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Moxonomy

Desecrated Tomb

Artifact3 generic mana

Most graveyard payoffs trigger when cards enter the yard; this one watches the other door. The trigger fires when creature cards leave your graveyard, which reframes every recursion spell, every reanimation effect, and every graveyard-based cost as a source of free bodies. That inversion is the whole pitch. A card that returns a creature to your hand or battlefield was already doing its job; this converts the side effect (a creature leaving the graveyard) into a Bat, at no extra mana. The payoff scales with how aggressively a deck churns through its own yard, so the design rewards builds that treat the graveyard as a resource to spend on loop after loop, not a place where dead things rest. Note the precision of the wording: it counts creature cards, not creatures, and it counts the event of one or more leaving at once, so a single mass-recursion spell that returns four creatures still makes only one Bat, while four separate recursions make four. That clause is what keeps it from spiraling. It does nothing the turn it resolves, asking instead for a board built to feed it: Unearth and escape creatures cycling back into play, scavenge and embalm spending bodies from the yard, self-mill loops refilling it. The Bats themselves are almost incidental, small and evasive, best understood as the receipt for a graveyard that never stops moving.

Desecrated Tomb (pm19)
PM19 · #230rare
Pricing
Normal:
Foil: $2.06
Oracle Text

Rules text

Whenever one or more creature cards leave your graveyard, create a 1/1 black Bat creature token with flying.
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
N/A
Pioneer
Legal
Modern
Legal
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
N/A
Brawl
Legal
Historic
Legal
Alchemy
N/A
Timeless
Legal
Standard Brawl
N/A
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
N/A
PreDH
N/A
Pauper Commander
N/A
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
Legal
Penny Dreadful
Legal
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
N/A
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
Legal
TLR
Legal
Printings elsewhere

Other printings

2 sets
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