At first it looks similar to Yawgmoth's Will but there is a very real distinction. The fact that it doesn't exile the cards you actually want to cast, means that you only need a couple of action cards in order to get an engine going.
With Yawgmoth's Will if you wanted to generate lots of mana for example, you'd normally need quite a few different types of cards to do it, whether that be a mix of Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, and some number of other mana sources that provide more mana than cost to cast them like Lion's Eye Diamond, Lotus Petal.
But even if I had access to all these cards, generating mana is limited.
You also need specifically a number of these cards to be in your graveyard. Just having a single Dark Ritual as a mana source is not really going to be sufficient enough to string a big turn together.
Underworld Breach on the other hand only requires potentially one outlet for generating mana. As long as you can stock your graveyard you can keep recasting that mana generating source.
For example you only need a Lion's Eye Diamond to keep generating more mana.
What do you need to make Underworld Breach a good card in your deck?
Well at its very worst you can use it to recast say a single card from your graveyard. Is that good enough? Honestly that is not too bad. Especially in Red where getting non-artifact cards from your graveyard is very limited.
However there are three components to making Underworld Breach more dynamic in your deck.
- Putting cards into your graveyard.
- Generating mana.
- Graveyard recovery. If Underworld Breach goes to graveyard, do you have a way to recover it?
However a big part of this thread is to also show you that you can run small packages around the card in order to still get great use out of it.
Putting cards into your graveyard
Graveyard strategies are nothing new, and really is one of the cornerstones of Magic across all formats.
Trying to cover all the various ways to do this are going to be too numerous to mention. However I will highlight stuff that can get you thinking about how to use Underworld Breach.
There are cards that can put massive amounts of cards into graveyard all in one go; Oath of Druids, Hermit Druid, Mirror-Mad Phantasm, Traumatize, Fleet Swallower, Morality Shift, Doom Whisperer.
However a big part of Breach is that you find a way to keep recasting particular cards that can put further cards into your graveyard and also look to gain advantages or at least keep digging until you find the card(s) you need to close the game out. These cards also want to be of use potentially in games which you don't get to use Breach.
I've broken this thread into color-combinations and I specifically list cards that caught my attention within these.
Its important to avoiding spinning the wheels too much. If you are looking to cast Thought Scour a number of times for example, it only puts 2 cads into your graveyard and you need to escape 3 cards. If this is your only means of fueling your graveyard you will run out of resources. However you are drawing a card each time.
Say if you start with 7 cards in your graveyard (including the Thought Scour), then you can cast it 4 times. Not bad, but not great either.
Tome Scour is 5 cards, so is netting you 2 cards each time. Now this doesn't actually do anything on its own, costing you a to put 2 cards into your graveyard essentially. There is going to eventually need to be more of a game plan.
How about some of the Green cards in Commune with the Gods or Gather the Pack? They provide both card advantage and putting cards into your graveyard. Lets say you keep aiming to put 4 cards into your graveyard. This means that as long as you have the mana you can keep casting these for the escape cost.
I feel at this stage its important to look at mana sources as it establishes what is capable with the cost of the graveyard fuel cards.
Generating mana
In order to keep casting cards, you are going to need a way to generate mana. Really anything that can produce more mana than it does to cast it.
In this thread I actually try and go into detail for color selections, but to get an overview of general concepts I'm going to list some cards that show off the ability to do these in a broad manner.
Artifacts Instant or Sorcery
For example High Tide or Extraplanar Lens to produce additional mana.
Here is a list of cards that untap more than one creature. If you have creatures that can tap for more mana than it does to cast the card you can net.
- Benefactor's Draught
- Blessed Alliance
- Breaking Wave
- Call to Glory
- Domineering Will
- Energy Arc
- Flying Crane Technique
- Gleam of Resistance
- Hope and Glory
- Insurrection
- Join Shields
- Mob Rule
- Mobilize
- Rally of Wings
- Rally to Battle
- Rallying Roar
- Relentless Assault
- Roar of the Kha
- Savage Beating
- Tenacity
- Thoughtweft Gambit
- To Arms!
- Triton Tactics
- Vitalize
- War Flare
- Waves of Aggression
- Ready // Willing
There are plenty of other-ways you can combine cards to make mana, like cost reduction or creatures that generate mana, but you'd also need a sacrifice outlet.
Or maybe you have something that taps for lots of mana and any way to untap it is going to generate mana.
Also flicker cards can do it, but you need to combine them with very specific cards. Probably the best example of use would be Ghostly Flicker along with lands and/or artifacts that produce at least 4 mana together.
Now as you can see a lot of them are basically combos. That is you need a number of specific cards in order for them to work.
Untapping creatures requires some number of mana creatures in play. If you were to use To Arms! for example you'd need at least enough mana creatures to produce at least 3 mana and one of them White in order to gain.
In a deck that already has or might want to play mana creatures, this is of course fine.
If we look at a lot of these on an individual basis, then often they might only provide a net gain of a single mana. For example Lotus Petal.
Is this really good enough? If you wanted to produce 10 mana then that is 30 cards you need to exile!
Even if you look at Dark Ritual, its netting you only each time you cast it. Now this might be enough for what you are trying to do, but its certainly not a given.
I feel its important to identify where you really want to be at with efficiency.
