The 24 Best Graveyard Shufflers in Magic Ranked

Elixir of Immortality | Illustration by Zoltan Boros & Gabor Szikszai

Many of Magic’s most broken effects and strategies rely on the graveyard as a resource in some form or another. Perhaps it’s the “second hand” of a storm deck that plans to fuel its win with Past in Flames or Yawgmoth's Will; perhaps it’s the waiting room for a Griselbrand coming out for 1 or 2 mana.

Regardless, players need ways both to protect their graveyard and disrupt opposing ones. This niche slice of Magic interaction is handled well by graveyard shufflers, effects that shuffle a few cards from a graveyard—or the entire thing—into a library. From the protective to the hateful, I’ll cover everything you need to know about graveyard shufflers!

What Are Graveyard Shufflers in MTG?

Turn the Earth | Illustration by Alayna Danner

Graveyard shufflers are cards that shuffle one or more cards in a player’s graveyard into their library; they generally shuffle a few target cards or the entire graveyard. These effects more or less fall into two categories: They’re either used as a form of graveyard hate to trip up your opponents, or to shuffle cards back into your library. That might be to protect your library from mill or to enable a combo. Both types of card appear on the list. What doesn’t appear are cards like Blightsteel Colossus and Progenitus that only shuffle themselves back.

Honorable Mention: Endurance

Endurance technically doesn’t qualify for the list since it puts the graveyard on the bottom of a player’s library instead of shuffling it into the deck properly. But I can’t not mention such a powerful, related effect. This is a decently sized creature with flash, and you can cast it for free while fulfilling all the roles you want from this effect. If I could rank it, it’d easily be in the top 3. Do with that what you will.

#24. Jace, the Living Guildpact

Considering a planeswalker for their ultimate is always dubious, as it takes time to reach it and your opponents have ample tools to stop them—more than ever as cards like Get Lost that directly destroy planeswalkers are printed. But Jace, the Living Guildpact comes close to its ultimate and blue is the color of proliferation, so it’s very achievable. And game-winning; decks often use two or more cards that make their opponents shuffle away their hand while they draw seven cards (think Narset, Parter of Veils plus Timetwister). Not many of these effects can be considered a win condition in their own right.

#23. Wand of Vertebrae

A self-mill deck could utilize Wand of Vertebrae as a cheap self-mill spell that gets going from the first turn. It certainly isn’t worth playing for the shuffle effect alone. But a cheap self-mill card that saves key cards from exile effects is fine at lower power levels.

#22. Eldrazi Titans

The original Eldrazi Titan cards—Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn—all shuffle your graveyard into your library when they hit it. A 0-mana shuffle is useful, but it comes with drawbacks; if you don’t have plenty of discard/self-mill effects, it’s hard to do it on demand, and these creatures are so expensive you can’t slot them into any old deck. The shuffle is more of a bonus than the point of the card. Still, if your EDH meta is strangely mill-focused, a ramp or big mana deck might benefit from one of the legal Eldrazi.

#21. Witness the Future

Witness the Future can serve as graveyard hate or graveyard protection, depending on how you feel. Snagging a card as part of the bargain is useful since just shuffling cards into a graveyard is rarely worth a card unless you can exploit the mechanic. It’s also a fine spell to copy due to the card draw.

#20. Perpetual Timepiece

Perpetual Timepiece only words in decks that can make use of the tap ability to fuel their self-mill shenanigans. Spending a total of 4 mana just to shuffle your graveyard is criminally over-costed, but 2 mana for a repeatable source of self-mill that can salvage a key card you didn’t want in the graveyard or shuffle your spells away pre-Rest in Peace has merit. This is basically just Wand of Vertebrae but better.

#19. Rite of Renewal

Rite of Renewal combines card draw with a shuffle effect, and plenty of it. The permanent restriction often doesn’t matter; this is a green card, and the decks that want a double Regrowth—self-mill deck or other graveyard decks—are often permanent-focused unless they’re storming off. The flexible shuffle effect allows you to hate on opposing graveyards or protect yours. Notably, it also triggers leaves the graveyard cards twice, once when the permanents are returned to your hand, and again when cards are shuffled out of your graveyard.

