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In the game of Magic: The Gathering, death is often only a temporary state. The game's many formats are flush with cards and strategies that make death more of a suggestion than an ending.
Graveyard strategies take full advantage of the graveyard, reanimating your dead Creatures and giving you access to the spells you've already cast. They're just sitting there after all. Why not put them to work? Treating your graveyard like a second hand is the name of the game for strategies like Dredge, Reanimator, and various flavors of Aristocrats and Spellslinger.
For multiplayer formats like Commander, you need every edge you can get if you want to stay ahead of your opponents. If you're looking to eke out every advantage and squeeze as much value as you can from your cards, the graveyard is where you should be looking.
The Best 15 Commanders for Graveyard Decks
There are countless ways to make use of your graveyard as a resource in Magic. There are just as many options for Commanders to helm your graveyard deck.
Given the number of Legendary Creatures that interact with the graveyard, the competition for the best of the best is fierce. One-time format-defining cards have been pushed from the spotlight to make way for the new hotness. Sorry Karador, Ghost Chieftain, The Mimeoplasm, and Sharuum the Hegemon, your time in the spotlight is done.
Here's a look at the best 15 Commanders for Graveyard decks.
- Kess, Dissident Mage
- Anikthea, Hand of Erebos
- Coram, the Undertaker
- Quintorius, History Chaser
- The Gitrog Monster
- Celes, Rune Knight
- Sefris of the Hidden Ways
- Hashaton, Scarab's Fist
- Iroh, Grand Lotus
- Terra, Herald of Hope
- Norman Osborn // Green Goblin
- Meren of Clan Nel Toth
- The Necrobloom
- Muldrotha, the Gravetide
- Teval, the Balanced Scale
Every color in Magic: The Gathering can interact with the graveyard, with each caring about different card types to varying degrees. You could build a deck that cares about the graveyard in pretty much any color combination, but some colors and strategies are more proven than others.
Black is the king of graveyard strategies, but every color brings a unique flavor and extra utility to the party.
15. Kess, Dissident Mage
Kess, Dissident Mage takes a Spellslinger approach to graveyard strategies. She allows you to cast one Instant or Sorcery card from your graveyard on each of your turns. This essentially gives all your Instants and Sorceries Flashback, which is a good amount of value.
Where Kess falls short is placing a "once per turn" restriction on her ability, meaning you can't go buck wild casting spell after spell from your 'yard. You also have to pay the full mana value of every spell you cast. Taking that into consideration, Kess works best with cheap, high-impact Instants and Sorceries.
Her ability is a powerful one but, you just can't break it in half quite like the best graveyard Commander options.
14. Anikthea, Hand of Erebos
Anikthea, Hand of Erebos is primarily an Enchantress Commander, but she brings a unique graveyard angle to the strategy. There aren't many Commanders that care about Enchantments in the graveyard, and there are powerful things that can be done by reanimating expensive Enchantments as evasive threats.
Black mana also introduces new avenues to explore that are unavailable to your typical Green/White Enchantress deck.
She does exile your Enchantments to reanimate them as Zombies, which reduces the impact of Enchantress all-stars like Replenish. However, having the ability to reanimate your Enchantments sitting in the Command Zone is worth the sacrifice.
13. Coram, the Undertaker
Jund 
is a great color combo for graveyard decks of all kinds, and Coram, the Undertaker plays multiple lanes. Coram actively wants Creatures with a lot of power to be in the graveyard, whether yours or your opponents'.
He actively sets himself up with his mill-on-attack ability. You may get lucky and mill one of your opponents' big Creatures to pump up Coram for a huge hit of Commander damage. It's much easier to plan on stocking your own graveyard with massive threats instead.
Coram's main draw is that he lets you both play a Land and cast a spell from any Graveyard that was put there from a library this turn. You can always grab something from your own 'yard, but being able to snag your opponents' Lands and spells is a significant upside.
12. Quintorius, History Chaser
Quintorius, History Chaser is one of only two Commanders without Black in its color identity on this list. He takes advantage of White's secondary status as a reanimation color and Red's ability to dump cards into the graveyard.
Red and White graveyard decks are rarer, but they get to play in a different space than Black-based graveyard decks.
He's from the College of Lorehold on Strixhaven, so he cares more about cards leaving the graveyard. It doesn't matter how, they just need to leave. Exiling things from your yard, Reanimating a permanent, and recursive artifact loops with Goblin Welder all create tokens that Quintorius can pivot into a win while fueling future graveyard shenanigans.
