The Grim Captain's Locker
Legendary Artifact
: Surveil 1. (Look at the top card of your library. You may put it into your graveyard.): Until end of turn, each creature card in your graveyard gains "Escape—
, Exile four other cards from your graveyard." (You may cast a card with escape from your graveyard for its escape cost.)
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander
- Price
- $0.39
- EDHREC rank
- #9171
The Grim Captain's Locker lands as a repeatable reanimation engine — exile five Pirates, then start returning them to the battlefield for free every turn. Matoya, Archon Elder and Admiral Brass, Unsinkable both lean on it hard because the effect scales with the size of your graveyard and rewards the exact strategy those commanders already want to run.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Admiral Brass, Unsinkable
Admiral Brass, Unsinkable already recurs Pirates that die in combat, and The Grim Captain's Locker stacks a second reanimation vector on top — once five Pirates hit the exile zone, you're pulling a threat back every single turn without spending mana.
Mirko, Obsessive Theorist
Mirko, Obsessive Theorist mills aggressively and fills graveyards fast, which means The Grim Captain's Locker hits its five-exile threshold ahead of schedule and turns that self-mill into a steady stream of free creatures.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
The Grim Captain's Locker is a Commander card through and through — the five-exile setup cost and one-per-turn payoff are calibrated for 40-life multiplayer games where you have the turns to assemble it. In Legacy and Vintage it's technically legal but competes against faster, more reliable reanimation at lower mana investment, so it won't see play there. Oathbreaker is the one other format where a dedicated Pirates build could make use of it, but the card pool support is narrower.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Matoya, Archon ElderMind Over MatterThe Grim Captain's Locker
Infinite self-discard triggers; Infinite draw triggers; Infinite looting
View on Commander Spellbook ↗Price Context
Current price
$0.39 bulk tier
At $0.39, The Grim Captain's Locker sits firmly in bulk territory, which makes it an easy inclusion for any Pirates build without budget scrutiny. Bulk rares with narrow tribal homes tend to stay at this price floor unless the archetype spikes in popularity, so grab it now if you need it and don't expect movement either direction.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.