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Living Lore

Creature — Avatar

As this creature enters, exile an instant or sorcery card from your graveyard.
Living Lore's power and toughness are each equal to the exiled card's mana value.
Whenever this creature deals combat damage, you may sacrifice it. If you do, you may cast the exiled card without paying its mana cost.

CMC
4
Mana cost
{3}{U}
Color identity
U
Rarity
uncommon
Set
Ultimate Masters
Price
$0.03
EDHREC rank
#22794
Buy on TCGplayer
Living Lore card art
Living Lore enters as an X/X where X is the mana value of an instant or sorcery you exile from your graveyard, then casts that spell for free when it dies — the bigger the spell, the bigger the body and the bigger the payoff. The cost is real: you're spending four mana on a creature that needs to die before delivering the spell, which makes it a liability against graveyard hate or instant-speed removal. In graveyard-centric decks like Muldrotha, the Gravetide, the delayed value is worth it; in most other shells, it's too fragile to justify.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern legal
pioneer legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Living Lore is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but it sees virtually all its meaningful play in Commander. The four-mana investment for a body that has to die to do anything is simply too slow and too interactive-dependent for competitive Constructed formats where a turn-four play needs immediate impact. In Commander, the calculus flips — games go longer, graveyard synergies are rewarded, and one free Peer into the Abyss or Expropriate off a creature death is exactly the kind of tempo swing the format enables. Oathbreaker can support it in the right spell-heavy signature-spell shell, but Commander is where Living Lore consistently earns its slot.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.03 bulk tier

At $0.03, Living Lore is deep bulk — a near-zero cost pickup that belongs in any graveyard-matters Commander deck that can reliably fuel it. The price reflects its narrow use case, not its ceiling in the right shell; it won't appreciate, but it also costs nothing to find out if it fits your build.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.