Gravelgill Duo
Creature — Merfolk Rogue Warrior
Whenever you cast a blue spell, this creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
Whenever you cast a black spell, this creature gains fear until end of turn. (It can't be blocked except by artifact creatures and/or black creatures.)
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- BU
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Shadowmoor
- Price
- $0.16
- EDHREC rank
- #28694
Gravelgill Duo enters as a 2/1 with both Merfolk and Rogue creature types, and its Kinship ability tacks on a repeatable -1/-1 counter distribution whenever you reveal a matching tribe at your upkeep. The payoff is real in the right tribal shell, but the 2/1 body and the coin-flip nature of Kinship keep it out of any deck that isn't explicitly built around Merfolk or Rogues.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Gravelgill Duo is a Pauper-legal common, and that's the format where it has the most plausible home — Merfolk and Rogue synergies exist at common density, and the Kinship trigger can grind out small creatures over multiple turns. In Commander, the card sees play almost exclusively in tribal builds helmed by Merfolk or Rogue commanders, where the -1/-1 counter output scales with how consistently you can flip a matching creature at upkeep. Legacy and Vintage have the card legal but no competitive reason to run it — those formats demand far more than a 2/1 with an inconsistent upkeep trigger. Oathbreaker follows the same logic as Commander: tribal context required, otherwise cut it.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.16 bulk tier
At $0.16, Gravelgill Duo is deep bulk — you're not paying for power, you're paying for a niche tribal enabler at essentially no cost. It holds that floor price as long as Kinship remains a fringe Commander theme, which is to say indefinitely.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.