Muldrotha, the Gravetide Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on March 30, 2025

Muldrotha, the Gravetide | Illustration by Jason Rainville

Sometimes the graveyard is a place where cards go to rest. But when Muldrotha, the Gravetide is on the table, your graveyard is more like your second hand. The more cards in your graveyard, the better!

Today I dive into how to play a Commander deck with one of the strongest Sultai cards at the helm: Muldrotha, the Gravetide. I cover deckbuilding options, strategy, and unique interactions that you might not have known about. And remember, when you play Sultai commanders (), the graveyard is your best friend.

Ready? Let's get digging!

The Deck

Stitcher's Supplier | Illustration by Chris Seaman

I’ve played Muldrotha, the Gravetide in just about every format you can play on MTG Arena. And let me tell you, when the Muldrotha train gets rolling it doesn’t stop. It lets you play one permanent of each card type from your graveyard per turn as if it were in your hand. To maximize this effect this is a self-mill deck with recursion that grinds your opponents through sheer value.

Here’s what you can play from the graveyard: creatures, enchantments, artifacts, lands, battles, and planeswalkers. The secret to a Muldrotha deck is to have lots of different card types in your graveyard at all times. When your commander hits the battlefield, you have both card advantage and card selection.

Want to cast creature removal? Pernicious Deed and Fleshbag Marauder are waiting for you. Want to get rid of artifacts or enchantments? Hostage Taker, Seal of Primordium, and Caustic Caterpillar are great options. Need card advantage? Cast Chromatic Sphere for the fifth time.

The Commander: Muldrotha, the Gravetide

Muldrotha, the Gravetide is a 6/6 creature for that lets you cast permanents from the graveyard. This can be done once per turn for every type of permanent. It's among the best mill commanders.

Instants and sorceries are fine, but those are kept to a minimum in favor of permanents. Seeing as your commander boasts a hefty mana cost, it’s important to hold onto your ramp and add more protection spells if your playgroups use lots of targeted removal.

Creatures

Doc Aurlock, Grizzled Genius, and Gravebreaker Lamia reduce your cost to play cards from the graveyard. The innocuous Spore Frog can be a repeatable Fog effect.

What do you do with a lot of mana? Steal a creature or artifact from your opponent. If Hostage Taker dies then you can do it again next turn.

Your creatures will eventually die somehow. When Liliana, Heretical Healer dies it turns into Liliana, Defiant Necromancer, ready to keep your opponent's card count low and reanimate some stuff.

Naturalize effects aren’t usually worth it here, but it becomes awesome when you can use the effect every turn.

A green staple in a lot of Constructed formats, Sakura-Tribe Elder shines even more here since it’s repeatable ramp and color fixing.

Consider that you play fetch lands, mill yourself, and put more lands into the graveyard than the average player, The Gitrog Monster’s ability triggers a lot. As you play cards from the graveyard, those cards leave the graveyard and make it perfect to trigger Tatyova, Benthic Druid and Teval, the Balanced Scale.

Graveyard Recursion and Interaction

Sometimes you need to get some extra cards from your graveyard, and Evolution Witness and Six can do just that.

River Kelpie and Secrets of the Dead reward you as you play your deck. Who doesn’t like to draw cards?

Hedge Shredder was made for this deck. It mills you and recovers your lands, and effectively turns land searching effects like on Evolving Wilds and Foreboding Landscape into ramp.

Graveyard Fillers

Jace, Wielder of Mysteries draws you extra cards while slowly filling your graveyard. Some Muldrotha builds focused on self-mill can use it as a win condition.

Ashiok, Dream Render fills your graveyard while denying your opponents. This is one card you don’t want to see on the other side of the board.

Wrenn and Seven can fill your graveyard and produce huge threats.

Stitcher's Supplier and Fact or Fiction are more sources of self-mill for your graveyard shenanigans.

Artifacts and Enchantments

Expendable tools like Expedition Map, Hedron Archive and Wayfarer's Bauble become everlasting artifact tools thanks to Muldrotha.

Phyrexian Scriptures and Elspeth's Nightmare provide card advantage and removal while upping the deck's enchantment count.

Animate Dead and Dance of the Dead offer reanimation and extra value in case you already cast a creature this turn.

Pernicious Deed can be played lots of times and never hits your Muldrotha if you don’t want it to.

Win Conditions

Here’s a tough one. This Muldrotha build aims to grind the table and survive long enough for these cards to help win in style, but this deck mostly wins by grinding.