Lion's Eye Diamond is certainly the most singular card that can guarantee 3 mana in all colors without the need for combining it with other cards. Its also over $200, so going to fall a bit short of being feasible for a lot of you. However this card is only ever going to get more uses and is "Reserved List" so if you want at least one take-away from this thread, just get yourself a copy as soon as possible and you can thank me in the future when of course its at least quadruple the price.
If you were looking for just Black or Red mana then Cabal Ritual or Seething Song will net you 3 mana as well.
Bigger gains might be through Songs of the Damned or Mana Geyser given the right setup.
Untapping lands I feel is a consistent and one of the "safer" options for generating mana as well.
Early Harvest, Rude Awakening and Turnabout with more lands than it cost to cast them will all produce mana.
Plus with effects that enable to tap lands for more than one mana also pile up.
At this stage some of you might be familiar with the Underworld Breach Pioneer deck that came in second at Worlds. It basically uses Lotus Field along with untap land effects in Hidden Strings, Vizier of Tumbling Sands, Pore Over the Pages to generate mana and card advantages.
Identifying lands that tap for more than one mana and also cards that allow this is important. If you check out my Zacama, Primal Calamity primer in my signature below, then I cover a comprehensive range of cards within Naya that do this.
If you look at Black you have Crypt Ghast, Bubbling Muck, Nirkana Revenant, Cabal Coffers, Cabal Stronghold.
Blue has High Tide.
The cards I don't list in my Zacama build are Extraplanar Lens, Gauntlet of Power and Gauntlet of Might.
Lands that tap for more than one mana are varied as well, with Lotus Field, Lotus Vale, Scorched Ruins, along with "bounce lands", Azorius Chancery, Dimir Aqueduct, etc, as good examples.
You can see a card like Frantic Search becomes very good once you are able to generate mana and be able to fuel your graveyard.
When it comes to non-land permanents, then often it needs to be artifacts or creatures that produce mana.
Dramatic Reversal probably being the best of them for efficiency.
Intellectual Offering is more expensive, therefore needing a threshold of more cards in play to enable it. But you do get the draw to help with finding more cards, although you also allow an opponent to draw into further cards.
Graveyard recovery
Another important question to ask is "Do you have any control over putting Underworld Breach into your hand/play if it does get put into your graveyard?"
There are a lot of ways to put cards into your graveyard, but a lot of them are what is term "milling", meaning basically blindly putting cards from your library into your graveyard.
The problem is if you don't already have Underworld Breach then it could realistically be put into your graveyard.
However there are ways to recover cards from graveyard outside of the Breach itself, and in the following color sections I explain various ways you can go about it.
Does your deck NEED to be a graveyard dedicated deck and/or lots of "ritual" mana sources?
I'm just going to answer this simply, NO.
Really that is the beauty of Underworld Breach is that you can build as much around it as you like, but you can also have a very small number of cards in your deck to fuel it and you can still get incredible use out of it.
Sometimes because you are not dedicating too much of your deck to the strategy you avoid getting locked out too much by graveyard hate cards.
I've found that decks that didn't use the graveyard really at all, now have a means to use it as a resource by just using a small suite of cards.
The other really important thing about Underworld Breach is that you don't particularly need to invest your game in "stocking" up your graveyard.
A card like Yawgmoth's Will often needs to be cast after you've spent some time casting cards and putting cards into your graveyard.
Because of the way you can just use a few of literally the same cards to enable you to get a sizeable graveyard, you can actually just wait until you are ready to start a big turn. which means that you might not have much of a graveyard at the start of your turn at all. This avoids exile graveyard effects that might have been used in the earlier parts of the game, putting a spanner in the works.
Returning the Underworld Breach back to hand for further use
Another element I want to touch on quickly is using return enchantment/permanent cards to hand to return Breach before the end of the turn, and thus be able to use it again later on in the game.
An example is using Chain of Vapor or Winds Rebuke to return it to hand. If you have enough cards in your graveyard you can do this every turn, or maybe look at alternative type turns.
I will have to admit that I personally haven't used it in this way yet, as I've found that I when I'm casting it, I'm aiming on very much winning the turn I play it.
But it is worth considering what cards can do this.
Cards by color
My first disclaimer is that this is by no means meant to be completely comprehensive, its simply my theory-crafting for the afternoon. As such part of the goal is to get others to share their thoughts and experiences. I look forward to learning a lot. If you feel there are cards I've missed, hit me up.
My second disclaimer is that due to the nature of wanting to repeatedly cast cards with the Breach there is a strong focus on instant and sorcery.
I do mention other cards types at times, but because to recast permanents cards like creatures, planeswalkers and artifacts require some way to get them into your graveyard, my research doesn't go that deep into these other types.
I'm sure once you incorporate more elements to do with sacrificing creatures for example, there are going to be a lot more permanent cards you can add into potential engines.
I guess thirdly that I haven't listed all the cards that cropped up in my research, as I feel some of them are simply not efficient enough. There are a lot of cards that I have listed that I still don't think are efficient enough, but given that some decks can just produce infinite mana, sometimes cost might not be the overall factor, so its worthwhile listing most things down.
Colorless (Artifacts)
Putting cards into your graveyard
Of note Painter's Servant with Grindstone will enable you to mill your whole library. Grindstone on its own in a mono-colored deck will trigger an additional time every so often.
Altar of Dementia can be combined with creatures that have high power. I actually go into depth about Greater Good later on in this thread which does a similar thing.