#18. Clear the Mind

Clear the Mind was a wonderful card in its Draft format that control decks used as a win condition by repeatedly shuffling their graveyard—ideally full of cheap removal and card draw—back into their library to deck their opponent. The card maintains that potential in the right Cube, and it’s also useful in casual Commander as a cheapish way to draw a card and reset a graveyard, be it yours or somebody else’s.

#17. Devious Cover-Up

Devious Cover-Up plays a similar role in Limited control as Clear the Mind, though you ideally have two copies so you can loop them. It edges out CtM because it actually impacts the game and control decks love an instant. If your strategy benefits from holding up mana and shuffling specific cards from your graveyard away, this could be your card.

#16. Dwell on the Past

Dwell on the Past gets points for efficiency. A single mana to get rid of four cards, from any graveyard, works in a pinch. That doesn’t quite overcome the issue of this spell costing a card from your hand without impacting the board or really doing much unless you have a specific synergy to break it.

#15. Feldon’s Cane

Feldon's Cane sits at a strange place on this list. This isn’t a good card. You lose a card from your hand for no impact on the board and don’t even get the benefit of an artifact in the graveyard for delirium or similar synergies. But, this is the absolute cheapest version of the effect that requires no additional synergies or chance or anything. It just does The Thing for a single generic mana that any deck can pay for, and is thus worth highlighting. It’s as close as this niche effect gets to Tormod's Crypt.

#14. Memory’s Journey

Memory's Journey also does nothing but shuffle cards, but it does so at a pretty decent rate. It’s an instant, so you have much more flexibility over when you cast it—for example, in response to a reanimation spell or targeted graveyard hate like Cling to Dust. Flashback lets you use it twice or makes it a strong spell to self-mill.

#13. Commit // Memory

Commit // Memory is the first of several wheels on the list that shuffle away all players’ graveyards before drawing them seven cards. It’s the least of these effects due to cost; not only is 6 mana a lot for this effect, but you generally need to spend 4 first on Commit. Still, this is a strong control card, and it’s lots of fun in Cube as long as you aren’t reaching for high-powered Vintage stuff.

#12. Midnight Clock

The lack of control over when Midnight Clock shuffles away your graveyard sucks, but a mana rock with such an outsized effect on the game is quite useful. It takes just three turn cycles to trigger this in Commander, assuming you don’t add counters, so you have the time and mana to set up leaves the graveyard synergies or similar effects.

#11. Cathartic Parting

Cathartic Parting gets by with its artifact removal, while the shuffle effect is more of an afterthought. Making an opponent shuffle away an artifact is quite potent; it gets around indestructible and makes it much harder to replay than bouncing or destroying it. It comes close to but falls just short of exile-based removal. And the shuffle effect does the shuffle effect thing.

#10. Loaming Shaman

Loaming Shaman is the only example of this effect attached to a creature, which provides many synergies. You can blink it, clone it, or copy it to get multiple graveyards. It can be part of a toolbox deck with tutors like Chord of Calling and Green Sun's Zenith that get it directly into play. It can even be reanimated! It offers possibilities that all the instants and sorceries on the list can’t, which makes it an appealing choice in the right shell.

#9. The Bath Song

The Bath Song needs time, but it has a great shuffling effect. The double Catalog offers plenty of card selection and gets cards into the graveyard to shuffle away, and the burst of mana attached to the shuffle gives you the resources to use all those cards you saw. It still verges towards the casual side of things—after all, it’s a 4-mana spell that requires two more turns to work—but it sets up nice turns.

#8. Time Reversal

Time Reversal is what you get when you balance Timetwister by adding additional mana and an exile clause. Though pricey for a wheel, it still works with all the expected synergies and payoffs, like Narset, Parter of Veils and The Locust God. It’s pretty cheap in terms of cost versus best-in-class spells like Wheel of Fortune and the higher mana value arguably makes it more friendly for casual play.

