The 24 Best Entomb Effects in Magic Ranked

Last updated on November 28, 2025

Entomb | Illustration by Seb McKinnon

Tutor effects in Magic are some of the best in the game, providing a high level of consistency to any deck. Whether you need to assemble a combo or hunt down the perfect answer to your opponent’s strategy, they get what you need in a flash.

Entomb effects are a powerful subclass of tutor that combines their consistency with graveyard synergies, which are among the most powerful and least fair in the game. If your deck cares about the graveyard at all, you ought to consider one or two of these effects.

What Are Entomb Effects in MTG?

Buried Alive | Illustration by Greg Staples

Entomb effects are a very specific subclass of tutor that search your library for a card and put it directly into the graveyard. These effects are named after the Odyssey card Entomb.

Entomb effects are distinctly different than self-mill cards because you control which cards are put in the graveyard rather than putting random cards from the top of your library into the graveyard. While they take a little more work than a traditional tutor like Demonic Tutor that put the card directly into your hand, it’s easy enough to build around them that entomb effects often become critical pieces of reanimator and other combo-adjacent decks. Much like a traditional tutor, the best entomb effects are efficient so you don’t spend too much extra mana finding your key card and have as few restrictions as possible.

#24. Iname, Death Aspect

Iname, Death Aspect has a wildly narrow entomb effect, and a pricey one, but you can do some funny tricks with it and potentially set up entire combos.

#23. Scion of the Ur-Dragon

Scion of the Ur-Dragon sits strangely on the list. It’s a very powerful card, with a lot of potential as a commander given some potential one-shot lines. As a tutor, paying for your first dragon in the graveyard is rough, but it’s also repeatable? You can certainly make it work, and there’s something to be said for a tutor that doubles as a threat.

#22. Phantom Carriage

Phantom Carriage can be an excellent Cube card. Only finding cards with flashback or disturb makes it fairly narrow, but I can see a casual deck built around flickering it as a draw engine to find cards like Mirrorhall Mimic and Deep Analysis.

#21. Disciples of Gix

Disciples of Gix is rather costly and strange. Black typically wants to get creatures in the graveyard, while red and its many Trash for Treasure effects care about the artifacts. This card strikes me as a sneaky gold card that helps Rakdos decks () power out Bolas's Citadel.

#20. Cynical Loner

Cynical Loner hits the efficient mark, though exploiting it takes work. It’s a fairly fragile card, especially since the best way to enable the survival ability is by attacking, but it has lots of potential as a repeatable entomb effect.

#19. Mythos of Brokkos

Mythos of Brokkos does some really cool stuff. Since you don’t need to return the permanent you entomb to hand, you could, say, drop an Archon of Cruelty into the graveyard and bring back tools to reanimate it, like a Liliana, Death's Majesty.

#18. Jarad’s Orders

Jarad's Orders easily sets up a series of powerful turns by finding a creature to play next turn while dumping something like Terastodon or Griselbrand into the graveyard to set up an explosive turn later down the line.

#17. Burning-Rune Demon

If your deck cares about the graveyard, Burning-Rune Demon is practically Mulldrifter. Since you “draw” two cards, it’s a fine flicker target and a nasty threat in the air. If you don’t care about the graveyard, just play Mulldrifter.

#16. Quiet Speculation

Entombing three cards is a lot, even if Quiet Speculation only hits flashback cards. Putting a flashback card in the graveyard is rather like drawing it, so this defaults to a 2-mana draw three, which isn’t terrible.

#15. Lotuslight Dancers

The right package makes Lotuslight Dancers a fearsome entomb effect, and it blocks well enough to let you take your time assembling whatever combo you need.

#14. Final Parting

Final Parting’s rather costly, but it’s a clean two-for-one and I appreciate that it sets up a strong reanimation turn by throwing a reanimation target in the graveyard and a reanimation spell in your hand.

#13. Realms Uncharted

Realms Uncharted only works in lands decks, but what a card! Dumping the Dark Depths combo into your graveyard or finding other key lands like Maze's End is excellent. Magic’s suite of “play lands from graveyard” cards only grows, so it’s easy enough to get relevant lands back.

#12. Oriq Loremage

Oriq Loremage is just an excellent, repeatable tutor. It plays nicely with repeatable reanimation effects like God-Pharaoh's Gift and Portal to Phyrexia.