But Altar of Dementia is in all colors, so opens you to a lot of options. But the classic case would be to keep recasting Phyrexian Dreadnought as its sacrifice clause is actually an enter the battlefield trigger, which means you can respond to it before it resolves, in this case sacrificing it to put 12 cards into your graveyard. You can of course mill your whole library this way.
Grinding Station can be combined with almost any artifact that you are able to cast "for free". That might be something like Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Grim Monolith, Basalt Monolith, as they are able to tap to pay for themselves. Su-Chi, Cathodion, Myr Moonvessel also pay for themselves. You simply sacrifice it to the Grinding Station in order to recast it.
But obviously that also extends to anything that actually cost zero mana. Cost reduction might help with that as well.
There are non-indefinite mill type cards in Keening Stone and Mesmeric Orb, but can really put a lot of cards into your graveyard.
Mesmeric Orb combined with cards that untap mana sources like Dramatic Reversal, Early Harvest, Rude Awakening, Turnabout, Frantic Search, etc, are going to be self contained units to keep fueling your graveyard. This is a way to ensure setting up indefinite.
Other much less impactful cards are Grindclock, Millstone, Perpetual Timepiece, Sands of Delirium, Screaming Shield, Tower of Murmurs, Whetstone, Whetwheel which can be used as more like setup cards earlier on in the games, although I wouldn't recommend them.
Generating mana
I've already highlighted Lion's Eye Diamond as the king-daddy of producing additional mana, but what else?
Well the thing is that with permanents you need a way to put them back into graveyard, so this limits options a lot.
Krark-Clan Ironworks is a sure fire way to generate mana and be able to put the artifact back in graveyard for recasting. Being a combo enabler for a lot of things, its not hard to imagine there will be limitless ways to abuse it with Breach as long as you have a way to also fuel the graveyard for the escape.
Graveyard recovery
There are artifacts that can get back enchantments from graveyard in Crystal Chimes, Skull of Orm, Codex Shredder, Conqueror's Foothold.
Mono-Red
Putting cards into your graveyard
That is Burning Inquiry, Collective Defiance, Control of the Court, Fateful Showdown, Goblin Lore, Incendiary Command, Khorvath's Fury, Reforge the Soul, Shattered Perception, Wheel of Fortune.
If you can keep casting Wheel of Fortune then you of course get 7 cards into your graveyard, which would be enough for the mana producer and the Wheel each time.
Lets say Mana Geyser with this is going to allow you to do it as many times as you want.
Generating mana
Runaway Steam-Kin can be used to cast cards. For example you can keep casting Burning Inquiry as it only costs .
Mana Echoes combined with a card that produces multiple creatures will give you access to lots of colorless mana. For example Empty the Warrens.
On that note Empty the Warrens with Phyrexian Altar/Skirk Prospector/Thermopod will get exponentially better with "storm" building up each time.
Graveyard recovery
Controlling what goes to your graveyard can be very important when you don't have Underworld Breach in your hand.
Now fortunately in Red, most of the graveyard fueling strategy is via drawing and discarding, so you get to choose in most of these instances.
Past in Flames and Recoup have flashback. Red by itself doesn't have any ways to get enchantments back from your graveyard other than Breach itself. But you can look to mix these cards with other colors to retrieve Breach.
Red specialty is getting artifacts back from the graveyard. Cards like Scrap Mastery, Goblin Engineer, Daretti, Scrap Savant, Goblin Wielder, to name a few.
There are artifacts that can get back enchantments from graveyard in Crystal Chimes, Skull of Orm, Codex Shredder, Conqueror's Foothold.
If you have a heavy mill plan then you can look to proxy getting access to the Breach by using Past in Flames/Recoup to cast Trash for Treasure or Scrap Mastery to get one of the artifact recovery cards into play.
Its a bit of a chain process, but in the end it means that you can freely mill your library and ultimately have access to all of it.
Gruul
Putting cards into your graveyard
They put between 4-6 cards into your graveyard which should be sufficient to fuel the escape cost of both the mana generator and these cards.
A classic example would be say having 7 lands in play and using Early Harvest to generate mana to cast both it and the Kruphix's Insight for example.
There are going to be times where you put enchantments into your hand for card advantage, so its not deterministic, but more than likely you draw/mill into additional ways to keep going indefinitely.
Lets look at something more expensive in See the Unwritten. At first this might seem to be too expensive to be a feasible way to get indefinite recursion going. But we can potentially put 7 or 6 cards into the graveyard. This means that is enough to cast a Lion's Eye Diamond, or Early Harvest/Rude Awakening twice, meaning enough to keep recasting it.
The other thing with the untap land cards is you can use land ramp to get better and better uses out of them. If you have access to something like Nature's Lore, you can cast it every time you net enough for it and to be able to cast the untap land card.
As long as you have a way to fuel your graveyard its worth casting the Nature's Lore as it exponentially makes the untap land card produce more mana, thus making it easier to cast the ramp cards as well more times before using the untap.
Green has dredge cards like Golgari Grave-Troll and Life from the Loam. But you need a way to both draw and discard them in order to put them back into the graveyard. Just casting them is probably not going to work.
The problem is that there isn't a lot of cards that have non-tap abilities that allow for both of these to happen.
If I was to list the best examples they are going into Blue as well; Compulsion, Mental Discipline, Mesmeric Trance, Unfulfilled Desires, Tomb Robber.
