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Paleoloth

Creature — Beast

Whenever another creature you control with power 5 or greater enters, you may return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand.

CMC
6
Mana cost
{4}{G}{G}
Color identity
G
Rarity
rare
Set
Conflux
Price
$7.24
EDHREC rank
#11495
Buy on TCGplayer
Paleoloth card art
Paleoloth turns every fatty that enters your battlefield into a free creature retrieval trigger — whenever a creature with power 5 or greater enters under your control, you can return a creature from your graveyard to your hand. The six-mana cost is real, but in a deck where Bramble Sovereign is doubling enters-the-battlefield triggers or Slinza, the Spiked Stampede is flooding the board with large creatures, Paleoloth pays for itself within a turn cycle.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Slinza, the Spiked Stampede

Slinza, the Spiked Stampede

49.5% of decks · synergy 0.48

Slinza, the Spiked Stampede naturally runs a parade of power-5-or-greater creatures, and Paleoloth converts each new arrival into a graveyard recursion trigger — the engine essentially runs itself as long as the stampede keeps moving.

02
Alena, Kessig TrapperGilanra, Caller of Wirewood

Alena, Kessig Trapper // Gilanra, Caller of Wirewood

31.9% of decks · synergy 0.30

Alena, Kessig Trapper // Gilanra, Caller of Wirewood generates mana from big creatures entering the battlefield, and Paleoloth closes the loop by recovering anything that gets answered, keeping the high-power count up to keep Alena producing red mana.

03
Mayael the Anima

Mayael the Anima

21.8% of decks · synergy 0.22

Mayael the Anima cheats large creatures directly into play, so Paleoloth immediately qualifies for its own recursion trigger and recycles whatever Mayael whiffed on or opponents removed — exactly the kind of resilience a top-heavy curve needs.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

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

Commander is where Paleoloth actually lives — six mana is acceptable when a single game lasts thirty turns and every big creature you play is also rebuying something from the bin. In Legacy and Vintage it's technically legal but completely unplayed; the formats move too fast for a six-mana do-nothing-on-entry creature that requires more large bodies to function. Oathbreaker is the one non-Commander 60-card-adjacent format where Paleoloth could show up in a stompy shell, though the faster clock makes it fringe at best. Stick to Commander.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

Disentomb and similar one-shot recursion spells cost pennies and recover a single creature, but they don't create a repeatable engine the way Paleoloth does — they're replacements only if you need the effect exactly once. Greenwarden of Murasa is a closer analog, a large body that recurs a card when it enters and again when it dies, and it costs less than a dollar while still triggering Paleoloth-style power-5 synergies in decks that care about that threshold.

Price Context

Current price

$7.24 mid tier

At $7.24, Paleoloth sits in the mid tier — more than a throw-in but nowhere near a budget-breaker for a six-mana utility creature. It's a niche card with a narrow home, so the price is unlikely to spike, but demand from Slinza builds arriving all at once could nudge it; buy when you need it, not speculatively.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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