Unearth

Sorcery

Return target creature card with converted mana cost 3 or less from your graveyard to battlefield.

Cycling (, Discard this card: Draw a card.)

Discussion (43)

I_Want_To_PlayAllTheDecks on Squirrels in legacy

23 hours ago

So I was actually thinking about what each color pairing brings to the table, mono-green is classic and cheap, UG is probably the best and has the most good cards and control but is expensive, BG has cards like Unearth and disruption, RG has the ability to pseudo-combo, and WG has Intangible Virtue. Which one is best?

CommandOmega on Scars

1 day ago

I'm sorry to say that your combo might not work. Illness in the Ranks seems to provide an anthem effect that doesn't actually put counters on creatures. It only reduces their power and toughness, which just hurts your own efforts. I think that you might want to take out some other cards as well so you can put some better ones in. Here are my suggestions:

• Remove 4x Weirding Wood for 4x Utopia Sprawl

• Remove 4x Juvenile Gloomwidow for 4x Devoted Druid

• Remove 4x Illness in the Ranks for 4x Ammit Eternal

• Remove 4x Scarscale Ritual for 4x Unearth

• Remove 3x Defiant Greatmaw for 3x Dusk Urchins

• Remove 4x Jungle Hollow for 2x Castle Locthwain and 2x Castle Garenbrig

Dusk Urchins and Castle Locthwain draws you more cards, and you can cast Unearth on it to bring it back as well as a bunch of other things. Devoted Druid is good for getting you more mana, and Utopia Sprawl is more efficient than Weirding Wood. Ammit Eternal is pretty good as well, as it gets you tons of value from your Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons and Nest of Scarabs. I recommend putting Scarscale Ritual into your sideboard since you don't have one right now. I get the feeling that you're trying to go for a budget build, but you might want to try to put in 4 copies of Overgrown Tomb in place of 2 Swamps and 2 Forests. If you don't want to spend the money on those, I suggest that you put in 4 Zagoth Triomes instead. You might also want to take a look at on Scryfall to check out other possibilities.

Daedalus19876 on To Drown the World in Death: Araumi EDH [PRIMER]

2 days ago

Testing out some temporary changes: Dakmor Salvage, Golgari Thug, Darkblast, Body Double, Fierce Guardianship, Obsessive Stitcher, and Unearth over Basalt Monolith, Demonic Tutor, Mana Drain, Notion Thief, Court of Cunning, Academy Ruins, and Forbid.

HalbrechtHalbrecht on BLACK ZOMBIE

1 week ago

I love Zombies! Probably one of the first tribes that got me interested in tribal decks, after I saw the power of my friend's Zombie deck. +1 from me just for Zombies!

Question 0: Before we can offer any meaningful help, we need to know if you truly mean this to be a deck for the Modern format? Or will it be casual and you won't care about format that much?

(As an aside, when I first started Magic and joined T/O, I didn't really understand that Modern was a competitive format and I just labeled any deck that could be legal in Modern as Modern. LoL. Pretty sure some of my decks on T/O still mistakenly have Modern set when really they should be Casual!)

I'm going to offer my advice assuming you want it to be Modern, but if you're going more for a casual build, then feel free to ignore some of this.

Game Plan

First, the deck is trying to do too many things — zombie tribal, self-mill, graveyard recursion, graveyard exiling, "swamps matter", tokens, devotion — some of which don't really complement each other. If you want to streamline it for Modern, you'll have to choose a more focused direction.

I would remove the "swamps matter" subtheme, as you don't really have ways to dump extra swamps onto the battlefield nor do you take full advantage of it (where is Defile for example?). Korlash might be worth keeping, since he's a zombie, but get rid of both Nightmare and Squelching Leeches, as they're not even zombies and they're on the higher end of CMC. Personally, I'd get rid of Lashwrithe as well, but if you really love the card and want to keep it, at least you can equip that to a zombie.