Oread of Mountain's Blaze or Merchant of the Vale is able to do it. Lets say you use Golgari Grave-Troll. Because you get to put 6 cards into graveyard you can cast a mana producer twice, therefore you may have enough to keep using the ability. But this is very much spinning the wheels, you'll eventually want something else or to at least be producing a reasonable amount of mana.
Greater Good can be used with some power to cost efficient creature(s) to fuel your graveyard. Phyrexian Dreadnought can be easily used to get through your deck. Vexing Devil, Lupine Prototype, Sheltering Ancient, Ball Lightning are other examples. But these are specialized creatures.
The thing is that because you get to use the cards you discard, it doesn't matter if you are even casting something that isn't so power to cost efficient.
Anything with 3 power is going to be enough make sure you can keep escape 3 as long as you have the mana producer as well.
These are some cards in Gruul that I thought might fit a build.
Survival of the Fittest allows you to put 3 cards into your graveyard for the escape at the cost of . So unless you have ways to gain advantages via putting creatures into your graveyard to then be exiled immediately, then you are spinning your wheels for no actual gains.
The exception is if you are simply looking to generate additional mana. But your source is going to need to be pretty good. For example casting Early Harvest would need at least 7 basics in order to net a mana once you spend the on the Survival of the Fittest.
Graveyard recovery
A very important element is "If Underworld Breach goes to graveyard, do you have a way to recover it?".
Green has some of the best ways to do this.
Creeping Renaissance can be flashback naming enchantments.
I've already pointed out Past in Flames and Recoup in Red, and you can use these to cast cards like Regrowth or Seasons Past to get Underworld Breach back in the cast of milling (or whatever else puts it into your graveyard).
Green also has some creatures that can return cards from graveyard, so you can use Genesis to return a card like Eternal Witness or Greenwarden of Murasa so that you can mill freely to get Breach back.
You can imagine using Oath of Druids or Hermit Druid to dump a large portion (or all) into your graveyard and you can use these methods of Creeping Renaissance or Genesis in order to cast Underworld Breach.
Rakdos
Black is probably the most infamous for creature graveyard recursion. But trying to get indefinite engines going with creatures with Underworld Breach is a little trickier as you need ways to get creatures back into your graveyard if wanting to recast them multiple times.
Putting cards into your graveyard
- Balustrade Spy
- Bitter Revelation
- Buried Alive
- Chains of Mephistopheles
- Corpse Churn
- Dark Bargain
- Destroy the Evidence
- Doom Whisperer
- Dread Summons
- Entomb
- Funeral Rites
- Iname, Death Aspect
- Liliana's Indignation
- Moonlight Bargain
- Morality Shift
- Price of Fame
- Ransack the Lab
- Shared Trauma
- Undercity Informer
Morality Shift can do it all pretty much in one go.
Others need very specific builds with Balustrade Spy and Undercity Informer having very few lands. I have actually built a 3 land commander deck around these cards in the past. Yes 3 lands total
Doom Whisperer just depends on how much life you can afford to invest. I made a deck based around this creature using Shadowborn Apostles. You can check out the list on MTGSalvation here. It essentially uses lifegain cards that you can use from your graveyard. There is nothing from using a similar idea in Mardu to make something that utilized a similar strategy.
Buried Alive can get 3 cards to fuel escape but you'd need some other way to get advantages.
If you are able to not exile creatures initially to fuel casting Songs of the Damned, then you can get traction that way.
Lets say you have 3 creatures in your graveyard already and cast Buried Alive to bring that up to 6.
Casting Songs of the Damned will generate 6 mana. But if you cast it again, chances are you have to exile 3 creatures and then you'll only gain 3 mana.
As you can see you really need to be able to turn 3 creatures into more cards in your graveyard otherwise you are definitely just spinning the wheels.
You could use a dredge card like Stinkweed Imp in conjunction with Phantasmagorian and/or Kraul Swarm. The idea is that you use this to setup your graveyard over a number of turns (or draws). You can dredge for 5 in your draw step. Then you can discard the Imp along with other cards via the Phantasmagorian in your graveyard in order to dredge again.
Now you can use the ability of Kraul Swarm to put Phantasmagorian back into your graveyard and you can start all over again with Kraul Swarm and Stinkweed Imp being 2 cards you discard to usePhantasmagorian ability again. Its just a way to ensure that you can dredge each turn without needing any other cards or casting anything.
Undead Gladiator can also be used in a manner with dredge setting up over a number of turns. You can discard the Imp in your upkeep to then dredge again. Then you can cycle the Gladiator to dredge the Imp again. The net result is that you can put 10 cards into your graveyard each turn, allowing you to setup over the course of a few turns.
Faithless Looting or any of the draw discard with Stinkweed Imp and Golgari Thug in your graveyard is enough to dredge 9 cards.
Each time you cast Faithless Looting you will be able to discard the Imp and Thug. For each you can get a net gain of 6 cards into your graveyard.
There are quite a few cards in Black and Blue that involve putting cards from top of library into graveyard, like Dread Summons and Liliana's Indignation. I'm personally not sure how viable they are as from an engine perspective they are not mana efficient at all. If you compare them to a Tome Scour for example, they cost 6-7 mana instead of 1 mana.
Now granted they do actually provide potential resources (creatures in these case) so maybe it would be part of your own builds plans.
