Pointed Discussion

Perfect with Jund.

Aside from mentioned synergies this card offers such as devour effects, could anybody tell me the difference between a Graveborn and a Zombie creature, please? O.O

Mode - Graveborn doesn't get zombie specific bonuses. Flavorwise, they might be the same thing, but creature type affects gameplay heavily in some cases.

Makes for a great combo with Charnelhoard Wurm and Magus of the Abyss. You get an army of tokens and eliminate your opponents creatures while recycling your own back into play thanks to the wurm.

yeah, so he runs perfect with the quillspike/persist/nantuko husk sac combo

FYI; the Graveborn type is referring to the card Balduvian Dead, back in the good ol' days when creature types were irrelevant and tokens all had unique creature types.

Lyzolda Bloodwitch can be good with El Deathkeeper.

Sac a creature.

Get a Graveborn.

Attack.

The sac the Graveborn for a card and 2 damage to any target.

Great with evoke.

poor sap sees a lot less EDH thanks to Kresh.

Gah! Reassembling skeleton and any sacrificing mechanic!

@Mode: a zombie is the animated corpse of a living. A graveborn is something been born from a grave. The corpse might still in the grave. Maybe the graveborn consists of the rotting tissue and fluids soaked earth next to the corpse. :)

I like Sekkuar a lot. He is best when you have ways to give your creatures persist (such with cauldron of souls) and have ways to sacrifice them at instant speed, like to phyrexian plaguelord.

the difference is graveborn are 3/1 and zombies are 2/2
I figure graveborn is less of a reanimated corpse (like zombies) and more of a thing born in or from a grave.
see night soil.

Well, many people have tried to answer Mode's question as to the flavourful difference between a Graveborn and a Zombie. I think we should look to Balduvian Dead, as its the only of the card that mentions the Graveborn. And once we look there, the answer is obvious:

Graveborn can grow some manly beards.

Despite dead flesh and years of decay, Graveborn corpses can both grow and maintain full beards in perfect condition. Made from the manliest of bodies, Graveborn innately have a Red nature- no doubt red mana is flowing through their hair follicles to add to their rugged allure. This excess of testosterone makes the Graveborn more reckless (but stronger) than the traditional zombie, accounting for its 3/1 frame. They are the Isaiah Mustafa of the undead, as it were.

So to answer your question, I have no idea.

possibly the only good orc ever? I dunno

Hi guys!

I will give 5, cause its Orc and Shaman, one of my favourite types, this card is perfect for casual, you can use @ Festering Goblin @ and other cheap mana cost creatures which gives you a bonus when are dead and also put some creaturex like @ Nantuko Husk @ which are pumpet when you sacrify creatures and with spells as @ Raise Dead @ makes you have a perfect circle you can put many tokens into play while pumping your creatures and killing oponent creatures, so with me, in casual against my friends at turn six I can scratch win easily. Around this card you can make some cheap and funny deack with nice sceme of play =)

Chears for everybody!

My first deck, my first legend, and my first of a lot of things in Magic. played with a friend back in the good ol' days who had sick Myr tokens and who actually straight up gave me a Rakdos the Defiler deck. yeah...good times. I gave Rakdos back, because my 16 yr old sense of honor told me you can't just get a Rakdos the Defiler for free- now I'm diligently busting Dissension packs trying to earn it. Kind of want to kick my own ass.

"I WILL MAKE YOU SOME SALAD!" - Sek'Kuar

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Sek'Kuar, the only Legendary Orc in all Magic, father figure to a tribe that just sucks.

I think the core difference between zombies and Graveborn really is the Red mana affiliation. Note how, while Balduvian Dead makes them, they themselves are zombies. It might also be possible that they're some hybrid between Zombie and Skeleton (a type I dearly love and regret seeing so poorly supported or remembered in comparison)

Why wasn't this guy the front-runner for the Graveborn box set?

Agreed that he should have been in Graveborn, or at least Balduvian Dead. He makes a pretty good general, though, and somewhat synergizes with Balduvian Dead.

