Diabolic Servitude

Enchantment

When Diabolic Servitude enters the battlefield, return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield.

When the creature put onto the battlefield with Diabolic Servitude dies (is put into the graveyard from the battlefield), exile it and return Diabolic Servitude to its owner's hand.

When Diabolic Servitude leaves the battlefield, exile the creature put onto the battlefield with Diabolic Servitude.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Premodern	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (49)

mrweaselman on Giggly Boys (EDH)

2 years ago

You can probably take out the small creatures like Daggerdrome Imp and Rakdos Cackler. They seem to be just chump blockers and your first few turns can be better spent ramping. Since small creatures do not seem too good, Demon of Death's Gate probably isn't that good either. It also sucks to get blown out on a 3 for 1 when your opponents have spot removal. Diabolic Servitude or Phyrexian Reclamation are interesting replacements for Victimize if you find yourself not having a good sac target.

Guerric on Fascinating Cards from New Capenna

2 years ago

1empyrean That card seems potenially pretty powerful! Its like a combination of Birthing Pod and Diabolic Servitude. Taiyam does seem like a good place for it.

Guerric on Varina

2 years ago

As for suggestions, with Syr Konrad, the Grim you absolutely want to play Living Death. It's super powerful and so fun. You can wipe the board, bring all of your best stuff back, and do tons of damage. I'd also play Dusk / Dawn, which is a board wipe and recursion card stapled together. Rise of the Dark Realms is also a way to get everything back. It's tons of fun. You also need a lot more ramp, and they need to be all at 2cmc so you can play Varina early. You'll also want Crashing Drawbridge to give everything haste and get your engine going. You have the signets but need Talisman of Dominance, Talisman of Hierarchy, Talisman of Progress, and Coldsteel Heart. You want ten pieces of ramp that are 2cmc or less to hopefully get Varina out early and get you going. Necromancy, Dance of the Dead, and Diabolic Servitude are also great recursion pieces. I particularly love the latter because while it is 4cmc, it is the gift that keeps on giving. I'd also replace Dovin's Veto with Arcane Denial, which is easier to cast and more flexible, and add Oblation is for added flexibility with removal. I's also add most of the zombies from your maybe board as they are all great, and would skip over most of the non-zombies except Syr Konrad as they aren't good enough. If you are going to add any non-zombies I'd think about Blood Artist and Falkenrath Noble which will make blocking and killing your zombies less desirable for your opponents. I'd also skip most of the non-Zombie, non-Tribal cards in your maybe board. Fact or Fiction is good in many other decks, but its redundant to the point of being pointless here. We want to avoid the good stuff cards! Same goes with Training Grounds, Reflections of Littjara, and Idol of Oblivion. Kindred Discovery is so good here, but make sure to replace a sub-optimal card draw piece in your current list with it. Feast of Sanity looks wicked fun, so I'd definitely play that! Return from Extinction is super meh. You want to return things to the battlefield and not your hand!

Guerric on [Primer] Unleash the Dragon! *Updated*

2 years ago

Profet93

Sorry about the delayed response, I was a bit tired last night and waited until morning. Fabricate probably could be cut. The targets are Whispersilk Cloak and Lightning Greaves which are sort of the easy button for protecting Scion, but we don't need them if we play conservatively.

I actually used to play Elemental Bond and Guardian Project in earlier versions of the deck, and while they are incredibly good in other decks, I found them to be at best win-more cards in this one. The thing is, creatures don't enter the battlefield as often as we might think. We can do a lot of damage with a small number of dragons, and some turns we won't have any new ones ETB. Where these cards payoff the most is when we play a mass recursion spell, but at that point we are winning the game anyway, so it isn't all that great. What does work incredibly well is Tome of Legends, which can pretty much get us an extra card for every turn we have it out, and Colossal Majesty is basically a second copy of Phyrexian Arena without the life loss, which is usually good enough. In a way, we are drawing cards by tutoring stuff into the graveyard, so we need our regular draw mostly to get our recursion pieces in hand.

