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Ascend from Avernus

Sorcery

Return all creature and planeswalker cards with mana value X or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. Exile Ascend from Avernus.

CMC
3
Mana cost
{X}{W}{W}{W}
Color identity
W
Rarity
rare
Set
Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate
Price
$3.80
EDHREC rank
#2487
Buy on TCGplayer
Ascend from Avernus card art
Ascend from Avernus returns every creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield — a full-board reconstruction for five mana that ends games when your table has traded off. The cost is real but the payoff dwarfs anything Polukranos Reborn or Goblin Bombardment do in isolation, since those cards exist specifically to fill the graveyard this spell then cashes in.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01

Polukranos Reborn

43.2% of decks · synergy 0.41

Polukranos Reborn mills aggressively and flips into a reanimation-adjacent threat, making Ascend from Avernus the natural endgame — mill your creatures in, then rebuy the entire pile at once.

02
Amalia Benavides Aguirre

Amalia Benavides Aguirre

41.1% of decks · synergy 0.38

Amalia Benavides Aguirre builds a graveyard through life-gain triggers and board wipes, and Ascend from Avernus converts that pile into a second army that resets the explore engine from scratch.

03

Joshua, Phoenix's Dominant

26.6% of decks · synergy 0.25

Joshua, Phoenix's Dominant rewards recurring creatures, and Ascend from Avernus functions as the ultimate reset button — everything that died comes back swinging, triggering Joshua's abilities all over again.

04
Delney, Streetwise Lookout

Delney, Streetwise Lookout

29.7% of decks · synergy 0.24

Delney, Streetwise Lookout cares about low-power creatures that die often and cheaply, so Ascend from Avernus refilling the board with that whole suite represents a massive tempo swing in a single spell.

05
Preston, the Vanisher

Preston, the Vanisher

23.2% of decks · synergy 0.18

Preston, the Vanisher generates illusion tokens when nontoken creatures enter, meaning Ascend from Avernus turning a full graveyard into a wave of ETBs effectively doubles the creature count the moment it resolves.

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 Ascend from Avernus does its best work — 100-card decks enable deep graveyards by mid-game, and a single resolved copy can single-handedly win a pod that has spent removal and board wipes keeping your threats in check. The spell is legal in Legacy and Vintage, but neither format has the time or inclination to spend five mana on a graveyard rebuild when faster, more redundant lines exist. Oathbreaker offers a middle ground: smaller decks mean shallower graveyards, but the 20-life starting total and faster clock make Ascend from Avernus a reasonable one-of finisher in the right shell. Outside those formats it's irrelevant, and that's fine — it was designed for the long game Commander enables.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$3.80 cheap tier

At $3.80, Ascend from Avernus sits in the sweet spot where the effect is powerful enough to deserve a slot but cheap enough to include without budget anxiety. Demand from graveyard commanders keeps steady pressure on the price, so this is unlikely to crater — it's a card you buy to play, not to trade away.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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