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Teval, the Balanced Scale

Legendary Creature — Spirit Dragon

Flying
Whenever Teval attacks, mill three cards. Then you may return a land card from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped.
Whenever one or more cards leave your graveyard, create a 2/2 black Zombie Druid creature token.

CMC
4
Mana cost
{1}{B}{G}{U}
Color identity
BGU
Rarity
mythic
Set
Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander
Price
$7.38
EDHREC rank
#2889
Buy on TCGplayer
Teval, the Balanced Scale card art
Teval, the Balanced Scale lands as a self-replacing graveyard engine — it mills on entry, reanimates when you sacrifice it, and pairs with Tortured Existence to loop value at instant speed. The cost is a five-mana creature that needs supporting infrastructure to close games, but Sin, Spira's Punishment decks running 40% inclusion rates tell you the payoff is real.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Sin, Spira's Punishment

Sin, Spira's Punishment

41.7% of decks · synergy 0.35

Sin, Spira's Punishment runs Teval, the Balanced Scale in over 41% of lists because Teval's sacrifice-and-reanimate loop directly fuels the discard-and-recur engine Sin rewards — every cycle through the graveyard translates into Sin's punishment triggers.

02
Teval, Arbiter of Virtue

Teval, Arbiter of Virtue

39.5% of decks · synergy 0.33

Teval, Arbiter of Virtue treats Teval, the Balanced Scale as a self-perpetuating threat: the Balanced Scale's mill feeds the Arbiter's graveyard-matters payoffs, and recurring it off its own death trigger keeps the engine running without spending additional cards.

03
Muldrotha, the Gravetide

Muldrotha, the Gravetide

28.3% of decks · synergy 0.22

Muldrotha, the Gravetide appreciates Teval, the Balanced Scale as a redundant reanimation piece — Muldrotha already wants the graveyard stocked, and Teval's enter-the-battlefield mill plus death trigger means it pulls double duty as both fuel and value engine.

04
Sidisi, Brood Tyrant

Sidisi, Brood Tyrant

27.5% of decks · synergy 0.21

Sidisi, Brood Tyrant wants every mill trigger it can generate, and Teval, the Balanced Scale delivers two distinct mill events — on entry and on death — each of which can flip a creature into the graveyard to trigger Sidisi's Zombie-generating clause.

05
The Master, Transcendent

The Master, Transcendent

17.1% of decks · synergy 0.11

The Master, Transcendent runs Teval, the Balanced Scale at a lower 17% rate, but the fit is real: The Master cares about creatures entering from unusual zones, and Teval's recursive loop can repeatedly rebuild a board presence that The Master then leverages for copy effects.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

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

Commander is the natural home for Teval, the Balanced Scale — the longer game gives it time to loop, and the 100-card singleton format rewards the kind of graveyard redundancy it provides. In Vintage, it's technically legal but competes against engines so much faster that it rarely surfaces outside casual builds. Legacy is the same story: the card is legal but the format's speed makes a five-mana creature with deferred payoffs a poor fit outside a dedicated graveyard shell. Oathbreaker offers the most interesting alternative context, where Teval could serve as the signature spell or a key piece depending on the commander pairing, though the 60-card format compresses the window for its loops.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

Golgari Grave-Troll and Satyr Wayfinder fill the mill-into-graveyard role for under $2 combined, though neither provides the recursive self-replacement loop that makes Teval, the Balanced Scale worth the slot. If the reanimation trigger is what you're after, Animate Dead at roughly $1 gets the creature back once — it's a clean effect but one-shot where Teval is a repeatable engine, so the trade-off is consistency for immediacy.

Price Context

Current price

$7.38 mid tier

At $7.38, Teval, the Balanced Scale sits in the mid tier — expensive enough to feel like a deliberate include, cheap enough that it doesn't anchor a budget. Given its 40%+ inclusion rate in the most synergistic commanders, that price reflects genuine demand rather than hype, and it's unlikely to crater.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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