#11. Lively Dirge

Lively Dirge has the notable benefit of reanimating your entomb target, presuming its small enough. That makes it an excellent choice for toolbox decks filled with silver-bullet creatures like Gaddock Teeg and Dauthi Voidwalker.

#10. Corpse Connoisseur

Corpse Connoisseur works great in graveyard-based decks. It sets up powerful plays, and it’s a reasonable card to mill since unearth gets you some value. Unearthing it seems even better in the context of Magic’s ever-growing pool of cards that trigger when cards leave your graveyard, like Teval, the Balanced Scale and Insidious Roots.

#9. Gravebreaker Lamia

Gravebreaker Lamia exists in a very similar space to Corpse Connoisseur. Hitting any card type while having two card types itself for delirium gives it a noticeable edge, though I can see the Connoisseur being the better card in decks that exclusively care about creatures.

#8. Goblin Engineer

Goblin Engineer plays nicely with red’s abundant Trash for Treasure effects. While the reanimation ability has a mana value restriction, the entomb doesn’t, so this sets up your Portal to Phyrexia as well as anything else.

#7. Buried Alive

Buried Alive hits multiple targets, making it an excellent set-up piece to milk your graveyard for several turns or for an explosive mass reanimation effect like Living Death or Rise of the Dark Realms.

#6. Vile Entomber

Of all the creature-based entomb effects, Vile Entomber is the best. It’s the cheapest, deathtouch ensures it always trades up on mana, and the zombie type is incredibly relevant when it comes to graveyard stuff.

#5. Transmute Artifact

Transmute Artifact is a rather roundabout entomb effect since the artifact takes a sojourn to the battlefield before hitting the graveyard and it sacrifices an artifact as an additional cost. But it’s super efficient and sometimes it just puts your Bolas's Citadel or whatever into play, giving it excellent flexibility.

#4. Gifts Ungiven

The trick to maximize Gifts Ungiven is exploiting the fail to find rule to find two prominent targets, both of which must go to the graveyard. This tutor entombs whatever you like. It once was a key part of Modern, and it was deemed too powerful for Commander, though it was unbanned in 2025.

#3. Unmarked Grave

Unmarked Grave has some restrictions; it sucks that it doesn't hit the reanimation target of all time, Griselbrand, but it does great work in decks that reach for cards like Archon of Cruelty or don’t care about creatures specifically.

#2. Intuition

The route to breaking Intuition involves developing “packages” of three cards that lead to strong combo lines regardless of which cards end up in your hand and which are in your graveyard.

For example, hunting up Underworld Breach, Lion's Eye Diamond, and Sevinne's Reclamation ensures you have a Breach line, no matter what your opponents give you. It’s practically a one-card combo engine!

#1. Entomb

When a class of cards is named after a card, it’s often one of the best. And that’s true here of Entomb. Any card, of any type, for the least mana possible at instant speed. This tutor is on par with the best of the best like Vampiric Tutor and Demonic Tutor, even if you need to do a little extra work around the graveyard. Its efficiency can’t be beat.

Best Entomb Payoffs

Perhaps the most powerful way to exploit entomb effects is through assembling combo lines. Reanimation spells are the classic option, but you can set up lines for cards like Underworld Breach or Past in Flames by putting relevant cards in the graveyard.

Entombs play well with recursive effects. Cards like Ramunap Excavator and Muldrotha, the Gravetide aren’t exactly combos with entomb effects, but they put them to excellent use by making them work like a traditional tutor to instantly play the card.

They also work decently with cards that care about a certain amount of something in the graveyard; for example, you could throw an enchantment creature into the graveyard to set up delirium or make sure you have enough creatures to trigger Oversold Cemetery. I don’t know that I’d use these effects exclusively to power such effects, but it’s a nice benefit.

Magic also has plenty of creatures that want to be in the graveyard for one reason or another. Throwing a dredge creature like Golgari Grave-Troll or a disturb threat like Mirrorhall Mimic into the graveyard might not be flashy, but it’s effective.

Wrap Up

Unmarked Grave | Illustration by James Paick

Entomb effects provide graveyard-based decks with incredible tools for consistency to set up powerful plays, often involving combo lines that end the game on the spot, or shortly after reanimating a Griselbrand or similar threat.

Which entomb effects are your favorites? Do you exploit them to set up combo lines or just to mess around with Regrowth effects? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord.

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!