Grafdigger's Cage

Artifact

Creature cards in graveyards or libraries can't enter the battlefield.

Players can't cast spells from graveyards or libraries.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

inuredbass on Maddening Mill Weaver

1 month ago

TheoryCrafter I took your Planar Void suggestion and wound up going with Grafdigger's Cage since that also hits creatures that ETB from your library with cards like Genesis Wave, and I can tutor for it with Urza's Saga. But the 1 mana graveyard hate suggestion was needed, thank you!

nbarry223 on Shifty Crabs!

3 months ago

Well, if you were going a third color, the obvious choice is {B}. Drown in the Loch is so powerful in a mill deck as a denial card, as it can counter a threat or be removal, and it scales, all for 2 mana. {B} also has a lot of gravehate options, many of which gain life, so they help against both aggro and graveyard oriented decks, which may help to free up some slots in the sideboard, by consolidating your hate a bit.

Jace, the Perfected Mind is also a pretty powerful potential tool if able to be enabled, main enabler is usually Archive Trap (would suggest Field of Ruin if you went that route). Tasha's Hideous Laughter is another option if just going for the mill since most modern decks are very low curves.

I'm also a little surprised you don't have much in the way of gravehate in your sideboard. What do you do against decks where your mill strategy enables them? Bojuka Bog and Grafdigger's Cage just seem suboptimal. If removing threats already in the graveyard, I'd consider something like Surgical Extraction or Ashiok, Dream Render. If doing something preventative, replacement effects are the way to go instead of narrow denial strategies like Grafdigger's Cage since a lot of strategies like Living End get around it. Dauthi Voidwalker or Rest in Peace are the two main cards that come to mind. Honestly though, I think your best option in your current colors is Relic of Progenitus, since it lets you slowly chip away at graveyard strategies or is a cantrip that can be used in response to their graveyard strategy.

DawnsRayofLight on Breya Treasures

4 months ago

Given the Mana curve, you can probably get away with 33-34 lands.

Might as well run Urza, Lord Protector  ^Meld as well

I know you were talking about adding Mycosynth Lattice to use with Vandalblast and Karn, the Great Creator (it is not official, but at some point they're going to need to create wishboard in the EDH rules to use with fetching cards outside the game, 10 is what I usually see allowed--> you could use this to add some artifacts to board that could act in a more stax capacity.

Maybe:

Ethersworn Canonist

Sen Triplets

Grafdigger's Cage

Void Mirror

Silent Arbiter

Lion Sash

Phyrexian Revoker

Defense Grid

Mana Web

--Flex slot--

Some cards I am not big on, i.e. I think you can drop these:

Impact Tremors: I get it works with a combo but I feel like there are better cards to use

Fable of the Mirror-Breaker  ^Flip: a pretty good card, it could fit in here, but you may need to run more reanimating cards, I don't feel it exactly fits too much with the goblin token and the mini-kiki

Pitiless Plunderer: excels in decks with lots of creature sacs but I don't see as much in this list, I feel at a glance, that it is more of a dead card more often than not.

That should give you some spots for Karn, Mycosynth, Urza, and maybe some artifact recursion like Tameshi, Reality Architect and/or Mishra, Tamer of Mak Fawa

jonniBgood on Pioneer Mono-White Soldiers

5 months ago

Looking at Sideboard, and I love the choices made. Curious to hear more of your thoughts on the matchup vs Blue/Azorious spirits and how your game plan is. I've been really liking Weathered Runestone recently though I like having Grafdigger's Cage for it's CMC despite it not stopping vehicles from returning via Greasefang eff. Another card that I've not seen used much is Calamity's Wake. I feel like it's a great tech for the right matchups but maybe it's too niche or too new? I figured it's helpful since you're mainly playing creatures. Again, I'm a big fan of your deck!

Delphen7 on The Technomancer 【Trazyn, the Infinite CEDH】

5 months ago

zAzen7977 Glad you like it :D

In my testing thus far, barring interaction, it usually plays Trazyn t2-t3 and wins the following turn.

• Between the lines being somewhat unintuitive and being able to win on top of interaction, the deck is hard to interrupt.

In general

• Interaction before we're set up hurts, but there are so many ramp effects we can usually pay command tax once or twice before getting truly stuck.
• Counterspells/removal on nonTrazyn cards usually don't matter as it just sets us up better to combo (ie an opponent counters a Mana Vault while we're sitting on a Pili-Pala kind of thing).

That said:

Counterspells

• These are pretty bad if they're aimed at Trazyn, but between discard, spells that draw counters (like Oppo Agent) and a lack of knowledge about his power, I usually see them deployed on the wrong cards.
• I play online (and thus against random people), but if you wanted to run this in a dedicated pod, more hand check would probably be good over Rocket Launcher and a couple other duplicate combo pieces to help clear the way for Trazyn once others know what's up.

