Grisly Salvage
Instant
Reveal the top five cards of your library. You may put a creature or land card from among them into your hand. Put the rest into your graveyard.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- BG
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Commander 2020
- Price
- $0.34
- EDHREC rank
- #1288
Grisly Salvage puts a creature or land in your hand and up to four cards in your graveyard for two mana — that's card selection and self-mill in one shot. It's a staple in any deck that wants the graveyard stocked, and Winter, Cynical Opportunist decks in particular run it at nearly 85% inclusion for exactly that reason.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Winter, Cynical Opportunist
Winter, Cynical Opportunist needs specific creatures in the graveyard to copy with its exploit trigger, and Grisly Salvage finds a creature for hand while binning up to four others — one spell does both halves of the setup work.
Kathril, Aspect Warper
Kathril, Aspect Warper scales directly with the number of keyword-bearing creatures in the graveyard, so Grisly Salvage's mill-five mode is essentially a stat-boost spell that also guarantees you hit a creature or land.
Disa the Restless
Disa the Restless wants Lhurgoyf creatures in the graveyard to reanimate and creatures in the yard to pump them; Grisly Salvage fills both conditions at instant speed for two mana.
Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis
Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis is cast by convoke and delve, so getting creatures into the graveyard fast is the whole game plan — Grisly Salvage is cheap, instant-speed fuel that also guarantees another creature hits hand if needed.
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord gets bigger the more creatures are in the graveyard, and Grisly Salvage is an efficient way to stock the bin while ensuring the next land or threat is in hand to keep the engine moving.
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 |
In Commander, Grisly Salvage is a role-player rather than a staple — it earns its slot in graveyard-centric Golgari builds but gets cut from anything that doesn't actively use the mill. Pauper is where Grisly Salvage shows up most competitively, slotting into graveyard-value decks that need cheap, instant-speed selection. In Modern and Legacy, it's legal but almost never played — those formats have faster, more powerful self-mill options that make Grisly Salvage redundant. Pioneer gives it a slightly better window given a shallower card pool, but it still rarely makes the cut outside niche brews.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.34 bulk tier
At $0.34, Grisly Salvage is deep bulk — there's no price barrier to running it, and copies are everywhere. Bulk commons this widely printed don't move, so grab it from any collection or trade binder and don't think twice about the cost.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.