To answer the question, I scoured the internet, and i found this. (via the D&D wiki, which D&D is owned by WOTC)

Graveborn have escaped death. Once a race dies its corpse may become a graveborn. Some speculate that this is because the soul has not finished its life. Others say that it is a random occurrence. Graveborn have an unnerving presence about them that is as much a result of their cold flesh as their detached cunning and determination. They have a supernatural way with words and often get what they want, but, even so, they fear for their lives since once they only just escaped death.
Haunted continually by the whispers of those who died and were buried in their vicinity, some graveborn seek to escape the voices by venturing into the wilds as barbarians. Others try to drown them out with arcane music or the more preferable, though demanding, voice of a warlock patron. Since they harbor no memories of their former lives and find it difficult to retain even recent memories graveborn are often distant and unapproachable, even to those who have known them for decades. These whispers are totally insane and provide no valuable advice. They are heard only by the graveborn and are a byproduct of her having escaped death.

In other words, i have no idea what they are.

Cant wait to use him in a sac deck with birthing pod and gravecrawler

Overshadowed? Maybe. Vorthosgasmic? HELL TO THE YEAH.

I don't see how Kresh overshadows this. They're just different. Very good EDH general right here.

Well a Graveborn token is not a zombie while a zombie is a zombie...

But yeah, I have this as one of my commanders on MTGO and what fun it can be. I can Violent Ultimatum in four turns if I get lucky. I can have creature removal every turn, I can make tokens out the wazoo. Just a fun commander with many fun things to do.

Do they have an official graveborn token? I kind of want to see it.

I'm using this dudebro because I saw him, and he was getting absolutely NO love at all. EDH general, who knows, I might find a way to make him interesting. Besides, nobody knows him too well, so he'll be a new face to the table. at very least 3/5, until I can find a way to make him super awesome.

He produces Graveborn because R&D was afraid of combos with Gravecrawler years before the latter existed. Or something like that.

sac Nether Traitor
to Phyrexian Altar
= one mana of any color, and get a 3/1 token;
sac the token to the altar, make {B} and replay the Nether Traitor,
repeat...
= infinite mana of any colors!

and for the win:
Warstorm Surge

I run him as the general of an EDH deck that I like to call ButtSeks.

I was tired of all the W/G and W/B/G token decks around, and wanted something different. Turns out he's really consistent and a blast to play. Lots of sac effects and recursion, as well at ETB effects and LTB effects make for a fun, intricate deck.

Things like Nether Traitor and Reassembling Skeleton (along with a sac outlet) let me bounce things in and out of play. Coupled with semi-repeatable recursion like Bloodghast, persist/undying creatures, Eternal Witness, Deadwood Treefolk, and things like Gleancrawler or Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker, Cauldron of Souls, or Mikaeus, the Unhallowed mean there's always stuff going on and things are always coming back from the dead.

To make my things dead, I use the usual sac outlets like Ashnod's/Phyrexian Altar, Altar of Dementia, Attrition, Mind Slash, Viscera Seer, Thoughtpicker Witch, Spawning Pit, whatever you want.

Golgari Germination, Pawn of Ulamog, and Gutter Grime have basically the same effect as Seks, but they make different types of tokens. Genesis Chamber triggers on ETB rather than LTB, but there's enough of both going on to make it basically the same thing.

To compliment the normal ramp/fixing you need in EDH decks, I stuck in stuff like Diligent Farmhand, Yavimaya Granger, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Dawntreader Elk, Viridian Emissary, and Yavimaya Elder to ramp while I sac and vice-versa.

Fecundity, Skullclamp, Soul of the Harvest, Harvester of Souls, and Dragon Appeasement are more than enough to keep my hand full. Also stuff like Grave Pact, Blood Artist, and Black Market make it so that stuff happens when my stuff dies.

Needless to say, Parallel Lives and Doubling Season are pretty snazzy here.

There are a number of ways to go infinite, but you shouldn't even really need (or want) to. There's plenty going on already, and it's quite deadly on its own.