Then I would choose between full-on zombie tribal including tokens, or devotion and recursion. Neither of the latter play nicely with tokens, which don't have mana costs for devotion or stay in the graveyard for recursion. A few incidental tokens are fine, but cards like Moan of the Unhallowed and Shamble Back are not synergistic at all with devotion/recursion.

Next, are you more interested in recurring your graveyard or exiling it for tokens? I.e. do you want to do Ghoulraiser, Gravecrawler, Lord of the Undead, etc., or do you want to do Cemetery Reaper, Graveyard Marshal, Tymaret, etc.? You can't do both. Personally, I'd go the recursion route, add more ways to sac your zombies for value, and cycle them in and out of the graveyard at will.

So in summary, I would go with 1) zombie aggro including tokens, or 2) zombie recursion, with a subtheme of devotion for Gray Merchant. Going either route, I'd cut Nightmare, Leeches, Lashwrithe, and Tymaret (he's not a zombie, and provides only inefficient graveyard hate). If you go route 2, I'd also cut the sorceries Moan and Shamble. That's at minimum 8 cards out. What you add depends on which game plan you choose.

Other Zombies

You're missing some other great zombie lords: Death Baron, Lord of the Accursed, Undead Warchief, and even Risen Executioner. While not a creature, Graf Harvest gives them all menace.

Relentless Dead and Unbreathing Horde are difficult to get rid of, the former because it can easily come back to hand (and bring a friend), the latter because of his damage prevention clause.

Graveborn Muse can provide some serious card advantage. Geralf's Messenger is amazing for devotion, he drains a little himself, and he's hard to get rid of.

If you go the route of cycling your zombies in and out of your graveyard, consider Undead Augur, Plague Belcher, and Quest for the Gravelord.

Misc. Comments

In place of Cemetery Recruitment, I'd run Ghoulcaller's Chant or Unearth. The latter is particularly good if you cut all your 4+ CMC creatures except for Gray Merchant (so aside from the cards I said to cut under "Game Plan", you'd also cut Korlash and Sidisi, which I think are good cuts anyways).

You didn't label this deck as "budget", so if you can afford it, Cavern of Souls is a must-include land in any tribal deck.

I don't like Sands of Delirium. It's only function is self-mill and there's more efficient ways to do self-mill. You also currently don't take full advantage of self-mill, with things like Dredge or Flashback-style effects. If you go full force into graveyard synergies, then self-mill is important, but even then, I'd play Stitcher's Supplier over Sands. For 1 mana, you can easily get 6 cards into your graveyard, and you can easily recur him, and he's a zombie that can attack. That would take 9 mana with Sands, which is just a dead artifact.

Lastly, some sacrifice options: Gnawing Zombie isn't amazing, but the effect is relevant. I would replace Sign in Blood with Village Rites — same card draw, but one less mana, instant speed, and no life loss. You also have cards that like to die, like Festering Mummy, Black Cat, Tattered Mummy, and the above-mentioned Stitcher's Supplier.

Sorry for the wall of text. I just love zombies! So I hope at least something in there was useful.

Goblin_Guide on Munch

1 week ago

Aaah MAN I can NOT beLIEVE I forgot about Hymn to Tourach, I'm so disappointed in myself.

The comment about the interaction is totally true, I really wanted to try out the strategy of suicide black and didn't really think about interaction too much. I'll probably take your advice and add in some Dismember and some Inquisition of Kozilek, those are both pretty good and well within budget range for me.

Cling to Dust is pretty good, I'll try it out in place of Cremate, the reason I have those (and Aphotic Wisps) is because I just really love cantrip effects; mostly irrational, but I like them nonetheless.

Rouse is really fun as a combat trick with a Death's Shadow, but you might be right about it not having high enough impact on the game; maybe I'll try out Cruel Bargain instead. But, only a couple, I want to keep the CMC down, the other slots will likely be for interaction.

