Lingering Souls
Sorcery
Create two 1/1 white Spirit creature tokens with flying.
Flashback 
(You may cast this card from your graveyard for its flashback cost. Then exile it.)
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- BW
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Modern Masters 2017
- Price
- $0.21
- EDHREC rank
- #5518
Lingering Souls puts four flying bodies on the board across two castings for a combined investment of 1WB — that's an absurd rate. King of the Oathbreakers turns every one of those Spirit tokens into a drain trigger, making this card a cornerstone of the deck rather than mere filler.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
King of the Oathbreakers
King of the Oathbreakers drains each opponent whenever a Spirit enters the battlefield, so the four tokens Lingering Souls produces — two on cast, two on flashback — translate directly into a repeatable life swing every time you recast or recur it.
Thalisse, Reverent Medium
Thalisse, Reverent Medium creates additional tokens at end of turn based on how many tokens you made that turn, so the two Spirits from Lingering Souls on cast and the two from flashback each trigger a fresh wave of Thalisse production.
Silverquill, the Disputant
Silverquill, the Disputant rewards token generation with incremental advantages across combat and political positioning, and Lingering Souls supplies four evasive bodies across two separate spell-cast events — exactly the density Silverquill shells want.
Extus, Oriq Overlord
The Awaken the Blood Avatar half of Extus, Oriq Overlord demands spell fodder in the graveyard, and Lingering Souls' flashback means it occupies the graveyard by design — making it a natural self-fueling piece in the sacrifice-and-recur engine.
Neriv, Crackling Vanguard
Neriv, Crackling Vanguard cares about Spirit tokens specifically, so Lingering Souls delivering four of them — each with flying — plugs directly into Neriv's lord-style buffs and combat math.
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 | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Lingering Souls is a role-player in any Orzhov or Esper token shell — four flying bodies across two castings is unusual efficiency at this cost, and the flashback means graveyard hate has to hit it twice to neutralize it. In Modern, Lingering Souls spent years as a format-defining card in midrange and Death's Shadow lists precisely because it blankets the board against aggro and generates two spells' worth of value from one card slot. Legacy lets it compete too, though the format's speed reduces the window where a 1/1 flier stabilizes anything. Lingering Souls is not legal in Pioneer or Pauper, so those formats are off the table entirely.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.21 bulk tier
At $0.21, Lingering Souls is true bulk — you can pick up a playset for under a dollar, which is remarkable for a card with a Modern and Legacy résumé. The price has stayed low because of wide availability across multiple reprintings, and there's no reason to expect that floor to move.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- King of the Oathbreakers
- Thalisse, Reverent Medium
- Silverquill, the Disputant
- Extus, Oriq Overlord
- Neriv, Crackling Vanguard
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.