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Garrison Excavator

Creature — Orc Sorcerer

Menace (This creature can't be blocked except by two or more creatures.)
Whenever one or more cards leave your graveyard, create a 2/2 red and white Spirit creature token.

CMC
4
Mana cost
{3}{R}
Color identity
R
Rarity
uncommon
Set
Secrets of Strixhaven
Price
$0.16
EDHREC rank
#19548
Buy on TCGplayer
Garrison Excavator card art
Garrison Excavator turns every sacrifice into a graveyard dig, generating card advantage and fueling recursive engines at virtually no cost. Pair it with Phyrexian Altar and you're converting creature deaths into mana and fresh ammunition simultaneously — Quintorius, History Chaser in particular loves the stream of exiled and recurred cards this loop generates.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Quintorius, History Chaser

Quintorius, History Chaser

21.1% of decks · synergy 0.18

Quintorius, History Chaser triggers whenever a spell is cast from anywhere other than hand, so Garrison Excavator's constant stream of cards exiled from the top of the library feeds directly into damage pings and recursive value every time those cards get cast.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

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

Garrison Excavator's home is Commander, where sacrifice synergies are abundant and graveyard engines thrive across long games. In competitive 60-card formats like Modern and Pioneer it's too slow and parasitic — it needs a sacrifice outlet already in play to do anything, which is a lot of infrastructure for a three-drop with no immediate impact. Legacy and Vintage have more broken ways to leverage the graveyard and won't invest three mana in a creature that doesn't win on the spot. Standard is the one format where it could see fringe play if the sacrifice shell exists in the format, but it's fundamentally a build-around card that rewards the patient, grind-oriented game Commander enables best.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.16 bulk tier

At $0.16, Garrison Excavator is pure bulk — easy to acquire as a throw-in or cheap single. Bulk rares with narrow combo applications tend to stay cheap unless a breakout deck puts them on the map, so don't expect movement.

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Sources

Mentioned

← All cards

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