I really enjoy playing Village Rites just as a card, especially post combat with it being the only card in my hand, but yes, it is a really really bad topdeck. I might cut some number for other card draw, but if I ever do end up with Unearth in the main I will likely bump the number up again.

Speaking of Unearth, yes, the sideboard is more of a maybeboard; it's filled mostly with cards I enjoy playing in this strategy, or just don't have room for.

For more removal, I'll mix it up with an assortment of some of the cards you suggested.

Thanks so much for the suggestions Draly, I have virtually no experience with the legacy format so it's nice to have someone with insight to offer.

sergiodelrio on Durkka durkka

2 weeks ago

Here are some ideas you might like:

Vexing Devil is all upside in your deck.

Then, maybe think of other cards that bring back creatures from the grave like Unearth. I don't like undying evil because you only have a tiny window to cast it. Cauldron Haze could be interesting also.

Then, you might want some creature that can bring back themselves from the grave, like Gravecrawler. You'll find a lot more on Gatherer.

Then, you might want a sac outlet like Viscera Seer in case your opponents don't kill enough of your stuff or exile them.

Village Rites is card advantage.

Finally, Spark Harvest over Bone Splinters all day every day.

Happy Brewing!

ellie-is on Ellie's Rats

2 weeks ago

HalbrechtHalbrecht: Thank you for the upvote and comment!!

Rats are great. Feel free to borrow as much as you'd like from this!

I still think Marrow Gnawer is a little slow, mainly because it can't tap when you play it. Best case scenario, I'll have five mana by T5 (39%/29% chance with my 19 lands depending whether or not I'm on the draw), and then tap it on T6 to double my rats. That's already too slow for a Modern wincon if you're not playing control, but in actuality it's going to take way longer than T5 to play it on most games due to the land count. So bringing it in would require me to change up the mana base as well and that'd change the strategy way too much.

In addition to that, I really dislike the Nezumi, hahahaha. I'll run one if I absolutely need to, but if they can be avoided I will. One of my least favorite tribes of animal people, and just do not look right next to all the cute little rats in the deck. (I also purposefully avoid diseased or zombie looking rats, haha. Just realized the art for Typhoid Rats up there was that horrible Khans of Takir one, but I just fixed it to the MB1/M15/Innistrad art I actually own, haha). That said, I do allow changelings, because they're one of my favorite tribes and I just love the idea of this amorphous person stumbling upon a pack of rats and deciding to live as one of them.

Those black counterspells seem like a really fun idea! I don't know if I can make room for them but I'll definitely think about it. Way back in the day I ran Avoid Fate on a monogreen deck and it always caught people off guard, it was wonderful.

Unearth rocks! Definitely the addition to this version of the deck that I'm most happy with, it just does so much work. If you want even more recursion for your deck, Claim is great as well. I actually ran Call to the Netherworld in the very first of version of this deck that included Pack Rat and while on a good day it worked exactly as you described, overall it was a bit of a risky gimmick choice—it only works with Pack Rat (here at least, in that deck I had some rats that caused mass discard but even then a lot of the time it wasn't doing that much work), while Unearth can bring back removed Rat Colonys too. In addition to that there's the Cycling as you said! Unearth is never a dead card while Call is almost always one.

I really like Fiend Artisan out of those sac outlets you suggested! I like how it goes to the battlefield instead of the hand and can be repeated every turn. I used to run Shred Memory just to search for pack rats haha, but that was before Rat Colony and now I'm way more likely to have -something- to attack with, at least. Sadly it's far from being budget friendly, but I might playtest it and see how I feel about bringing it in in the future!

