Grapple with the Past
Instant
Mill three cards, then you may return a creature or land card from your graveyard to your hand. (To mill three cards, put the top three cards of your library into your graveyard.)
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- G
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Double Masters 2022
- Price
- $0.28
- EDHREC rank
- #2110
Grapple with the Past mills three cards and returns a creature or land from your graveyard to hand for two mana at instant speed — that's a lot of card selection packed into one cheap spell. Against Winter, Cynical Opportunist decks it's nearly automatic inclusion, but any graveyard-matters shell that wants to self-mill and recur threats should be running it.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Winter, Cynical Opportunist
Winter, Cynical Opportunist wants to fill the graveyard and recur permanents repeatedly, and Grapple with the Past does both in one spell — mill three to load the yard, then pull back a key creature or land on the opponent's end step.
Disa the Restless
Disa the Restless rewards you for having Lhurgoyfs and other graveyard-count payoffs, and Grapple with the Past accelerates that count while letting you recover a specific threat you've already milled past.
Teval, the Balanced Scale
Teval, the Balanced Scale cares about cards in graveyards as a resource, and Grapple with the Past mills three at instant speed to trigger threshold effects while keeping a creature or land within reach for retrieval.
Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis
Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis needs creatures in the graveyard to convoke and delve into play, and Grapple with the Past feeds that count while recovering a land drop you need to keep casting spells around it.
Aatchik, Emerald Radian
Aatchik, Emerald Radian builds around instants and sorceries that interact with the graveyard, and Grapple with the Past slots in as a cheap instant-speed mill piece that doubles as recursion when the right permanent surfaces.
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 | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Commander is where Grapple with the Past earns its keep — the 100-card singleton format is full of graveyard synergy decks that want cheap, flexible self-mill, and instant speed lets you mill into an answer at the end of the turn before yours. In Pauper it's a commons-legal value piece that sees fringe play in graveyard brews but competes with more efficient options. Modern and Pioneer have enough dedicated graveyard payoffs that it occasionally appears in casual builds, though the power ceiling of those formats pushes players toward cards that do more per mana. Legacy and Vintage have no real use for it — two mana for three cards milled is far too slow in those environments.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.28 bulk tier
At $0.28, Grapple with the Past is pure bulk — a card you pick up out of a commons box without thinking twice. Bulk commons with consistent graveyard-deck demand tend to stay flat, so there's no reason to expect movement in either direction.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.