Generating mana
Cabal Coffers and Cabal Stronghold would need land untappers to generate mana indefinitely, so not really a Rakdos thing, but extend when you add other colors in Blue and Green.
Graveyard recovery
As I pointed out Black is known for its ability to return creatures from the graveyard, but not other types, especially not enchantments.
If you were to try a straight Rakdos deck and hope to use Morality Shift or Doom Whisperer to dump your library into graveyard without actually having the Underworld Breach already then your options to recovery it are limited. Again you have to string together some proxy ways to get it.
If you look at the methods I mentioned with artifacts and flashback cards in the Mono-Red section, you can use the same methods.
Black however does have a lot of tutors, so you are more likely to be able to find these cards.
Black gives you access to bringing creatures back into play with cards like Dread Return, Morgue Theft, Soul of Innistrad, Champion of Stray Souls.
You can return a creature like Goblin Engineer or Goblin Wielder, with the aim of getting Crystal Chimes, Skull of Orm, Codex Shredder, Conqueror's Foothold back from graveyard as well.
This is a lot of hoops to jump through, but when you are wanting fail-safe ways of milling your entire library into your graveyard regardless of whether you already have access to particular cards, you want to know what is possible.
The other thing is that this also shows you the pathway when you get into other colors. If you were to be in Mardu then you can return a Sun Titan for example to return the Underworld Breach.
In Jund you can return Eternal Witness instead.
Increasing Ambition is a flashback card you can look to search for cards in library if you are still needing to find something after putting lots of cards into your graveyard.
Jund
There are some Golgari cards focused on putting cards into your graveyard. But a lot of them are creature ETB/LTB and I don't focus on creatures much because they are hard to cast multiple times as engines for Breach as you constantly need a way to get them back into your graveyard, whether that be sacrifice or other means. It just adds a layer of complication.
Putting cards into your graveyard
Boros
Putting cards into your graveyard
White is literally the weakest color for actually putting cards into your graveyard. At least we know where we stand.
Generating mana
Even though there are lots of untap creature cards in White, Boros is not know for its mana creatures.
There are a number of artifact creatures that tap for mana so you could look at some artifact brew to generate mana that way.
Gold Myr, Iron Myr, Metalworker, Palladium Myr being examples.
Flickering a creature that can generate mana is also possible. For example using Cloudshift on Dockside Extortionist.
Smothering Tithe and symmetrical draw will allow you to keep recasting. Burning Inquiry, Incendiary Command, Khorvath's Fury, Reforge the Soul, Wheel of Fortune.
Graveyard recovery
White has some of the best ways to get enchantments back from your graveyard.
I personally use Hall of Heliod's Generosity as a land to do this in some of my Jeskai decks.
Sevinne's Reclamation with flashback guarantees you can mill your library freely.
There are some mass recovery spells in Replenish or Open the Vaults and you can use other flashback cards like Past in Flames or Recoup to cast these in the case of milling.
There are a bunch of creatures that can return enchantments as well, Sun Titan, Archon of Falling Stars, Auramancer, Cavalier of Dawn, Emeria Shepherd, Griffin Dreamfinder, Lagonna-Band Storyteller, Lotus-Eye Mystics, Monk Idealist.
Naya
Between untapping lands and mana creatures and the ability recover Underworld Breach itself from graveyard, you have everything you need to make are really powerful strategy. The White element isn't needed so much, so just depends on if you are already running a deck in those colors or have something specific in mind.
I have a particular configuration of using graveyard as a resource in my budget build for my Zacama, Primal Calamity primer, and I already have a number of the cards mentioned in this thread. Its a perfect case for slotting into that deck. I haven't made the changes yet, but I can make that part of being a case study for this thread and show you how you can extend the use of Underworld Breach given your deck setup already.
Mardu
Orzov has some of the better ways of bringing back creatures (in Black) and enchantments (in White). So you can look to combine these two to produce an effective way to mill your library and have ways to recover the important Underworld Breach via recurring particular creatures.
Izzet
Izzet and Jeskai are the decks I have been running Underworld Breach so far.
You can check out my Elsha of the Infinite deck in the signature below which it features.
I've also been running a very precise Underworld Breach package in my Kykar, Wind's Fury deck. I haven't made a thread for the deck, but I posted my list in MeowZeDung Primer here.
I have a Will & Rowan Kenrith primer as well, and I have a configuration which utilizes instants and sorcery from your graveyard heavily, and Underworld Breach is custom made for that particular build.
However I haven't found quite the home for it yet in the Superfriends list. And this is as good a case for hypothetical theory-crafting around "how to make it good, and whether its then worth the slot(s)?" when the deck hasn't been designed around it in any manner.
I'll get back to this as a case study later on in this thread.
But first lets get into Blue cards that help Breach strategies.
Putting cards into your graveyard
- Brain Freeze
- Chronic Flooding
- Compelling Argument
- Dream Twist
- Drowned Secrets
- False Memories
- Fleet Swallower
- Frantic Search
- Jace's Erasure
- Mental Note
- Mirror-Mad Phantasm
- Persistent Petitioners
- Pieces of the Puzzle
- Strategic Planning
- Stream of Thought
- Taigam's Scheming
- Thought Scour
- Tome Scour
- Traumatize
- Vision Charm
- Winds of Rebuke
I've found that you only need to cast a few cards in a turn in order to get the graveyard train going. As long as you have a mana producer you can put all the cards into your graveyard. I often then just use Brain Freeze as my win condition as well, milling opponents out. I also play Stifle in the decks, just in case opponents have Kozilek, Butcher of Truth or Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre to stop the shuffle effects.