11. The Gitrog Monster
The Gitrog Monster is a classic Commander that generates massive value by putting Lands in the Graveyard. It doesn't matter how they get there, The Gitrog Monster just wants to put Lands in the bin and rewards you with card draw.
It's relatively simple to set up an engine with the big frog that lets you churn through your deck and fill up your graveyard. Once it's nicely stacked, you can bring back whatever you want with Black and Green's suite of Reanimation spells for Creatures and Lands.
The Gitrog Monster champions a proven strategy. It's a little one-note, but that note is strong.
10. Celes, Rune Knight
Celes, Rune Knight is a relatively recent addition to the game, but she has a lot of potential in decks that like to bring things back from the graveyard. Celes doesn't Reanimate anything on her own, but when she enters she does an excellent job of putting things into the graveyard to bring back.
She also actively rewards you for reanimating Creatures by buffing your entire team with +1/+1 counters when you do. Combo potential with Persist Creatures is Celes' strong suit. You can cancel out the -1/-1 counter with Celes's +1/+1 counters, allowing you to bring Creatures with Persist back over and over again as long as you have a way to sacrifice them.
Phyrexian Altar or Ashnod's Altar can provide you with infinite mana on top of whatever Enters ability your chosen Persist Creature brings to the table. You can surely figure out a way to win the game once your engine is running.
9. Sefris of the Hidden Ways
Sefris of the Hidden Ways ticks a lot of boxes for a good Graveyard Commander. She cares about Creatures going into your graveyard and she can bring them back out without paying for them. The catch is that she plays into a very specific mechanic to do so: the Dungeon.
Sefris is a great payoff for Dungeon decks that want to take advantage of the myriad small bonuses that come along with clearing the various rooms. You'll want ways to Venture other than Sefris, since she can only trigger once each turn.
You can Venture during your opponents' turns as long as you have a way to put a Creature in your graveyard at Instant speed. You can get a little tricky with Sefris, completing a dungeon and reanimating a Creature in response to a big play.
Sefris is extremely flexible, and Esper 
is a great color cobo for a Reanimator deck. If you're able to take full advantage of the Venture mechanic, Sefris is a strong graveyard Commander.
8. Hashaton, Scarab's Fist
Hashaton, Scarab's Fist is our Zombie rep, giving us access to the three best Zombie colors and a way to double dip on value from throwing our Creatures into the Graveyard. He doesn't exile your cards to make tokens, like The Scarab God. The tradeoff is he can only make tokens when you discard the Creature.
If you have Instant-speed discard outlets, Hashaton can give you a cheap copy of any Creature at a moment's notice. Once your Graveyard is packed with Creatures, you get to reanimate them the old-fashioned way, getting twice the value.
What makes Hashaton so interesting is how many ways you can build around him. He's a great Zombie Kindred Commander, an excellent Reanimator Commander, or you could build around his token-making ability. That flexibility makes him a strong consideration for your Esper graveyard decks.
7. Iroh, Grand Lotus
Well worth his heavy mana cost is Iroh, Grand Lotus. He gives all your Instants and Sorceries Flashback, kind of like Kess, but he doesn't limit how many you can play in a turn. Temur is great at making huge amounts of mana, so it's likely you'll be able to cast multiple spells per turn from your Graveyard. If some of those spells are Lessons, that's even more likely since they'll only cost 
.
You trade access to Black for Green, but you gain the ability to cast as many spells from your graveyard as you want. Of course, you can only cast spells from your graveyard during your turn, but that's a minor inconvenience.
6. Terra, Herald of Hope
Despite the fact that she bears a striking resemblance to Alesha, Who Smiles at Death, there are some slight differences that push Terra over the top. She needs to connect in order to bring a Creature back from your Graveyard, but she gains Flying on your turn which makes surviving combat much more likely than Alesha's First Strike.
Terra, Herald of Hope also helps fill your graveyard on her own by milling two cards every combat phase. Two generic mana is an easier cost to pay than Alesha's two hybrid White/Black mana, and Terra can bring back Creatures with up to three power compared to Alesha's two.
Terra helps feed her own graveyard engine, gives herself evasion, and has an expanded pool of potential targets for her reanimation ability. All those options make her an interesting upgrade for Alesha decks while retaining all the established interactions and combo potential.
