Grave Upheaval
Sorcery
Put target creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. It gains haste.
Basic landcycling 
(, Discard this card: Search your library for a basic land card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle.)
- CMC
- 6
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- BR
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Commander 2016
- Price
- $0.54
- EDHREC rank
- #14138
Grave Upheaval puts a creature from any graveyard onto the battlefield under your control with haste — that's a reanimation spell that also fixes mana by cycling a basic land into play. The six-mana cost is real, but Magar of the Magic Strings turns the card into a repeatable engine, making the sticker price almost irrelevant by turn four or five.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Magar of the Magic Strings
Magar of the Magic Strings exiles Grave Upheaval to create a copy whenever a creature deals combat damage, meaning one copy of the spell can fire off every combat step — reanimating a fresh threat each time while the land drop keeps mana flowing.
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 |
Grave Upheaval is a Commander card through and through — the format's slower pace and multiplayer graveyards give it room to breathe, and the land-fetch tacked on means you're never just trading six mana for a creature. In Legacy and Vintage, where it's technically legal, it doesn't come close to competing with faster, cheaper reanimation like Reanimate or Animate Dead. Oathbreaker follows the same logic as Commander: the spell is fine there if your signature spell slot supports a slow midrange game, but it's not a priority inclusion outside dedicated graveyard shells.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.54 bulk tier
At $0.54, Grave Upheaval is firmly bulk — cheap enough to throw into any reanimator list without a second thought. Bulk rare prices at this level rarely climb without a spike in competitive demand that isn't coming here, so buy it now if the slot calls for it and don't expect the price to move.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.