Stax

• Stax is an interesting matchup. They can usually shut us out of comboing pretty quickly, but Trazyn is a 4/6 deathtouch, and the deck runs many big critters, so I can usually beat them to death and immediately win at instant speed.
• If anyone ever kills the stax pieces stopping us Trazyn can combo over anything opponents could do given we have Farmstead Gleaner or Pili-Pala. Even if we don't it's unlikely anyone has multiple piece of removal after removing stax pieces.
• It is worth noting that Drannith Magistrate and Collector Ouphe completely shut us down, but other common pieces are blank cardboard (like Grafdigger's Cage).

Removal

• As it's CEDH you don't really see much removal, but Patchwork Gnomes, Welding Jar and multiple haste effects mitigate what little there is
• If he is removed, it's usually pretty easy to recast Trazyn given how many ramp cards in the deck.

Turbo

• This is probably the worst matchup. If an opponent goes off before Trazyn is set up, there's nothing we can do about it. I usually hope that another opponent has interaction.
• Amusingly, Brain Freeze wins us the game if Trazyn is on the field, but Thoracle lines usually end poorly.
• When using discard to fish out counterspells, I try to target blue black players over other blue players to try and mitigate the risk of dying to Thoracle/Consultation if casting Trazyn goes poorly.

I think of the couple dozen games I've played thus far, my only losses were to a t2 Thoracle/Consultation, Gitrog with Collector Ouphe on the battlefield, a Chisei, Heart of Oceans playing way too many counterspells, and a wild game where no one drew anything until t30ish.

The best comparison for this deck is probably Turbo K'rrik. On average this list is slightly slower than K'rrik, but more resilient and less familiar, which gives us a slightly better game against interactive decks.

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This was a lot, but I hope it answers your question!

jek22 on Cultivator of the Unnatural (RG Urza)

7 months ago

I like it a lot! I mean I'm going to hate playing against it, but that means it's good lol

If I had to cut cards that I found confusing or didn't fit, I'd go with Eye of Vecna, Blinkmoth Urn, Ratchet Bomb, Elsewhere Flask, Wedding Invitation, Cinder Glade, and Dragon's Rage Channeler.

Mystic Forge seems a little redundant with your commander and clashes with Grafdigger's Cage. Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots aren't that necessary unless you want protection. Haste would just be for attacking since there are no creatures with activated abilities in the list, and there are only one or two creatures that I think you'd want to attack with.

I know you're looking to cut cards, but I'd recommend Voltaic Construct, put Passionate Archaeologist back in the deck especially since you'd be paying 0 to ping people for 1 or 2 in most cases, and Blood Moon would be funny but it depends on who you play against.

Overall I think it's a great deck, I'm not sure what else you could cut to get you to 100 though.

multimedia on Death by Mutation (Budget)

8 months ago

Thanks for the upvote. I find that creature tutors and entomb effects are good enough since all the combos here only require creatures not a noncreature card. Having tutors that put creatures directly into graveyard not hand is also helpful. Diabolic Tutor would be worth paying 4 mana if I needed an artifact or enchantment to combo, but that's not the case here. Good instinct to cut Diabolic.

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Karmic Guide + Reveillark + Viscera Seer is the classic creature reanimation combo that's been around for years and honestly it's perfect with Nethroi since it's an all creature combo. What's nice about Lark with all creature combos is you can include in the combo a 2 power or less creature such as Vile Entomber to setup the rest of the combo for a wincon.

Karmic + Lark + Seer + Entomber you tutor/put into graveyard Blood Artist then Lark reanimates it to give the combo a wincon. Any other creature with 2 power or less who self-mill could replace Entomber to do the same thing just puts more cards into your graveyard such as Satyr Wayfinder.

Karmic Guide + Body Launderer + Viscera Seer is the new excellent combo for all creatures combos because it too can setup the rest of the combo by looting until you get Reveillark and Blood Artist into graveyard. Then Karmic + Launderer stops reanimating each other and instead one of them reanimates Lark who then reanimates Artist for the wincon.

If playing Body Launderer and Karmic Guide, Saffi Eriksdotter + Viscera Seer combos with each of these creatures too. Having a backup Launderer infinite loot combo piece is helpful.

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In multiplayer Culling Ritual wrecks and it can make enough mana including a green mana that's needed to mutate Nethroi plus more. If you're using a combo that requires attacking with Nethroi or another creature then consider adding Culling since it can clear the battlefield of all tokens who could be blockers. Culling also destroys many of the best opponent graveyard hate cards Rest in Peace, Ground Seal, Scavenging Ooze, Grafdigger's Cage, Weathered Runestone, etc.

Speaking of graveyard hate that exiles that's why I'm playing Riftsweeper. It has a unique ETB trigger that lets me remove an exiled card putting back into my library. That's also why I'm playing Elixir of Immortality to combat against exiling of my entire graveyard since in response I can shuffle my graveyard back into my library. This is mostly to combat Bojuka Bog and Scavenger Grounds, the most played graveyard hate in Commander.

Slashdance on Woodland's Wrath

8 months ago

The Bond Beetle was to sub in for the Young Wolf if I need to also put in Grafdigger's Cage. I'll see what I can do, or maybe I just won't use Grafdigger's ... it seems a little problematic with the deck atm. Not sure, lol.