Just aim Villainous Wealth and Torment of Hailfire at an opponent with a large enough X and you’ll have good card advantage, or they lose on the spot.

Worm Harvest is a late-game card that builds an army of creature tokens.

Sometimes you need to control your opponents for the win. Mindslaver‘s effect is repeatable with Muldrotha.

The Mana Base

Because Muldrotha can play lands from the graveyard I snuck in a cycling land and focused on fetches. 

Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse, and Foreboding Landscape work nicely with the Panorama lands from Shards of Alara serve as examples of lands that work as fetches.

To help fix your three colors you have the on-color shock lands from Ravnica, the check lands from M10 and Innistrad, the slow lands from Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow, and a cycling land from Amonkhet (other cycling lands are good budget options, more on this below).

If you want to exchange a dual land you don’t have with a gate or snow land, go for it. For upgrades consider the Zendikar and Khans of Tarkir fetch lands and a triome.

The Strategy

Your main goal is to chill and survive. Most players catch on that your Muldrotha deck will be a long-term problem. So you may be attacked early, your commander will probably be the target of removal, and your graveyard the target of some hate. Try to always land your commander on the battlefield with a protective spell or enchantment.  

Ramp is best in the early game. In the midgame your cards should disrupt everybody equally, forcing every player to sacrifice a creature or discard a card. Get your self-mill going to obtain more resources turn after turn.

In the late game you should recur your big spells with Evolution Witness-like effects, replay your sagas for value until you fire your win condition at an opponent.

Combos and Interactions

Fact or Fiction | Illustration by Matt Cavotta

• Cards like Fact of Fiction can draw you cards and “play the cards from your graveyard.” A similar interaction is seen in cards like Wrenn and Seven and Hedge Shredder.
• Thought Scour operates as a mini Ancestral Recall.
• When you cast cards with Muldrotha, cast Baleful Strix and Gravebreaker Lamia and other cards like artifacts or enchantments instead of creatures. That way you can still use Muldrotha to cast another creature.
• Remember that Muldrotha's ability resets if you return it to your hand. It’s possible to cast cards from the graveyard using it and then return it to your hand to cast it again and play even more cards from your graveyard.
• This deck has a fair share of basic lands because there are lots of repeatable ramp effects that search for basics, like Sakura-Tribe Elder.

Rule 0 Violations

This deck doesn’t have any play patterns that can violate Commander‘s Rule 0 since it’s a casual build and likely a bracket power level 2 in your EDH playgroup. It doesn't have tutors that search for combo pieces or locks that keep everyone out of the game.

Upgrade Options

• Strip Mine and Wasteland can wreak havoc on your opponents’ mana base.
• Zendikar and Khans of Tarkir fetch lands.
• Mana Drain is a Counterspell that ramps you.
• Mystic Remora draw cards at the expense of your opponents unless they pay .
• Ashnod's Altar, Phyrexian Tower and Altar of Dementia are sacrifice outlets that allow you to turn your creatures into damage and mana.
• Deathrite Shaman can turn your graveyard into resources, mainly ramp and color fixing.
• Sylvan Safekeeper offers more ways to protect your commander.
• Entomb and Demonic Tutor are more tutors for your deck that can search for the right pieces.

Other Builds

The first alternate goes for combos and is a dedicated self-mill strategy that uses Hermit Druid alongside Laboratory Maniac or Thassa's Oracle. You may want to play some dredge cards like Stinkweed Imp and Golgari Grave-Troll to accelerate this process. 

Some players like builds that use Birthing Pod and Prime Speaker Vannifar along with Muldrotha to keep sacrificing creatures for value while you go up the chain.

Other builds like to win with a big Lord of Extinction or Consuming Aberration sacrificed to Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord.

Kokusho, the Evening Star sacrifice loops are also popular.

Wrap Up

Evolution Witness[/card] | Illustration by Nereida

[card]Muldrotha, the Gravetide was one of the most popular commanders when it released and is still one of the more fun commanders to play. If you’re a control player at heart you’ll love the value avenue that Muldrotha offers. If you have the resources and cards available to put together a Muldrotha EDH list then I urge you to do it. Muldrotha EDH is a great combination of power and flexibility.

What do you think of this list? Is your Muldrotha build different? Are graveyard commanders your favorite, or do you prefer other color combinations? Don’t be afraid to leave a comment with your thoughts and feedback or find us over on Twitter.

That's all from me for today. Stay safe, stay healthy, and wash your hands!