Tournament Success Brings Classic Reanimator Staple Back from the Dead

Last updated on October 21, 2025

Atraxa, Grand Unifier | Illustration by Marta Nael

Some things just don't know how to stay dead, and they just keep coming back from the grave. Which is both a great trope for horror movies, and the cool thing about the Reanimator archetype in Magic: There's nothing like cheating big, scary things into play from your graveyard!

This time around, though, what's coming back is one the archetype's staples in Modern; and not exactly from the grave in this case, but from the “Has-beens” of MTG.

Pronounced dead more than once, Goryo's Vengeance is back among Modern's most popular archetypes… and its price, like its play rate, has soared back into peak form.

Goryo's Vengeance Price Spike

Psychic Frog | Illustration by Pete Venters

In the last 30 days, near-mint copies of Goryo's Vengeance went from about $7.70 to around $16.70 in the last thirty days (that's to say, current price is 217% of what it was a month ago!)

Source: MTGStocks

This black instant is no stranger to sudden price spikes, and the current one is not even the biggest in the last couple of years (it had two different price spikes during 2024, and in one of them going way over $20).

If you play Commander, you may have only rarely met Goryo's Vengeance. It does have enough competitive punch to make it to the top of cEDH tournaments, often with Ratadrabik of Urborg or K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth in the command zone, but overall this black card sees very little play in casual Commander decks.

And while Commander, as MTG's most popular format, is usually the main reason for why a card goes up in price (above all if it's seen as playing well with some upcoming Magic set), in this case it's all about Modern, and how Goryo's Vengeance is (once again) a four-of in one of Modern's top-tier archetypes.

Esper Goryo, aka Instant Reanimator

Last September, the Edge of Eternities Modern Pro Tour saw a pretty diverse metagame, but with a clear preference for Esper Goryo:

Source: WotC's Pro Tour Edge of Eternities Modern Metagame Breakdown article

While the archetype's winrate was not among the best (it sat at a good-but-not-great 52% according to Magic's Hall of Famer Frank Karsten's Metagame Mentor), it was the most played deck, and Jonny Guttman reached Top 8 with it with several other pilots getting to Top 32.

A few days later, Tobia Nappi made it to the finals of the MagicCon PTQ…

Source: MTGTop8

… and since then it's been roughly 8% of the Modern metagame.

Esper Goryo's main trick is to toss Atraxa, Grand Unifier into the graveyard with Psychic Frog), cheat her into play with a full playset Goryo's Vengeance, then cheat some more by blinking her with Ephemerate (which gives you another ETB from Atraxa, Grand Unifier, and voids Goryo's Vengeance‘s exile clause during the next end step.

What Will Happen With Goryo's Vengeance Price?

Atraxa, Grand Unifier | Illustration by Marta Nael

Unlike some speculative buyouts we wrote about last week, Goryo's Vengeance‘s current price spike is organic – and, as seen on the previous graph, it's not even unusual: Goryo's Vengeance has spiked twice last year, whenever it found a Modern metagame where to shine.

Last year, it was Modern Horizons 3 releasing Psychic Frog into the wild (and Atraxa becoming the de-facto reanimator target across several MTG formats) what made the archetype playable again. And, as current results show, it's very competitive right now… although it will depend on how the Modern metagame evolves. As the price graph also shows, Goryo's Vengeance has a tendency to drop down to $5-$6 when it's no longer Reanimator's time to shine.

But, then again, some cards just don't know how to stay dead – and nobody knows when they'll be back!