In a multiplayer game such as Commander, any and every advantage you can get is important to stay ahead of your opponents. Needless to say, resource is the name of the game. One of the more popular and potent resources to have is access to more cards. Outside of increasing your maximum hand size, the most reliable resource is your graveyard.

Yep, that place where the corpses creep? The graveyard isn't just a place for the dead, its the zone that you can leverage and abuse to grab the win.

Commander Staples for Graveyard Decks

Dumping Cards In

Before you use the graveyard, of course you gotta fill it up. There are a few ways to do that one is to discard cards currently from your hand. There are many spells that include discarding in their cost like Faithless Looting, Careful Study, and Cathartic Reunion. Repeatable discard outlets like Psychic Frog, Psychatog, and Putrid Imp are cheap creatures you can consider.

The other way is to milling your cards from the graveyard to the library. Repeatable self-mill cards are great to have as they are essentially drawing your cards. Doom Whisperer, Hermit Druid, and Underrealm Lich are powerful creatures that let you dump a lot of cards into your yard. There are also cards like Greater Good and Altar of Dementia that double as both a self-mill permanent and a sacrifice outlet.

Dredge is another mechanic that is infamously effective at getting cards into the bin. Dredge is a powerful tool that lets you replace a draw by milling a certain amount of cards in exchange for getting a card with Dredge back to your hand. Top Dredge cards in the Commander format are Life from the Loam, Golgari Grave-Troll, and Dakmor Salvage. There are a few ways to

But the most efficient and surgical way to get a specific cards are with tutors. Yep, there are library to graveyard tutors too! Entomb leads this list. Other tutors to take note of are Buried Alive, Unmarked Grave, Graveyard Lamia, and Corpse Connoisseur.

Raise the Dead

Once your graveyard is nice and well-stocked, it's time to get your pointy necromancer hat on! Any necromantic spell selection should contain the following nefarious non-permanents: Reanimate, Unburial Rites, and Victimize. If you want to go big and reanimate a whole army then you simply cannot go wrong with Agadeem's Awakening, Eerie Ultimatum, or Rise of the Dark Realms. Another mass reanimation spell that can sometimes double as a board wipe of sorts is Living Death.

Reanimating a dead body is best done with a buddy, as they say in Innistrad. Or so I'd like to think. Here are the best options when it comes to creatures that bring back a critter from the yard. Karmic Guide and Reveillark are top tier if you are dipping into white. There are a number of loops those cards interact with and I'll leave the research up to you. Sun Titan, Apprentice Necromancer, Body Launderer, Body Snatcher, Sepulchral Primordial, and Phyrexian Delver all bring their own partners to the corpse party.

Animate Dead, Whip of Erebos, Altar of Bhaal, and Journey to Eternity are other non-creature permanents that reanimate like the best of them.

Graveyard Payoffs

With all this reanimation going on, how can you win? Aside from outlasting the table with the nigh-infinite value of recurring your threats there are a few ways you can win. Draining the table with enters the battlefield and dies triggers from cards like Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, and Cruel Celebrant are one of the most efficient ways to win. Those cards being creatures also add another layer of ensurance as you can resurrect them if ever they are dealt with.

Other creatures with strong reanimation potential are Archon of Cruelty, Kokusho, the Evening Star, and Massacre Wurm (or Massacre Girl too!). Of course, cheating expensive high mana value creatures is also a good use of a Reanimate. So, include the usual suspects like Blightsteel Colossus, Worldspine Wurm, Apex Altisaur, and other Timmy favorites.

Exile is the Enemy

If you're playing with a decent pod, everyone will have at least packed a way or two to deal with graveyard shenanigans. Any necromancer worth their salt should protect their graveyards from being desecrated. Shuffling your graveyard back to your library can be done through cards like Perpetual Timepiece and Elixir of Immortality are artifacts that can be splashed into any deck. For a more targeted approach, Gaea's Blessing and Noxious Revival are instants that can get key pieces back into your library before the inevitable exile happens.

In the worst case scenario, Pull from Eternity and Riftsweeper can get you a card back from exile. But we don't want those things to happen right?

Giving yourself hexproof or shroud is another way to protect your yard from effects like Bojuka Bog. Ivory Mask, Orbs of Warding, Aegis of the Gods, and Leyline of Sanctity protect you from targeted graveyard exile.

Necrommander

With all of the dark necromantic shenanigans we discussed, which commander options are the best. Without a doubt, the cream of the corpsey crop are Muldrotha, the Gravetide and Meren of Clan Nel Toth. These two are the most efficient in brining back stuff from the yard. However, the OGs Karador, Ghost Chieftain and The Mimeoplasm are still fun commanders to utilize. Other generals that blend well with graveyard strategies are The Necrobloom, Coram the Undertaker, Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord, and Chainer, Nightmare Adept.

Reanimation Station

Having access to more cards in different zones gives you more power to play with. Trust me, Karador, Ghost Chieftain was my first commander deck and I still prefer graveyard strategies in commander to this day. And there, you have all you need for potent graveyard shenanigans!