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Chthonian Nightmare

Enchantment

When this enchantment enters, you get {E}{E}{E} (three energy counters).
Pay X {E}, Sacrifice a creature, Return this enchantment to its owner's hand: Return target creature card with mana value X from your graveyard to the battlefield. Activate only as a sorcery.

CMC
2
Mana cost
{1}{B}
Color identity
B
Rarity
rare
Set
Modern Horizons 3
Price
$0.40
EDHREC rank
#2204
Buy on TCGplayer
Chthonian Nightmare card art
Chthonian Nightmare is a repeatable reanimation engine that snowballs fast — pay two life and sacrifice a creature to reanimate something bigger from your graveyard, then keep climbing the curve as long as you can feed it. The cost is real: you're losing creatures and life every activation, so without a source of free fodder like Priest of Gix, the card eats itself. In Rakdos, the Muscle shells that generate expendable bodies, it's a four-mana engine that closes games.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Rakdos, the Muscle

Rakdos, the Muscle

37.4% of decks · synergy 0.35

Rakdos, the Muscle wants to swing wide with expendable creatures, and Chthonian Nightmare turns every sacrificed attacker into a bigger threat pulled from the graveyard — the two cards form a natural climb-the-curve loop.

02

Grist, Voracious Larva

27.3% of decks · synergy 0.25

Grist, Voracious Larva mills and generates Insect tokens at scale, giving Chthonian Nightmare a constant stream of cheap fodder to sacrifice while the graveyard fills with reanimation targets simultaneously.

03
Lurrus of the Dream-Den

Lurrus of the Dream-Den

19.9% of decks · synergy 0.17

Lurrus of the Dream-Den operates in low-CMC shells where Chthonian Nightmare's two-life-and-a-creature cost is manageable, and together they create a recursive value loop — Lurrus replaying permanents while the Nightmare engines up the size of what comes back.

04

Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER

16.9% of decks · synergy 0.13

Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER accumulates counters through combat and death triggers, and Chthonian Nightmare accelerates the gameplan by converting small blockers and early plays into progressively larger threats from the graveyard.

05
Teysa, Orzhov Scion

Teysa, Orzhov Scion

15.3% of decks · synergy 0.13

Teysa, Orzhov Scion generates white creature tokens on black creature deaths, which means every Chthonian Nightmare activation also nets a fresh sacrifice target — the two cards create a self-sustaining loop with any drain or payoff on board.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

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

Commander is where Chthonian Nightmare does its best work — 100-card graveyard density means reanimation targets are plentiful, and the life payment is trivial at 40 life. In Legacy and Vintage, it's legal but competes with faster, unconditional reanimation like Reanimate and Animate Dead, so it rarely makes the cut outside of combo shells that specifically need a repeatable trigger. Modern is the same story: the four-mana investment and creature sacrifice cost are too steep when one-shot reanimation is cheaper. Chthonian Nightmare is not legal in Pioneer, Standard, or Pauper, which together represent the majority of competitive paper play.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.40 bulk tier

At $0.40, Chthonian Nightmare sits firmly in bulk territory — easy to pick up as a throw-in or from a bargain bin. Bulk rares with genuine combo potential tend to creep up if they break into a popular archetype, but at this price there's no reason to wait if the card fits your build.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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