As for the Time Spiral cards! I live in Brazil. It's easy to find older pre-modern cards in Portuguese, and everything after Time Spiral is easy to find in Portuguese and relatively easy to find in English (I prefer English cards to keep my decks all in one language, plus I'm not always happy with how they translate some things haha), but for some reason all the stores have a VERY small amount of Time Spiral cards in either language, when they have them at all. And most of the time they're in horrible condition. I have absolutely no idea why this happens! I'll probably have to get my Swarmyards overseas eventually, but waiting months for cards to arrive (or paying for them in dollars right now) sucks haha. My best hope is that they'll reprint it at some point soon, maybe in a Commander set or something like that!

HalbrechtHalbrecht on Ellie's Rats

2 weeks ago

Thanks for your help on my deck; I thought I'd return the favor!

First of all, +1 from me for rats! I've been working on a rats deck off and on for a while now, and I'll be taking some notes from your deck. ;)

Late-Game & Threat Protection

So I know you said you're avoiding the high-CMC dudes like Ogre Slumlord in this version... but are you suuuuuure you don't want 1x Marrow-Gnawer??? I just think in a deck like this that's dropping so many rats, it makes for a great late-game play. In the right matchups, just dropping it and giving your rats Fear might win the game (though obviously side it out against opponents playing black / lots of artifact creatures). But if it can stick around one turn and get back to you, man, that tap ability will seal your victory. Obviously the issue with that is it'll be a major target for removal (assuming they haven't already used up their removal on your Pack Rats / Pipers), but on that note, consider....

Counter magic. Yep, in black. I've been playing around with both Imp's Mischief and Dash Hopes, but I think in the case of protecting specific threats like Pack Rat or Gnawer, I'd go with the former. No one sees it coming in black, so it can make for great game 1 blowouts.

Recursion

Now, I love your Unearth find, and I'm thinking of trying it in my deck, but have you considered Call to the Netherworld as a discard target for Pack Rat? I know returning to play is better than to hand, usually, but hear me out:

• With Unearth: You discard creature 1 to Pack Rat, pay 1 mana for Unearth, then discard creature 2 for another Pack Rat.
• With Netherworld: You discard creature 1 to Pack Rat, discard Netherworld for another Pack Rat which you cast for free to return creature 1, and then you play creature 1 for 1-2 mana (you still have creature 2 in your hand).

The net result is that you pay the same or one more mana (depending on which creature you bring back), but you only use 2 cards to achieve two activations of Pack Rat plus an extra rat in play, rather than 3 cards. In other words, you have creature 1 in play and creature 2 in hand rather than creature 1 in play and creature 2 in the yard. I wouldn't recommend it if you had a lot of 3-CMC rats, but in your case, I think it's actually marginally better.

What I'm completely ignoring in that comparison is the Cycling on Unearth. Count how many times you actually cycle it instead of cast it, and consider that as well. Guess it might be matchup dependent.

Sac Outlet

In my deck, I haven't been keeping it format specific, so as my sac outlet, I'm using Diabolic Intent. It's perfect for getting the Pack Rat engine going, grabbing a late-game Merrow-Gnawer, searching up a removal spell, or just going for a big mana turn by tutoring a Cabal Coffers. Sadly, it's not Modern-legal!

Instead, I looked through all the free sac effects (either as an activation on a permanent or as an additional cost on a spell), and the best one I think is Village Rites. It's only 1 mana, it turns on BOTH Tragic Slip's Morbid and Fatal Push's Revolt, it's instant-speed so it pairs nicely with that removal, and it adds card draw to your deck, which is great in a deck where you empty out your hand quickly due to a low curve and discard effects.

The only other option I found is Fiend Artisan. Not a rat, unfortunately, but it's the closest thing to Diabolic Intent you can get in Modern. It not only provides a sac outlet, but it also tutors straight to the battlefield, and because of your low curve, you'll only ever be paying 2-3 mana.

Well, that about does it for me. I ended up writing quite a lot more than I originally thought I would, hence adding the accordion, so I hope at least something in all that rambling helped!

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P.S. If you don't mind me prying, where do you live that Time Spiral cards are hard to come by? Feel free to ignore entirely if you'd rather keep your location private. :)