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Submerged Boneyard: Best Graveyard Recursion Combos for EDH
There’s something deeply satisfying about a plan that starts in the graveyard and ends in glory. Submerged Boneyard, a blue-black land from Zendikar Rising Commander, embodies that thrill. It enters tapped but can instantly swing the race in your favor by producing either blue or black mana—precisely the colors you want when you’re stacking graveyard recursion, card draw, and inevitability 💧🪄. In an EDH shell, this unassuming little land becomes a quiet backbone for long games where “graveyard is the new hand” isn’t just a trope but a working strategy. The flavor text from Kiora—“Long after the land has given up the last of its secrets, there will still be mysteries in the depths of the sea”—lands with extra resonance when you’re dredging, digging, and delivering answers from the depths 🎣⚓.
Why Submerged Boneyard fits a graveyard-centric EDH deck
Submerged Boneyard optimizes the two colors most players reach for when they want to combo, recur, or simply outlast the table: blue for counterplay and efficiency, black for graveyard power and stability. The land’s card text is refreshingly straightforward: it enters tapped and can be tapped to add either blue or black mana. That’s a big deal in commander where mana stability and color access determine the tempo of your turns. In the late game, you can chain together a cascade of graveyard recursions, drawing and reusing threats until your opponents realize they’ve walked into a well-constructed trap card dungeon 🧙♀️💎.
Pair Submerged Boneyard with classic black and blue recursion staples, and you’re building a play pattern that rewards planning and patience. You’ll generate value through repeated returns of creatures and effects from the graveyard, smooth out your manabase, and defend against disruption with counterplay and timely draw. It’s the kind of land that shines brightest when your deck is built to abuse its color pairing and graveyard-centric plan, giving you options even as the game grows longer and more complex 🎲⚔️.
Concrete patterns: best-graveyard recursion combos to try in EDH
- The classic two-card reanimate engine: Use Submerged Boneyard to generate black mana for a reliable reanimation spell (think of a spell that lets you pull a creature from the graveyard onto the battlefield). The real payoff comes when you pair it with a way to recast that same creature or to reuse its enters-the-battlefield effects. Blue mana opens up additional countermagic and draw, helping you protect the engine while you assemble the payoff. This is where the deck’s discipline shines—protect, recur, and press. Keep a mental track of what ETB triggers you value and how many times you can flip the table in a single turn 🧙♂️💎.
- Flicker and reanimate synergy: With blue in the mix, you can employ flicker effects to re-trigger ETB abilities or reset a creature’s status for another round of recursion. Submerged Boneyard fuels blue-black spells that enable flickering, counterspells, and draw. The goal is a loop where you temporarily “blink” a threat or a value creature from the graveyard to the battlefield again, netting you repeated value while your mana sits comfortably in your mana pool. It’s the kind of grind that rewards patience and precise timing 🎨🧭.
- Blue counterplay meets graveyard recursion: Don’t underestimate the pressure you can apply with counterspells and card draw while your engine churns in the background. Submerged Boneyard fixes your mana so you can safely deploy the early black hate and the late blue control, ensuring your recursion engine isn’t derailed by a single disruption spell. This balance between resource denial and resource generation is the essence of a well-tuned Dimir-leaning graveyard plan 🧙🔥⚡.
- Multi-step value generation: In longer games, you’ll cultivate a cascade of value: draw a card, recur a threat, replay via a reanimation spell, and reuse its ETB. The land’s color flexibility is what makes this approach robust, letting you adapt to what the table is doing—whether that’s heavy artifact-based interference, graveyard hate, or speedier linear strategies. The trick is to sequence your draws and recursions so you don’t run out of the most valuable spell casts; Submerged Boneyard helps you keep the flow steady 🗺️🎲.
Deck-building notes: optimizing Submerged Boneyard in practice
When you slot Submerged Boneyard into a deck, aim for a lean engine—enough recursion spells, enough draw, enough counterplay—without tipping into overkill. You want to maximize the land’s potential by ensuring you can cast at least one black or blue spell on turn two or three, and you should have backup paths for finding the other half of your engine. In EDH, that often means pairing the land with a resilient commander that can support a graveyard-oriented plan or with a suite of cheap, reusable effects that pair well with your reanimation suite 🧪💎.
Flavor and lore matter here as well. Submerged Boneyard is a nod to the mysteries lying beneath the ocean’s surface—where even a plain land can hide potent, unseen loops. Embrace that story while you math out your sequencing: count your draws, measure your mana, time your removals, and savor the moment when your graveyard is no longer a graveyard but a springboard into the battlefield 🌊🧭.
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For card-nerds who want to dive deeper, EDHREC and the broader community celebrate Submerged Boneyard as a reliable, offbeat engine that can surprise opponents who think they’ve anticipated your line. The land’s uncommon status in Zendikar Rising Commander ensures it’s accessible enough to slot into many builds without breaking the bank, making it an excellent staple for players refining their graveyard-recursion shells in both casual and semi-competitive circles 🧙♂️💎.