Necromancy is good, and is definitely better than Unburial Rites which, while recurrable, is on the pricey side in terms of mana. I've mostly held out because it isn't super cheap, but I have some store credit at Card Kingdom and might pick that this week! I like Diabolic Servitude because it is recurrable- if the dragon dies it goes back to hand and we can use it again, and it's always a discount on hard-casting a card. You are right about the potential downside of the card being exiled, which is why I'd never use it on my most critical dragons like Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund. I should definitely add that to the primer though! As for Yawgmoth's Will, that is great, but I own all my decks in paper and the real world price tag is a bit prohibitive. It has its price tag for a reason though!

I hadn't thought of Rishkar's Expertise! I think this is a risky deck, and one which plays with big mana, so it probably is worth it! I'm definitely ok with burst card draw as long as it get's at least three cards for a good return on mana and I don't play too much of it. This card could easily refill my hand later in the game when I need it, and get me a free permanent on top of that. Great suggestion!

Ikesantana on MagicalHacker - List of All Recursion

2 years ago

Diabolic Servitude. No shade, but I'm surprised this one was missed.

Gidgetimer on Nightmare Shepherd exile interaction mechanics

3 years ago

So there is a lot to unpack here. I am going to go through each statement/question and give a yes/no and try to explain the reasoning behind each to help understand the interactions. This is going to be a bit of a fragmented response since each case has to be considered separately.

If you return a creature with Whip of Erebos it gets exiled instead of going anywhere else on the next end step or when it would leave the battlefield. Nightmare Shepherd will not trigger.

If a creature returned to the battlefield with Diabolic Servitude dies you can stack the triggers so that you get the 1/1 copy or not, but the Diabolic Servitude is returned to your hand. If instead the Diabolic Servitude leaves the battlefield, the returned creature will be exiled and will not trigger Nightmare Shepherd .

The rules on Haunt state that the card "haunts" the creature if it is put into exile as a result of the Haunt ability. This means if you exile it to Nightmare Shepherd it will not "haunt" a creature.

702.54b Cards that are in the exile zone as the result of a haunt ability “haunt” the creature targeted by that ability. The phrase “creature it haunts” refers to the object targeted by the haunt ability, regardless of whether or not that object is still a creature.

Abilities track an object through a maximum of one zone change. If the creature goes directly to exile Nightmare Shepherd will not trigger. If Nightmare Shepherd moves it from the graveyard to exile, the ability that expects to find it in the graveyard will not find it in exile.

I also have some clarification on the subject of Commanders and the command zone. The replacement effect now only applies to Commanders going to hands and libraries. They changed how they interact with going to libraries and exile to a SBA that is only checked once immediately after the event happens (much like how Deathtouch is handled). This means that Rescue from the Underworld will no longer be able to track Commanders into the command zone since they hit the graveyard first.

FalconForce on Nightmare Shepherd exile interaction mechanics

3 years ago

I know that Nightmare Shepherd 's triggered ability happens when the affected creature enters the graveyard and then you can exile that card. Also when multiple exile effects trigger simultaneously you can pick the resolution order.

Because of that I believe that Whip of Erebos 's triggered ability doesn't work with it because it goes directly into exile instead of anywhere else when it dies. But Diabolic Servitude would work because the creature actually enters the graveyard before it's exile triggers. Let me know if I'm wrong.

But how does it interact with the haunt mechanic? Is 'haunting' only a delayed trigger that doesn't require the card? Could you haunt the Shepherd and make a token or is it an either/or? Blind Hunter as an example.

Or what if the exiled card would be brought back by another effect? I'll use sacrificing the creature to Rescue from the Underworld as an example. I looked at the 3rd and 4th rulings on it and I think they might mean that if the card is exiled face up or goes to the command zone instead of the graveyard it'll get returned, but if it hits the graveyard before going to one of those places then it'll be treated as a new object.

So, if I understood that correctly, why does the delayed trigger track the card when it changes to a new zone the first time but not the second? Or does the trigger only work because the creature was sacrificed as a cost and it's therefore already in whatever zone it goes to before the delayed trigger is applied to it?

CHAmb1es on Sing for Absolution

3 years ago

Grind Thanks for the suggestions, Diabolic Servitude seems very good and I had no idea about that card! I generally don't want my reanimation targets to exile away after one turn (hence I knew about Whip of Erebos but ultimately decided not to add it) because each creature matters quite a bit. Phyrexian Reclamation might be decent too, I think I'll def add it if my playgroup runs a lot of graveyard hate (but as of now, they don't).