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Afterlife from the Loam

Sorcery

Delve (Each card you exile from your graveyard while casting this spell pays for {1}.)
For each player, choose up to one target creature card in that player's graveyard. Put those cards onto the battlefield under your control. They're Zombies in addition to their other types.

CMC
8
Mana cost
{5}{B}{B}{B}
Color identity
B
Rarity
rare
Set
Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander
Price
$1.49
EDHREC rank
#4510
Buy on TCGplayer
Afterlife from the Loam card art
Afterlife from the Loam is a recursive threat engine — it brings back creatures from your graveyard while generating tokens, and it chains off sacrifice payoffs like Pitiless Plunderer to keep the loop self-funding. The cost is real: you need a stocked graveyard and the right shell, but Teval, the Balanced Scale decks meet both conditions naturally.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Teval, the Balanced Scale

Teval, the Balanced Scale

46.3% of decks · synergy 0.39

Teval, the Balanced Scale mills cards into the graveyard as a baseline function, which means Afterlife from the Loam arrives with targets already waiting — recurring creatures while generating tokens feeds both the sacrifice and card-type piles Teval rewards.

02
Hidetsugu and Kairi

Hidetsugu and Kairi

21.7% of decks · synergy 0.20

Hidetsugu and Kairi puts cards into the graveyard every time it deals combat damage, giving Afterlife from the Loam a steady stream of recursion targets to rebuy the most expensive spell in the bin.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern not legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Commander is where Afterlife from the Loam does its best work — 100-card singleton games run long enough for the graveyard to fill up, and the token generation compounds across a full table. In Legacy and Vintage it's technically legal but faces a pace problem: those formats punish slow, setup-dependent value cards harshly, and graveyard hate is ubiquitous. Modern, Pioneer, Standard, and Pauper are all off the table. Oathbreaker is the one non-Commander format where it could see play, since the lower life totals and faster clock still allow graveyard synergy decks to exist.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

92 decks
Afterlife from the LoamPitiless PlundererAshnod's AltarEternal Witness

Afterlife from the LoamPitiless PlundererAshnod's AltarEternal Witness

Infinite LTB; Infinite ETB; Infinite colored mana; Infinite sacrifice triggers; Infinite death triggers; Infinite colorless mana; Infinite storm count; Infinite magecraft triggers; Infinite Treasure tokens; Infinite recursion of creature cards in your graveyard

View combo details →

Price Context

Current price

$1.49 cheap tier

At $1.49, Afterlife from the Loam sits in the budget-staple tier — cheap enough to slot into any graveyard deck without deliberation. Demand from Teval lists is high enough that the price is unlikely to crater further, so picking up copies now is straightforward math.

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Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.