Strategic Planning
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
- U
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- The List
- Price
- $0.08
- EDHREC rank
- #7616
Strategic Planning digs three cards deep and puts two of them in the graveyard — for one blue mana at instant speed, that's a better rate than most cantrips when your deck wants the bin as a resource. It's a staple in Octavia, Living Thesis builds specifically because every instant or sorcery in the graveyard counts toward her eight-spell threshold.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Octavia, Living Thesis
Octavia, Living Thesis needs eight instant or sorcery cards in the graveyard to drop her cost to zero, and Strategic Planning puts two there while finding a third — it's doing double duty on the same mana.
Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy // Scion of Halaster
Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy // Scion of Halaster recasts instants and sorceries from the graveyard, so Strategic Planning isn't just selection — the two cards it mills are live fuel for Gale's triggered ability.
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, Strategic Planning earns its slot in any blue deck that cares about graveyard density — spellslinger, reanimator, or threshold strategies all convert the self-mill into value rather than pure card disadvantage. In Pauper it's a legitimate role-player: commons that filter and fill the graveyard at instant speed are scarce, and the format's slower pace makes the card-disadvantage trade more acceptable. Modern and Pioneer have cheaper or cleaner options — Serum Visions, Consider, and Opt all exist — so Strategic Planning rarely makes the cut in those 60-card shells where tempo is tighter. Legacy and Vintage have too many broken cantrips at the same cost for this to compete.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.08 bulk tier
At $0.08, Strategic Planning is deep bulk — you're paying essentially nothing for a card that overperforms in graveyard-centric Commander decks. Bulk commons with this level of niche demand don't climb, but they also don't need to; it's a free include whenever the effect fits.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Octavia, Living Thesis
- Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy // Scion of Halaster
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.