Gruesome Menagerie
Sorcery
Choose a creature card with mana value 1 in your graveyard, then do the same for creature cards with mana value 2 and 3. Return those cards to the battlefield.
- CMC
- 5
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Guilds of Ravnica Promos
- Price
- —
- EDHREC rank
- #20263
Gruesome Menagerie returns one creature each of power 1, 2, and 3 from your graveyard simultaneously — that's three bodies for five mana at sorcery speed. It's a niche but powerful reanimation spell in decks that deliberately fill their graveyard with small creatures and want the whole engine back at once.
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 | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Gruesome Menagerie is almost exclusively a Commander card — the format's slower pace and graveyard-centric strategies give it the context it needs to shine. In competitive 60-card formats like Modern and Legacy, the five-mana cost and the strict 1/2/3-power requirement make it too conditional when Unburial Rites, Reanimate, and similar spells exist. Pioneer is similarly unforgiving; Gruesome Menagerie would need a very specific aristocrats shell to justify the slot over cheaper alternatives. In Commander, though, that restriction is actually a deckbuilding constraint that rewards you — build around it and you get three creatures for five mana, which is exceptional value in a format where card advantage scales with each body you recover.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
unknown tier
Current pricing data for Gruesome Menagerie isn't confirmed in this listing, but it's a bulk rare from a large set that saw wide print, so expect it to sit in the $0.25–$1.00 range at most vendors. It's worth picking up purely on spec for any aristocrats or graveyard-value Commander deck — the ceiling on its utility is high and the floor on its price is low.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.