Ransack the Lab
Sorcery
Look at the top three cards of your library. Put one of them into your hand and the rest into your graveyard.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Jumpstart: Historic Horizons
- Price
- —
- EDHREC rank
- #11320
Ransack the Lab puts three cards in your hand for two mana — you keep one and bin two, which in graveyard-synergy shells means you're not losing resources, you're loading the engine. Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy // Scion of Halaster turns those discards into fuel, making this a two-mana spell that effectively costs nothing in card equity while accelerating your setup.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy // Scion of Halaster
Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy // Scion of Halaster wants instants and sorceries in the graveyard to copy and recur, so Ransack the Lab functions as both a selection spell and a self-mill engine — the two cards you pitch are as valuable as the one you keep.
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 | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Ransack the Lab earns its slot in any black deck that cares about the graveyard — reanimator, spellslinger with recursion, or value-grind strategies where card selection matters more than raw card advantage. In Pauper it's a legitimate powerhouse, competing directly with Preordain-style effects and outperforming them in any deck that treats the graveyard as a second hand. Legacy and Vintage give it steep competition from Brainstorm and Ponder, so it rarely makes the cut there outside of dedicated mill or graveyard synergy builds. Modern runs it in niche self-mill shells but not as a staple — the format's speed demands more immediate payoffs than a sorcery-speed dig.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
unknown tier
Price data for Ransack the Lab isn't currently available in the system, so check Scryfall or TCGPlayer for the current market rate. Given its Pauper staple status and Commander demand, expect it to sit in the budget-to-mid range — worth picking up without worrying about overpaying.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy // Scion of Halaster
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.