Reaping the Graves

Commander is where Reaping the Graves actually sees play, and for good reason — multiplayer games generate enough spells over a single turn cycle to satisfy the trigger trivially, and the payoff of recovering eight or ten creatures after a board wipe is backbreaking. In Pauper it's a legal common with real applications in black-based graveyard decks that can meet the spell-cast condition through cantrips or rituals. Legacy and Vintage have access to it but the effect is too slow and conditional for those formats' game speeds, where Reanimate or Animate Dead just picks up the best target directly. Outside Commander, the floor is low — but inside it, the ceiling is enormous in the right shell.