Undead Gladiator
Creature — Zombie Barbarian
, Discard a card: Return this card from your graveyard to your hand. Activate only during your upkeep.
Cycling (, Discard this card: Draw a card.)
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Onslaught
- Price
- $0.94
- EDHREC rank
- #16342
Undead Gladiator is a repeatable looting engine stapled to a 3/1 body — pay one black mana and cycle it from your graveyard every turn, no card disadvantage. The cost is real: three mana to cast plus one to recur means you need a deck that actively wants cards in the graveyard, not just a generic black slot.
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 |
In Commander, Undead Gladiator earns its slot in any black deck that wants graveyard density — Zombie tribal, reanimator, and self-mill strategies all benefit from a creature that perpetually refuels the bin on demand. Legacy has access to stronger looting effects and faster clocks, so the Gladiator's three-mana entry cost keeps it out of competitive lists there. Vintage is legal but irrelevant; nothing about Undead Gladiator's rate competes in a format defined by Ancestral Recall. Commander is its true home.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.94 bulk tier
At $0.94, Undead Gladiator sits in bulk territory — easy to acquire and trivial to cut if the slot underperforms. The price is unlikely to move significantly given its narrow niche, but that also means there's no financial risk in picking one up to test.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.