Cabal Surgeon
Creature — Human Minion
, 
, Exile two cards from your graveyard: Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Torment
- Price
- $0.11
- EDHREC rank
- #28824
Cabal Surgeon puts a free creature from any graveyard onto the battlefield under your control — the catch is sacrificing it at your next end step, which makes it a one-turn engine or a combo piece rather than a keeper. Run it when you need a body right now, not a body that sticks.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Cabal Surgeon earns its slot in reanimator and sacrifice-value shells that don't care about the end-of-turn clause — if your plan is to sacrifice the stolen creature before cleanup, the drawback evaporates entirely. Pauper is where Cabal Surgeon has the most competitive relevance, since common-legal reanimation is scarce and a repeatable (if temporary) steal effect at this rarity is genuinely powerful in the right shell. Legacy and Vintage have access to far more efficient reanimation, so it won't see serious play there outside of strict budget or format-restriction contexts. Oathbreaker mirrors the Commander read: strong in the right strategy, irrelevant outside it.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.11 bulk tier
At $0.11, Cabal Surgeon is deep bulk — you're grabbing it out of a dollar box or tossing it in a cart as an afterthought. Bulk rares with narrow applications don't tend to move, so don't expect the price to do anything interesting.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.