#7. Turn the Earth

Turn the Earth is basically just Memory's Journey with lifegain and a mono-colored identity, which helps Commander players a ton. Being an instant lets you mess with Thassa's Oracle and Underworld Breach, and you can even threaten it as a rattlesnake: After you cast this and ruin the reanimator player’s plan, who wants to interact with their graveyard with this face-up, ready with flashback?

#6. Echo of Eons

Echo of Eons costs 6 mana upfront, which is, again, a lot for a wheel, but it also has great synergies thanks to flashback. It commonly works as a poor Timetwister when you discard it or mill it. It has great synergy with Lion's Eye Diamond, which serves as both discard outlet and mana source to flash it back.

#5. Stream of Thought

Stream of Thought can be everything. It’s a source of self-mill, a source of graveyard shuffling, even a win condition with enough mana. That’s an awful lot of flexibility for a 1-mana spell you can tutor up with anything from Dizzy Spell to Micromancer.

#4. Timetwister

We finally hit the gold standard of graveyard shuffling wheels, in that Timetwister is worth its weight in gold.

Three mana is the busted rate for a wheel. This card isn’t exactly free; you don’t want to spend 3 mana to give your opponent seven cards they can use before you. It needs something to break the symmetry, even if that’s as simple as a bunch of mana dorks to dump your hand and use the seven cards better than your opponent. This is another card where the graveyard shuffling is mostly incidental, though still welcome.

#3. Elixir of Immortality

Elixir of Immortality was once the win condition of Standard WU control decks. And you thought Teferi, Hero of Dominaria was bad! This can’t function as graveyard hate, but it’s hard to consider a better way to shuffle your graveyard into the library. It’s cheap, you can split the payment across multiple turns, and any deck can exploit it due to its colorless identity.

#2. Quandrix Command

Quandrix Commander boasts incredible flexibility. Many graveyard shuffler cards have incidental graveyard shuffling, but this one does it best because it has so many relevant modes. It can be graveyard hate or interaction or a buff depending on what you need in the moment. And it’s still an instant. You lose out on very little by adding this to your decks as a piece of graveyard hate that isn’t worthless if nobody’s playing graveyard stuff.

#1. Gaea’s Blessing

Gaea's Blessing is just best in class, and it fills every use. You want to mess up the delirium player by shuffling away that enchantment creature? Trying to trigger your Teval, the Balanced Scale? Looking to save yourself from the mill player? It does all of that. Since it cantrips when cast, it lacks the weakness of going down a card for not impacting the board and even gives it utility when drawn while the graveyards are empty, or at least irrelevant. It’s a huge upgrade over the Eldrazi Titans since it also shuffles your graveyard to protect against Bruvac the Grandiloquent, yet any green deck can cast it for a card. It’s hard to see how this mechanic could evolve past Gaea’s Blessing short of making it cost a single mana or trying to justify a colorless version.

Best Graveyard Shuffling Payoffs

Graveyard shuffling is a rather niche mechanic, but we can still put it to good use. It plays nicely with effects that care about cards that leave your graveyard like Teval, the Balanced Scale and Insidious Roots. These don’t care where the card goes, just that it leaves the graveyard.

You can also use them as protection against graveyard hate and mill. If, for example, an opponent tries to exile your Valgavoth, Terror Eater with Scavenging Ooze, you can shuffle it into your deck to keep it safe until a more opportune moment to reanimate it arises. They work against mill in a similar fashion: Shuffling your library back into your deck against a mill deck is equivalent to resetting your life total to 20, 40, or whatever against a more standard Magic deck attacking your life total. It forces the mill player to kill you twice.

These also work as graveyard hate. Shuffle effects aren’t as clean as exile-based removal—again, Valgavoth can be found later—but it often sets your opponent back a turn or more and even fizzles reanimation spells on the stack when the target gets shuffled away at instant speed.

Wrap Up

Memory's Journey | Illustration by Slawomir Maniak

Graveyard shuffling effects might be niche and often come with downside in terms of card advantage, but many cards have incidental graveyard shuffling, and you can build around the niche synergies to great success. Whether you need this to hate on your opponents or enable your strategies, these cards could have a role in your next brew.

What graveyard shuffling effects do you play? Do you like the mechanic? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!