Experimental Lab // Staff Room
Enchantment — Room // Enchantment — Room
When you unlock this door, manifest dread, then put two +1/+1 counters and a trample counter on that creature.
(You may cast either half. That door unlocks on the battlefield. As a sorcery, you may pay the mana cost of a locked door to unlock it.)
- CMC
- 7
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- G
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander
- Price
- $0.28
- EDHREC rank
- #8935
Experimental Lab // Staff Room puts a free spell on top of your library at the start of combat — a meaningful tempo swing that costs nothing beyond the land itself entering tapped. In decks built around topdeck manipulation or cascade, that guaranteed spell access is real card advantage, and Zimone, Mystery Unraveler in particular turns the extra draw into a repeatable engine.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Zimone, Mystery Unraveler
Zimone, Mystery Unraveler draws extra cards whenever you draw beyond your first each turn, so the free spell Experimental Lab // Staff Room deposits on top feeds directly into her trigger engine — you're converting a land slot into card advantage every combat.
Yarus, Roar of the Old Gods
Yarus, Roar of the Old Gods cares about cascading into creatures, and Experimental Lab // Staff Room stacks a free spell on top before attacks, letting Yarus hit it with near-certainty rather than leaving the cascade target to chance.
Kaust, Eyes of the Glade
Kaust, Eyes of the Glade rewards knowing and manipulating the top of the library, and Experimental Lab // Staff Room provides a guaranteed known card there before combat each turn — clean alignment with Kaust's core mechanic.
Vannifar, Evolved Enigma
Vannifar, Evolved Enigma benefits from stacking the top of the library to control what gets revealed or cast, and Experimental Lab // Staff Room does that passively every turn from a land slot, requiring zero extra investment.
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 | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Experimental Lab // Staff Room is a Commander card through and through — the slow enters-tapped penalty is acceptable in a 40-life singleton format where the cumulative value of a free spell every combat compounds over a long game. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but irrelevant; those formats punish tapped lands hard and have no use for a slow value engine that takes multiple turns to pay off. Oathbreaker is where it sees fringe play in the same topdeck-matters shells that want it in Commander. Everywhere else it's either banned by format or simply too slow to matter.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.28 bulk tier
At $0.28, Experimental Lab // Staff Room is bulk, and the price reflects its narrow home — it's a powerful effect but only in specific topdeck-matters builds. Bulk rares with a real niche tend to stay flat rather than spike, so treat it as a cheap pickup for the decks that want it, not a spec.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Zimone, Mystery Unraveler
- Yarus, Roar of the Old Gods
- Kaust, Eyes of the Glade
- Vannifar, Evolved Enigma
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.