As you can see however Blue has a lot of ways to put cards into your graveyard from your library.
There are some heavy hitter in putting large chuncks of your library into your graveyard in Mirror-Mad Phantasm, Traumatize, Fleet Swallower.
Just being able to cast/activate these once could be enough to win you the game.
Chronic Flooding is an interesting one, especially if you combine it with ways to untap lands. If you already are using these types of cards to generate mana then you also use it to fuel your graveyard.
Frantic Search, Turnaround, Snap, Pore over the Pages, Hidden Strings, are all cards to look to use with Chronic Flooding.
You could make a cheesy Persistent Petitioners deck to get the big mill. Sphinx of the Chimes and Thrumming Stone would then become a game winners, and you can look to use the flashback cards as mentioned already in Mono-Red section to ensure getting the Underworld Breach back from graveyard.
Some enchantments can be used as engines to put cards into your graveyard with Jace's Erasure and Drowned Secrets. These can go a long way if you don't quite have the perfect cards.
There are a lot of draw and discard cards in Blue.
- Artificer's Epiphany
- Attunement
- Breakthrough
- Brilliant Spectrum
- Careful Consideration
- Careful Study
- Catalog
- Chart a Course
- Compulsive Research
- Enhanced Awareness
- Fact or Fiction
- Flux
- Forget
- Frantic Search
- Ghastly Discovery
- Izzet Charm
- Laquatus's Creativity
- Mystic Meditation
- Pore Over the Pages
- Prying Eyes
- Pull from Tomorrow
- Rain of Revelation
- Sift
- Sift Through Sands
- Thirst for Knowledge
- Thirst for Meaning
- Thoughtflare
- Tolarian Winds
- Tragic Lesson
- Trial of Knowledge
- Windfall
- Wistful Thinking
Breakthrough is effectively a mill 4 for as you'll end up discarding the cards in your hand. You might think that this is strictly worse than Tome Scour for example, but Scour really only sets up the graveyard, where at other times you could cast Breakthrough with something to draw into in mind. I mean you can literally cast for X=1 and hope (or know, i.e Mystical Tutor, Long-Term Plans, etc) you are drawing into Underworld Breach, in which case it probably is beneficial that cards go to graveyard.
The discard and draw cards equal to cards in hand can be very powerful for this strategy. Blue has some of the best in Tolarian Winds and Windfall. If you can get 7 cards discarded each time, then you will setup yourself up nicely to fill your graveyard.
Look for Jeskai to have that added touch of Smothering Tithe to make Windfall a full blown combo.
Generating Mana
Say you have Darksteel Citadel, Seat of the Synod, Great Furnace, Sol Ring, Mind Stone, Arcane Signet, Izzet Signet in play.
Blinkmoth Infusion is going to cost and you can tap your artifacts for , which means that you can in fact gain a mana each time. But that is a lot of artifacts to be in play, realistically you are having a good game already.
Graveyard recovery
Blue specialty in recovering cards from graveyard are mainly instant or sorcery. So with Breach being an enchantment you have to look to proxy getting it back through chaining cards.
Recall is a Blue card that you can get any card back.
With Mystic Retrieval or Past in Flames/Recoup you can get the Recall back to then get the Breach.
Jeskai
Jeskai Ascendancy can become a great way to string together putting cards into your graveyard while getting more resources. You can also look to creatures that produce mana to keep paying for casting spells.
I've already mentioned that I have two Jeskai decks that run Breach with Elesha and Kykar, and I use a trump card in Wild Research to find me all the tools I need to win with Underworld Breach.
What I do is that I get quite a few cards into my hand and then search for Underworld Breach with Wild Research. If it accidentally gets discarded then I'll use Wild Research again to get Argivian Find to retrieve it. Then I'll use Research again for Brain Freeze, and at that stage it doesn't matter what you search for and gets discarded because you can cast it anyway with the Breach.
Grixis
Dimir is probably the most notable color selection for "milling" cards into your graveyard from your library. The "mill king" as it were,
Phenax, God of Deception really being the stalwart for commander choices in this department.
But admittedly a lot of the mill is "opponent" only worded cards that these decks run, therefore less practical for Breach means.
Putting cards into your graveyard
Temur
Simic has some of the best mill cards (in Blue) and the best graveyard recovery cards (in Green), so you can definetely make a deck that looks to mill as much as you can muster.
Example Case Studies
I thought I might as well show examples of my own decks, where I am trying to figure out if Underworld Breach is something that I want for them?
If you see my threads I have 8 decks with Red in them.
I've already mentioned my Zacama, Primal Calamity primer in which Breach is the perfect fit for the budget build that looks to use the graveyard as a resource.
After theory-crafting this thread, its obvious to me some cards I can include.
Now the deck already has Oath of Druids, Early Harvest, Greater Good, Open the Vaults, Past in Flames, Seasons Past.
Therefore including the cards Underworld Breach (duh), Benefaction of Rhonas, Commune with the Gods, Kruphix's Insight, Rude Awakening, Creeping Renaissance seems like a perfect fit.
