Malevolent Awakening
Enchantment
, Sacrifice a creature: Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Odyssey
- Price
- $0.20
- EDHREC rank
- #20562
Malevolent Awakening gives black-based creature decks a repeatable sacrifice outlet that doubles as graveyard recursion — pay 1BB and sacrifice a creature to return any creature from your graveyard to hand, once per turn. The cost is real, but the value engine it creates is a headache for opponents to dismantle.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Commander is where Malevolent Awakening earns its slot — the 100-card singleton format rewards redundant recursion engines, and a permanent that survives board wipes while enabling sacrifice loops is exactly the kind of incremental advantage grindy black decks want. In Legacy and Vintage, it's technically legal but competes against far more efficient reanimation and sacrifice tools; no serious list runs it in those formats. The card is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, or Pauper, so Commander and Oathbreaker are the practical homes. Oathbreaker can support it in the right planeswalker shell, though the 40-life format's faster pace makes the triple-mana activation harder to sustain.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.20 bulk tier
At $0.20, Malevolent Awakening is deep bulk — you're picking it out of a commons bin or paying a quarter at most. Bulk enchantments with narrow application rarely move, so don't expect the price to climb unless a high-profile Commander deck puts it in the spotlight.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.