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Wake the Dead

Instant

Cast this spell only during combat on an opponent's turn.
Return X target creature cards from your graveyard to the battlefield. Sacrifice those creatures at the beginning of the next end step.

CMC
2
Mana cost
{X}{B}{B}
Color identity
B
Rarity
rare
Set
Commander Masters
Price
$0.74
EDHREC rank
#8188
Buy on TCGplayer
Wake the Dead card art
Wake the Dead drops multiple creatures from your graveyard onto the battlefield at instant speed, then sacrifices them at end of turn — the payoff is the enter-the-battlefield triggers, not the bodies. Pair it with Archaeomancer to rebuy a spell and Syr Konrad, the Grim to stack death triggers on the way out, and it reads less like a graveyard spell and more like a lethal engine piece.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Syr Konrad, the Grim

Syr Konrad, the Grim

21.6% of decks · synergy 0.20

Syr Konrad, the Grim pings each opponent whenever a creature leaves the graveyard and again when it dies, so Wake the Dead pulling three creatures out and then sacrificing them at end of turn translates directly into a stack of damage without needing combat.

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

Wake the Dead is a Commander card — instant-speed, multi-target reanimation scales with the density of graveyard synergies that 100-card singleton naturally enables, and the forced sacrifice clause matters far less when your payoff is ETB triggers rather than sustained board presence. In Legacy and Vintage it's technically legal but effectively unplayed; those formats want unconditional reanimation like Reanimate or Animate Dead that doesn't demand end-of-turn cleanup. Outside those three formats Wake the Dead isn't legal, which is irrelevant since it was never competing there anyway.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.74 bulk tier

At $0.74, Wake the Dead sits firmly in bulk territory despite being a genuine combo enabler in graveyard-heavy Commander builds. That price makes it an easy auto-include for any deck that wants it — there's no meaningful financial barrier here.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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