With key cards being mana doublers in enchantments and/or creatures being able to use the reveal cards to find them is useful during the course of the game and then they can be used to fuel the graveyard as combo cards later on.
Alright so it was easy accessing a deck that already has a graveyard theme. But how about my actual alpha primer that doesn't use the graveyard at all?
I also don't have any of the mana producers I've identified in this thread, nor many ways to fuel the graveyard.
I have Wheel of Fortune and Reforge the Soul. These can be constantly recast given the right setup.
There is also Genesis Wave, but honestly 99% of the time that goes on the stack I'm winning anyway.
Same with Greater Good, if I'm using that card it normally means I'm winning.
Ways I could use Underworld Breach in a proactive way is when I have a mana doubler in play it would allow casting Nature's Lore or Three Visits as many times as they can be escaped, because a land comes into play untapped and can be tapped for two mana.
Another way would be with the Genesis Wave as in the case if Underworld Breach is one of the cards you put into play, often you'll have lots more untapped mana. All the instant and sorcery will go to the graveyard and now you will be able to cast some of them for value. But again often I'm just winning off a Genesis Wave anyway.
I was thinking that with Zacama untapping lands, you could in fact let it go to the graveyard to then use Breach as a way to cast Zacama multiple times without having to spend commander tax. There are quite a few sacrifice creature cards (for draw or tutors), so this is definitely a thing.
Then it becomes a case of should I make slots for enablers? There are far too many non-basic lands to make Early Harvest good, but I could play Rude Awakening.
But without a way to fuel the graveyard it wouldn't be particularly good. If I was to go all-in on Oath of Druids and/or Hermit Druid, then I'd also want a way to recover the Underworld Breach.
At this stage I'm starting to think that would be dedicating too many slots to a very specific plan, of which my deck hasn't been designed for and more importantly I don't think needs.
Is it worth just putting in the Underworld Breach simply as a fail-safe, maybe against a board wipe? Rather than a straight proactive plan, this would be used in a worst case scenario.
After thinking about it, I could definitely see including Underworld Breach and Commune with the Gods as includes. And that's it.
I feel that with Zacama ability to produce incredible amounts of mana anyway, that I don't need to include Breach engine cards, except the Commune with the Gods which can draw you into a lot of action cards, which this deck is all about finding.
I don't need to worry about recovering the Breach itself if goes to graveyard as my methods for filling my graveyard are all controlled by me, meaning no blind milling.
And in there I think its a good case of showing people just how much or in this case little you can go to get value from the card.
I've also already mentioned that I included Underworld Breach in a particular configuration of Will & Rowan Kenrith which uses the graveyard as a resource with instants and sorcery. The deck is full of ways to fuel the graveyard anyway, so I literally didn't have to change much.
I simply added Underworld Breach and Brain Freeze to the mix.
But just like my Zacama primer, my Will & Rowan primer is not based on the graveyard at all.
There are no obvious ways to produce additional mana in the form of instants or sorcery.
The cards that put cards into the graveyard are Fact or Fiction and Dack Fayden.
Now with Will [-2] this does mean FoF only cost and with the way the split happens you can almost certainly keep fueling the escape to recast it a few times.
Now there are some tricky ways to generate mana given the context of the deck already with Breach and especially with Will [-2] cost reduction.
Heart of Kiran can actually be used to send your mana producing planeswalkers to the graveyard, to then recast again.
Imagine purposefully sending Teferi, Temporal Archmage to the graveyard, so that you can cast him for and then untap mana sources that produce more than 4 mana.
Release to the Wind is another powerful card like this as it only costs with Will [-2] and you can keep casting a mana producing planeswalker to generate mana. This is actually an instant that can produce mana, but it needs to be combined with a mana producing walker.
Cards that could be included to help are Dramatic Reversal with 14 artifacts that tap for gains. The classic combo is Isochron Scepter with Dramatic Reversal, which honestly would probably be worth it as a two card combo.
The other untapper worth considering is Turnabout which can name lands or artifacts. With Will [-2] it only costs so it doesn't take many lands to net mana.
Finally there is Lion's Eye Diamond to consider. But there are no ways outside of Breach to really use it in the deck. I don't play Wheel of Fortune type cards. Casting Will 3 turns early is nothing to scoff at, but trading that for resources in hand is a bit too much all-in for my tastes.
If I included Dramatic Reversal and Turnabout I'd be comfortable with the mana needs, given other ways to also produce mana.
Really I'd feel the need for more ways to fuel the graveyard other than Fact or Fiction.
Candidates are Wheel of Fortune, Windfall, Collective Defiance, Faithless Looting, Fateful Showdown, Incendiary Command, Frantic Search.
The reason for considering cards like Collective Defiance, Fateful Showdown, Incendiary Command is that not only do they have the draw and discard, but they also have creature kill modes, which is a factor in playing the deck.
I'm often casting Mizzium Mortars for the 4 damage to a creature.
I'm also specifically not including "mill" cards as I want to control what goes to the graveyard, obviously including not putting the Underworld Breach there, as Izzet struggles and specifically my deck wouldn't have a way to recover it. Nor would I want to dedicate further slots to this.
With this all considered, I feel that the changes I'd make would be including; Underworld Breach, Wheel of Fortune, Windfall, Frantic Search, Dramatic Reversal, Turnabout.
Then further to accentuate these changes I'd include Isochron Scepter and Narset, Parter of Veils. Narset just helps to make the inclusion of Wheel of Fortune and Windfall a little bit more powerful.
