The Cloning of Shredder

Six mana double-black at sorcery speed, in a medium-speed format with one to two playable removal commons per color, is the math that decides where this sits. BG Food and WB Legends-attrition take it P1P3 to P1P5: not over the Turtle mythics or Stomped by the Foot, but ahead of most uncommons in those archetypes. UR Sneak and the faster Mardu builds let it wheel.

The setup tax is the gate. You need a creature in the bin worth six mana, and TMT's commons do not naturally fill the yard: Mill shows up on five cards total, and self-discard is thin. The targets that justify the engine are the legendary uncommons and Turtle mythics, which means the payoff is gated behind the same picks the rest of your deck already wants. Stripping legendary off the tokens does real structural work precisely because the best targets are the legends the format keeps pushing you toward.

What the format cannot do is grind the engine out once it lands. Chapter I triggers the moment the Saga enters, so you have a token the turn you cast it, and killing that token with Grounded for Life or Stomped by the Foot accomplishes nothing: chapters II and III copy the exiled card, not the token. The real answer is narrower. Enchantment removal in response to the chapter I trigger is brutal: the trigger still resolves and you keep one token, but the Saga itself is gone, so chapters II and III never arrive and a three-for-one collapses into a one-for-one. Counterspells are cleaner still. That single window, the turn you tap out, is the only place the engine breaks.

Maindeck wherever a graveyard plan supports it.

The math that makes this worth six double-black mana is the multiplication: one creature in your graveyard becomes three Mutant-typed copies across three chapters, with the first token landing the moment the Saga enters and chapters II and III asking nothing of you except patience. That changes who wants it. Meren of Clan Nel Toth and Muldrotha, the Gravetide are the natural homes, decks already built to fill a yard and grind it. Meren likes that the copies are non-legendary, so all three can coexist, and she can feed them to a sacrifice outlet for experience counters; the tokens themselves vanish on death rather than returning, but the bodies are fodder either way. Muldrotha wants it as a recastable enchantment if it gets answered, which is the failure case the Saga is most exposed to.

That exposure is the real cost. The first token is immediate, but chapters II and III are the back half of the payoff, and getting there means surviving two of your own draw steps with a six-mana enchantment sitting in the open. A single piece of removal between chapters costs the opponent nothing and you the rest of the engine. At a four-player table this is a kingmaker read more than a threat read: the value accrues slowly enough that opponents have time to decide whether answering it is worth their card.

This is Bracket 2-3 territory. The clock is too slow for Bracket 4-5 graveyard shells, which run faster Reanimate-and-Exhume lines and have no patience for a three-chapter engine, and cEDH never touches it. Budget-wise it sits in casual reach, the kind of finisher a $200-400 Meren or Muldrotha build slots without strain.

What it competes with is your existing reanimation slot. Against a clean Reanimate, this loses the speed race but wins the long game: one cast yields three bodies, and the original stays safe in exile as a reference rather than a creature an opponent can answer back into the yard. In a deck built to go long, that trade is the point. In anything trying to close fast, it is dead weight.

A six-mana, double-black reanimator payoff for a Modern graveyard deck, and Modern does not run six-mana sorcery-speed enchantments that telegraph a turn early as its reanimation plan. The format's graveyard decks want to cheat creatures out fast and protect the play, not announce a Saga and wait three turns for it to come online. It has registered nothing in tracked tournament play this season. There is no archetype here that asks for a back-loaded token engine at this rate. Legal, not picked up.

Legal since its March 2026 release, but yet to register in tracked Standard tournament play this season. The structural read explains the absence cleanly. Six mana at double black for a sorcery-speed enchantment that produces nothing the turn it lands is a hard sell in a format that punishes setup turns, and the Saga telegraphs itself: a removal answer on the turn it resolves leaves you with an empty enchantment ticking toward sacrifice. The engine also wants a particular shell to exist around it, a graveyard deck that fills the yard early and then has a turn to spare on a payoff that back-loads its value across chapters II and III. Standard's current black graveyard decks have not been built to sit behind a six-drop and wait. The payoff is real once it stabilizes (three Mutant-typed copies of a sizable creature, immune to the legend rule), but the format has not given it the protected setup window the card needs, and nothing in the current pool plays as the dedicated enabler it would want.

The card belongs to the block that rotates in the fall 2026 cycle, exact date pending Wizards' announcement. That gives it less than a full Standard lifespan to find the shell it needs, and the enablers that would build that shell come and go on the same clock. If a slower graveyard-midrange archetype emerges in the next set or two, the math could change; on the announced pool, it has no home, and the rotation window for finding one is short.

A six-mana, double-black reanimator finisher for a Pioneer graveyard deck that does not exist yet, because nothing has assembled around it this season. Chapter I produces a token the turn it resolves, but the engine wants you to survive into chapters II and III, which is slow for a format where the reanimation shells that exist run cheaper payoffs and want their bodies now. Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play. If a dedicated multi-turn graveyard engine ever wants a token-copy finisher, this is the card. Until then it sits in the maybe-pile.

A six-mana sorcery-speed enchantment in a format where Reanimator wins through Exhume into a body for one mana off Black Lotus. Chapter I does produce a token immediately, but the engine wants chapters II and III to pay off, and a single removal spell answers the lot before then for nothing. The fast Reanimator lines want the creature now; the Bazaar and Dredge engines do not want a slow double-black rebuy payoff. Legal, but yet to register in tracked Vintage play this season. Noise.

Reanimate at one mana puts the creature on the battlefield the turn it resolves; this asks for six, double black, at sorcery speed, and waits a full turn before producing the first token. The comparison the archetype actually cares about is Reanimate and Exhume, and a six-mana Saga loses that race in a format where Reanimator wins through Griselbrand by turn one or two. The back-loaded payoff is the wrong shape: by the time chapters II and III matter, the game in fast Legacy is decided. Force of Will pitches to it for free, and a single removal spell on the resolution turn costs the opponent nothing while you have spent six mana for one token. The token-copy engine is a fine Commander reframing, but Legacy reanimation does not want a slow rebuy. Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play. Does not clear the bar.