5. Norman Osborn // Green Goblin
Now, this is a graveyard Spellslinger Commander! Norman Osborn // Green Goblin wants you to believe that you have to play around giving your spells Mayhem and casting them the turn your discard them, but that's just upside.
The real juice is making all the spells you cast from your graveyard cost 
less. That reduces Flashback costs and other ways of casting spells from your graveyard, which really opens up the possibilities.
Cost reduction and a way to cast any spell you want out of your graveyard is a powerful combination of abilities for a color combo that loves using the graveyard as a second hand. Blue, Red, and Black have no shortage of ways to discard cards at Instant-speed, so playing around the Mayhem restriction is hardly an issue.
4. The Necrobloom
The Necrobloom is what happens when you make Field of the Dead a Commander. If the Landfall ability to make tokens was the only thing this had going for it, it would be fine, but it really wouldn't be a Graveyard Commander. Giving every Land in your Graveyard Dredge 2, is what pushes The Necrobloom over the top.
Dredge is a notoriously broken mechanic that dumps cards into your graveyard with startling efficiency. It's easy to throw a bunch of Lands in the bin and then draw cards to bring them back to hand, throwing even more Lands into the bin in the Dredging process.
Green easily lets you play multiple Lands in a turn, generating an army of 2/2 Zombie tokens for your trouble. And that's assuming you only care about putting Lands in your bin.
Dredge is one of the best ways to fill your graveyard with goodies to pull back out later, and The Necrobloom is in incredible colors to take full advantage of a stacked graveyard.
3. Meren of Clan Nel Toth
Back when she was first printed, Meren of Clan Nel Toth was a nightmare. Nowadays, Meren is still scary, but she isn't nearly the scariest thing to see across the table.
Experience counters are incredibly difficult to interact with, which makes Meren relevant at any point in the game as long as you're able to kill your creatures. That's child play for Golgari .
Reanimating something for free every turn is a solid prospect on its own. Putting a Creature into your hand if you don't have enough experience counters to reanimate it outright is one hell of an insurance policy.
Golgari is the home base graveyard decks, which means Meren is primed for success even if she didn't have a powerful ability. She has all the tools she needs to succeed and promises insane value over the course of the game.
2. Muldrotha, the Gravetide
Alongside Teval, Muldrotha, the Gravetide is among the reasons why Meren isn't as scary as she used to be. As long as you have the mana to cast them, Muldrotha lets you play multiple cards from your graveyard per turn, including Lands. Sultai adds Blue to the Golgari party, which boosts the power level substantially and provides so many tools for milling yourself.
Blue, Black, and Green are easily the best three colors you could be playing for a graveyard strategy. Blue helps fill your graveyard with self-Mill and provides powerful control and interaction. Black is the king of the graveyard, treating it as a second hand. Green supplements Blue's Mill and Black's graveyard mechanics, providing an additional layer of mana ramp and recursion on top of powerful Creatures.
The one thing that holds Muldrotha back, if you can even call it a drawback, is that you have to pay the full cost of the permanents you bring back from your graveyard. That is hardly an issue for a Green deck, and there are plenty of powerful value engines you can set up with cheap permanents.
1. Teval, the Balanced Scale
Outside of reanimating Creatures on its own, Teval, the Balanced Scale does pretty much everything a graveyard deck wants.
As a 4/4 Flyer, Teval will have no trouble swinging in to trigger its Mill ability, ramping your mana in the process as long as you have a Land in your graveyard. On top of that, any time something leaves your graveyard, you get an additional 2/2 Creature as a bonus.
Teval does an exceptional job at feeding all kinds of graveyard strategies and serves as a huge payoff since it doesn't care what kind of card leaves your graveyard or how it does so. Reanimate a Creature and get a 2/2. Eternal Witness a card back to your hand and get a 2/2.
Exile cards from your graveyard for a Delve cost and get a 2/2. Teval breathes and you get a 2/2. You'll be drowning in 2/2s, and so will your opponents.
He is the perfect enabler for your graveyard deck and rewards every action you take in pursuit of your gameplan. Teval, the Balanced Scale is the pinnacle of graveyard Commanders in Magic.
Conclusion
Whatever kind of graveyard deck you choose to build, the cards on this list are at the absolute top of their respective strategies. Sultai may be the strongest color combo for graveyard decks in the game, but there's more to building a Commander deck than power alone.
If power level isn't your main concern, there are Commander options that make use of the graveyard in plenty of unique ways. Keep digging graves, and you're sure to find your next favorite Commander.
