Graveyard

The graveyard is one of the six main zones in the game of Magic: The Gathering.

Description

The graveyard is the pile into which you discard, where instant and sorcery spells go once they have resolved, and where permanents go when they have been sacrificed, destroyed, or "put into the graveyard" due to a state-based effect.

Cards in the graveyard are usually no longer relevant to the game, but some mechanics do interact with the graveyard. Examples are Flashback, unearth, dredge and delve. A notable creature type that often comes back from the graveyard is Zombies. The threshold and delirium mechanics also make use of the graveyard. Decks such as reanimator are built to use or re-use cards in the graveyard, often making it as useful a resource as a player's hand.

Flavor

Flavory speaking, sometimes the graveyard is regarded as a literal cemetery littered with bodies. In other ways, is regarded as a more conceptual past, a "place" where forgotten magics are hidden.

"Graveyard sets"

Weatherlight was the first set where the graveyard "mattered". Blocks like Odyssey, Innistrad and Amonkhet gave graveyard strategies the center stage, and the graveyard played a huge part for the Golgari, Grixis, and Sultai in otherwise not-graveyard-focused sets.

Rules

From the Comprehensive Rules (June 7, 2024—Modern Horizons 3)

• 404. Graveyard
  • 404.1. A player’s graveyard is their discard pile. Any object that’s countered, discarded, destroyed, or sacrificed is put on top of its owner’s graveyard, as is any instant or sorcery spell that’s finished resolving. Each player’s graveyard starts out empty.
  • 404.2. Each graveyard is kept in a single face-up pile. A player can examine the cards in any graveyard at any time but normally can’t change their order. Additional rules applying to sanctioned tournaments may allow a player to change the order of cards in their graveyard.
  • 404.3. If an effect or rule puts two or more cards into the same graveyard at the same time, the owner of those cards may arrange them in any order.

Order of cards in the graveyard

Several cards from early sets relied on the order of cards in a graveyard. The last of these, Volrath's Shapeshifter, was printed in Stronghold.

• Alms
• Ashen Ghoul
• Barrow Ghoul
• Bone Dancer
• Bösium Strip
• Circling Vultures
• Corpse Dance
• Death Spark
• Guiding Spirit
• Krovikan Horror
• Mistmoon Griffin
• Nature's Kiss
• Necratog
• Nether Shadow
• Phyrexian Grimoire
• Phyrexian Furnace
• Shallow Grave
• Soldevi Digger
• Spinning Darkness
• Volrath's Shapeshifter
• Zombie Scavengers

Graveyard mechanics

Cast spells out of graveyard

Black is the color most focused on the graveyard. thus the ability to cast spells out of the graveyard is primary in black. Blue occasionally can cast instants and sorceries out of the graveyard. Red is also secondary, especially in sets where it can grant flashback to instants and sorceries in the graveyard.

Bringing back from the graveyard

White, the color of mercy, is the color that saves things the turn they are destroyed.

Exiling from the graveyard

Exiling from the graveyard is used to get rid of cards that might have an effect/usable activation cost. Black does it most often, but white occasionally does it in sets that need it.