Shadow of the Grave
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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
Historic Brawl Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planar Constructed Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Shadow of the Grave

Instant

Return to your hand all cards in your graveyard that you cycled or discarded this turn.

shadowjules on Budget Cycle Storm

1 month ago

Hey QuantumGeckoGuy! Very cool deck man, I tinkered with something like this for a while as well.

I tinkered with a similar concept for ages. Instead of looking to scale with Drannith Stinger and Marauding Mako, mine had a combo win with Lotleth Giant, and a secondary beatdown plan with Hollow One and Chitin Gravestalker. The deck DESPERATELY needs to cut down as much as humanly possible on any card without cycling. I think running Dark Ritual is a mistake, as you can get similar results with 4 copies of Lotus Petal - when churning through your deck, you can combo off so much earlier with you effectively know you can consistently find free bursts of 1 mana to cast Songs of the Damned. The difference between your bursts of mana costing (1) and costing (0) is huge. Running Lotus Petal is extra good when accompanied by a suite of (1) cost cyclers. Drannith Stinger is a good start, but I would run every creature with a (1) mana cycling ability ever printed - it just adds a crazy amount of consistency. I've found that 38 to 40 creatures with cycling in the deck is ideal for a 1 turn combo kill.

Finding lands is extra easy with cards like Troll of Khazad-dum and Oliphaunt. With the amount of cards that cycling lets you see, you really don't want to mulligan. These landcycling cards are huge because they often allow you a turn 1 tutor of a land in the early game (Troll of Khazad-dum gets you Fetid Pools and Oliphaunt gets you Canyon Slough). You can tutor for a land turn one either with an untapped Ash Barrens or the strict upgrade in Capital City that also filters your mana, or again with a turn 1 Lotus Petal. Later in the game, the land cyclers are never dead draws, because they tutor for a dual land, that also ends up cycling away, letting you see more cards and remove more lands from your deck as you combo off.

Crucially for the combo win, Lotleth Giant only cares about creatures in your graveyard, so do keep that in mind when comboing off. I tend to split my graveyard into two piles - 1 with creatures and 1 with noncreature spells (cycled lands, lotus petals, and so on). The combo turn needs to resolve a Songs of the Damned to cast Lotleth Giant usually, but thats not always super hard. A sideboard tech of Miscalculation really helps protect this here. Also 2 Shadow of the Grave is usually enough to stop your deck from running out of steam, especially since you run out of steam after seeing like around 30-40 cards in your deck. Again, Lotus Petal is so useful here.

Finally, I've found that you CAN run 3 fluctuators and not 4 if you're able to have a split of cycling cards with a low enough curve. This deck really wants to minimize the turns it spends not spending mana, so again, Ash Barrens and Capital City not entering tapped is really important, same for your Lotus Petal. These untapped mana sources, along with 1 mana landcyclers and 1 mana cycling creatures gets this deck to be much more consistent and much faster.

Built like this, the Hollow Ones / Chitin Gravestalker Beatdown plan is more of a trick to trip up your opponent rather than a primary win condition. When your opponent plans to counter your big combo turn, dumping 2 4/4s and a 5/4 onto the battlefield really early can be backbreaking. THese are the matchups where something like Drannith Stinger is just a lot less useful as a pinger, and I would think of Marauding Mako and Drannith Stinger as plank cards with cycling rather than win conditions.

This deck has trouble against certain kinds of graveyard hate. It never targets anything in the graveyard, and never looks to play things directly out of your graveyard, so cards like Grafdigger's Cage and Soulless Jailer don't do anything. But cards that exile our whole graveyard or stop cards from getting to the graveyard (Rest in Piece / Leyline of the Void / Soul-Guide Lantern) make the Lolteth gameplan obsolete. Sideboarding in Ominous Seas still turns out cycling card draw into massive beaters, and this can still let us combo into two or three 8/8s to threaten a short clock.

The deck has some potential and honestly is a ton of fun to tinker with. I've been iterating on it for ages myself. Here's my list if you're at all curious (Ignore the silly name and out-of-date descriptions, its a little messy and I started it 5 years ago in high school). Deck: deck-large:cycling-coombo-deck

CommanderNeyo on Budget Cycle Storm

1 month ago

Also, you could consider a couple copies of Shadow of the Grave, maybe dropping (2) of Reaping the Graves?

Have you also considered Cabal Ritual to go along with the Dark Rituals? I think they are fairly pricey, so might be out of the budget range.

Andramalech on i.Stab

3 months ago

Balaam__ that's another great example of clunky gameplay on my part- so I swing in combat phase prior to casting the Shadow of the Grave, awaiting damage to go through. Post-combat I cast SOTG in order to refill my hand and dump from it the fodder I won't be needing in the following turn. Bit of a rudimentary and super sucky Scroll Rack type of effect.

Balaam__ on i.Stab

3 months ago

It’s pretty tight, all things considered. You’ve got plenty of pseudo-draw, cycling keeps things moving forward while fortifying what’s in play, and there are only very minor instances of disharmony like Shadow of the Grave temporarily kneecapping Vile Manifestation until you get some more cycling cards back in the discard pile.

DeinoStinkus on Count the Bells, Heed the Chimes

2 years ago

God-Eternal-Magic-Player it actually has a fairly decent win rate so far. The issue is that despite its incredibly expensive mana base, it can't really compete with 9-10 level decks. I'd place it at about a 7 or an 8, and it absolutely depends on how fast you can get the sphinx out. Once the sphinx drops, you are almost completely guaranteed to win that turn because of all the wheels and of course the approaches, but it's all about that speed. I've been trying to slot in some quick countermagic to protect the combo but it's still fairly fallible. Currently I have to rely a lot on people not thinking the sphinx is a legible threat, and then activating the ability (since it's rare to see activated ability countermagic).

The ultimate glass cannon deck I suppose xD

king-saproling I completely forgot that Street Wraith was a creature X(

I added Gitaxian Probe and thought "oh hey Street Wraith is samesies" without considering the consequences, lol.

I really like Shadow of the Grave. Thinking on it a bit more now I think LED would be a fine addition as well. Mastery is a bit strange but could definitely serve as an alternate wincon. 120 damage to each opponent is certainly nothing to scoff at!!

king-saproling on Count the Bells, Heed the Chimes

2 years ago

So cool! Never thought I'd see Sphinx of the Chimes in EDH. Personally I'd cut Street Wraith due to the risk of hitting it with The Bridge.

You might like these: Shadow of the Grave, Lion's Eye Diamond, Mizzix's Mastery

immakinganezehaldeck on Anje Reanimator (Casual CEDH)

2 years ago

11/23/22 - Madness update

I'm really low on madness cards. Needs to be far higher for an anje deck.

IN

OUT

NOTES

Removed most end game threats + interaction that didn't have madness, since madness tech needs to be there in high density and the deck can win through that stuff mainly.

Andramalech on MBD Zombie

2 years ago

Balaam__ I agree about building towards a goal that is non-traditional:

Building to win is so Spike, and I wanna win like Timmy or Johnny. I personally think this deck is more Johnny because at first glance.. you might miss some of these key interactions!

I.e.: things like how Zombie Infestation makes bodies that can be tossed for Scourge of Nel Toth, and then replenish your hand with Shadow of the Grave.

Boneyard Scourge is a cool card, but admittedly it isn't eternal format legal... that doesn't mean I won't use his happy ass anyways!

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