Now remember with Will [-2] cost reduction, Wheel and Windfall cost only and respectively, which means that you hardly need much mana at all to get an engine going.
Should I play Lion's Eye Diamond now that I have Wheel of Fortune and Windfall? Honestly I still think no, as I'm happy with the other ways to produce mana. This might be incorrect, but I want the primer to be at least partially accessible to most people wanting to build it, and LED is a bit too much of specialist card.
I still have to evaluate what Underworld Breach might mean for my other decks in Greven, Predator Captain, Korvold, Fae-Cursed King, Feather the Redeemed and Kenrith, the Returned King.
I've run out of steam at this stage, but as I evaluate each deck for its potential worth to include, I'll update this thread as well as the primers themselves.
The whole point is just to show you thought processes that may help you with your own evaluations for your own builds, and potential cards to consider given how your deck works.
Feel free to ask for help with your decks. I'm always happy to look through your builds and see what can be done to make Underworld Breach potentially dynamic for you.
I've finally gotten around to analyzing it for my Korvold deck. So its of course a slam-dunk in the deck because I have so many ways to put cards into the graveyard in the first place.
The deck has the added advantage of also running other sacrifice outlets in Turntimber Sower, Prossh, Skyraider of Kher, Viscera Seer, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Sadistic Hypnotist, Phyrexian Altar, Ashnod's Altar.
This comes in potentially handy when looking at creatures you might want to recur with Underworld Breach.
The first one that comes to mind is Dockside Extortionist.
Brass's Bounty is another one that can combo to keep generating mana given enough lands. But even if you are just spinning the wheels say on 7 lands, with Korvold in play this means you draw 7 cards each time, which will win you the game anyway.
There are other ways to keep casting cards with Phyrexian Altar and Ashnod's Altar.
If you have Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder in play then you can just keep recasting almost any creature. Lets say its Burnished Hart, you can just keep sacrificing the thrulls for 6 mana to recast the Hart and you can even sacrifice it to get 2 basics with the other 3 mana.
Most of the creatures require colored mana however, so Phyrexian Altar could be used to cast Ingot Chewer for evoke with Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder in play to generate mana.
Note that I don't play cards like Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Songs of the Damned, Battle Hymn, Mana Geyser, which can be used to generate mana. I could easily see running these and they are still good at specifically casting Korvold earlier as well as other cards.
Rude Awakening or Early Harvest could be other ways, although the land base has a lot of non-basics and there are no mana doublers in the deck so these cards seem out of place for this build.
Now there are not any cards specifically that put more cards into your graveyard in an Underworld Breach engine type of way.
You could keep recasting Scapeshift. In fact you could just use Breach as a way to cast Scapeshift just literally another single time, and honestly that is normally enough to have drawn enough cards to close the game out.
What cards make Underworld Breach better in the deck?
Well Lion's Eye Diamond is another way to generate mana, and I already play Lotus Petal because having low costed cards in play you can sacrifice to Korvold is really important. So LED is definitely a good card in the deck, and can be used to cast Korvold at times you are confident you can discard your hand.
Now there are mass graveyard to battlefield cards in Living Death, World Shaper, Splendid Reclamation, so it is possible that you could look for more library to graveyard cards as well as helping Underworld Breach become better.
Dredge with Life from the Loam, Golgari Grave-Troll, Stinkweed Imp could be an option.
Altar of Dementia is another creature sacrifice outlet and you can use it to target yourself. However a lot of the token creatures have 0 power (Plants, Kobolds, Eggs) so not that good really.
Grinding Station only does artifacts, but is an actual combo with Underworld Breach enabling you to keep filtering through your library until you get to key cards you'd want to cast.
Mesmeric Orb is just one of those cards that puts a lot of cards into graveyard over turns, but also might potentially help your opponents with their own graveyard strategies, so only include if you are really deep on graveyard recursion, which this deck isn't really.
Hermit Druid is a cheap way to put cards into your graveyard and finding a basic land is still card advantage. The deck has 8 basics, but you could easily put more non-basics into the deck if wanting to put higher number of cards into the graveyard each activation.
Greater Good is way to draw and discard, which ultimately fuels the Underworld Breach. Sacrificing Korvold to this might happen if your opponents have removal for him anyway.
But as I've already said a lot of the tokens have low power. But you could look to use it more like a milling engine, rather than putting cards into your hand.
For example even if you are sacrificing creatures with 1 power, as long as you are resigned to the fact that you will be discarding your hand altogether, then you can keep sacrificing to put more cards into your graveyard.
Creeping Renaissance is the sort of card you want when you end up having a milling strategy, as it allows you to flashback and get the Underworld Breach if it gets milled.
How about other big hay-makers like Morality Shift or Doom Whisperer? Again I don't really play enough graveyard strategies to warrant these although they are not outside the realms of possibility.
The deck would require more life gain elements to make Doom Whisperer have more potential I feel.
These are the changes I've ended up doing over the last few weeks.
There is definitely a version I could make that focuses on the graveyard more, but I don't feel like warping around that strategy too much, as the theme is sacrifice, and I'm already getting incredible use out of Underworld Breach potentially in this deck.
The cards I decided to add in the end were just Underworld Breach and Lion's Eye Diamond, and I still have a great build around just because so much of the deck is designed around putting cards into the graveyard anyway.