from the only options out there. I encourage you to look for more cards that work within your own Commander decks to deal with graveyard problems.
Some other more budget options that any deck can run include Scavenger Grounds and Stone of Erech. The relative safety of the former being a land comes at the cost of also exiling your own graveyard. The latter is an interesting card that passively hates on creatures that would go to the graveyard and can be tapped to sacrifice itself for two mana to draw a card and exile someone’s graveyard when you need it.
Some colors, especially white, black and green, have access to a considerable amount of anti-graveyard tech. Make sure that you explore your options.
Depending on the colors that you’re playing, you have even more powerful options to choose from such as Dauthi Voidwalker and Endurance that might be exactly what you’re looking for. I hope that you’ll keep your options open and consider adding an anti-graveyard card or two to your favorite Commander deck if you’re running into a lot of powerful graveyard strategies when you sit down to play a game.
Articles like these are made possible and kept ad-free due to the support of all of our Patreon, Twitch, and Discord subscribers. Come check us out on Discord to chat about all things Commander and play curated games with people from all over the world! We’d also love to hear from you on Twitter where you can find all of our latest news!
“This article is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards.
Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.”
