Champion of Stray Souls
Creature — Skeleton Warrior
, 
, Sacrifice X other creatures: Return X target creature cards from your graveyard to the battlefield.
: Put this card from your graveyard on top of your library.
- CMC
- 6
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- mythic
- Set
- Commander 2015
- Price
- $0.30
- EDHREC rank
- #14082
Champion of Stray Souls is a reanimation engine that pays for itself over time — sacrifice fodder becomes battlefield presence, and its activated ability can swap an entire graveyard's worth of creatures back into play for the right price. The cost is steep: six mana to cast, another three plus tapping plus sacrifices to activate, so it earns a slot only in decks that were already planning to flood the yard.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Champion of Stray Souls is a Commander card through and through — the six-mana body and three-mana-plus-sacrifice activation are calibrated for a format where games run long enough to recoup that investment. In Modern and Legacy, the rate is simply too slow; reanimation spells like Persist or Reanimate do the same job for a fraction of the mana and don't require sacrificing your own board. Pioneer has access to cheaper reanimation payoffs that see actual competitive play, so Champion of Stray Souls doesn't crack lists there either. In Commander, it finds a real home as both a value engine and a one-card reanimation plan in Zombie, aristocrats, or sacrifice decks that can reliably stock the graveyard and generate sacrifice fodder.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.30 bulk tier
At $0.30, Champion of Stray Souls is deep bulk — the kind of card you pick up in a trade binder without thinking about it. The price is stable because demand is narrow and supply is healthy, so don't expect movement in either direction.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.