Shamble Back
Sorcery
Exile target creature card from a graveyard. Create a 2/2 black Zombie creature token. You gain 2 life.
- CMC
- 1
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Shadows over Innistrad
- Price
- $0.18
- EDHREC rank
- #18125
Shamble Back exiles a creature from any graveyard and puts a 2/2 zombie token onto the battlefield — all for one black mana at sorcery speed. It's a clean two-for-one in graveyard-heavy metas, and at one mana it's never a dead card.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Shamble Back earns its slot in any black deck that wants incidental graveyard hate without dedicating a card slot to a do-nothing hoser — you get a body alongside the exile effect, which matters when you're trying to stabilize a board. Pauper is where it sees the most competitive daylight, since the one-mana cost and token generation both punch above bulk-rare weight in aggressive and midrange black shells. In Modern and Pioneer it's outclassed by dedicated graveyard hate like Leyline of the Void or even Soul-Guide Lantern, so it only shows up as a budget option or in creature-token synergy builds. Legacy and Vintage have too much velocity for a sorcery-speed one-shot exile to matter. Oathbreaker mirrors the Commander calculus — fine in a pinch, rarely optimal.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.18 bulk tier
At $0.18, Shamble Back is deep bulk — pick up a playset for under a dollar without thinking twice. Prices at this floor don't move unless a competitive deck adopts the card in volume, and nothing on the horizon suggests that's coming.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.