Pointed Discussion

Back in the day, I had a deck that dropped Nicol Bolas into the graveyard for a massive hit using the haste granted by this card. The fact that it had buyback made it even better, and it works very similarly to the modern Grixis Unearth mechanic.

Unearth on a stick...this card is amazing at first glance and keeps getting better. First and foremost the card brings back any creature for no negative cost, other than its removed from play if and only if it is still on the field at the end of the turn. So if you use this with something like Unsummon you can return the creature and save it. Use it with something like Ashnod's Altar and you can bring the creature back later. The fact the creature gets haste means free swing. The fact this card is an instant means you can do it in your combat step (and when blocking!). This card is just simply amazing. Not too useful in fast formats like Vintage and Legacy though...unless you bring back a huge fattie like (as posted earlier) Nicol Bolas.

Ashnod's Altar? More like Greater Good. If you use legendary fatties, you can also use the cheaper Goryo's Vengeance.

I used to play this thing with Recurring Nightmare.

Don't need fatties -- just creatures with the right comes into play abilities.

Personal favorite: Fleshbag marauder (each player sacs a creature when he comes into play). For a full set up Gravepact (each player sacs a creature when one of your creatures goes to graveyard) first. Net effect -- each player loses two creatures but you. You lose the fleshbag marauder who goes to your graveyard ready to be corpsed danced again to take out two more creatures.

In EDH, Terastodon loves this and a kicked rite of replication. xD

@damagecrab: The last line says to exile the creature, not the card. If it is anywhere else but on the battlefield, it is no longer a creature, therefore not exiled. Besides, the Oracle rulings at the bottom even say that it is only exiled if it is still on the battlefield.

@damagecrab: No, no, no, no, no. If you look at any cards that actually affect creature cards in all zones, they will SAY "creature card". And in fact back when this was printed they would have said something like "summon card". Secondly, it is ridiculous to think that this keeps tracking the card no matter what happens to it (returned to hand, shuffled into library, etc.) because there is nothing else in the game that works that way. Bottom line, if it just says "creature" it means a creature permanent, case closed.

@ Nammertime: Trust me, that makes sense; I just don't see it that way. The way I read it; there's no difference between the card and the creature, there's no reason why an effect can't follow a card across zones and anything can be exiled from anywhere. That's what the rules say from my perspective. Everyone we play with on Sundays agrees that it doesn't make sense the other way. You're welcome to come over and debate it. Snacks are on me but it's still BYOB!

@ damage crab, hmm free snacks... but I have to hang out with people who don't know how to play magic.
tough choice...

You can get around that "remove from the game" clause if you keep bringing back creatures with sacrifice effects, like Bottle Gnomes or Stronghold Assassin.

With right fattie in your graveyard, this & Fling should be two turn kill.

Coprse Dance works great in my Sedris commander deck it. It's even beter than unearth from my general. Havin Kagemaro or Fleshbag Marauder on top gives great instanspeed removal. It also makes sick things with Teferi's Veil and Sundial of the Infinite.

Memory Crystal

My favourite is this in my Vish Kal EDH

{4}{B}: Return a creature, use whatever abilities it has, attack, sac it for counters on your commander

Who else wants to see Buyback return?

It has long been joked that Urza Block went through no playtesting whatsoever, but I'm pretty sure the lack of playtesting began a little earlier than that. If you look at some of the cards from Tempest, it's hard to believe they didn't seem like terrible ideas even at the time.

Making a card that is immediately reusable is asking for trouble, even more so when the card in question lets you immediately reuse something else. We know that now.

Given that artifacts that reduce the generic mana cost of spells already existed (or were printed concurrently), and given that creatures that can sacrifice themselves for black mana already existed (or were printed concurrently), Corpse Dance, repeatable at max and min, seems like a recipe for disaster.

And yet, how broken did it really end up being?

Due to the existence of Shallow Grave, any reason to run Corpse Dance must stem from its reusability. This means it is really only useful for combos and/or mileage. However, combos can be disrupted if a kill spell puts the wrong creature on top of your graveyard. And due to the existence of Animate Dead and Reanimate (from the same set as Corpse Dance!), the potential mileage advantage is somewhat limited; permanently resurrecting a creature will usually go farther on less mana, making Corpse Dance best for getting mileage out of creatures that are likely to perish quickly, whether via their own accord, external removal, or chump blocking/trading. This means it mostly produces mileage with sacrifice effects/engines (via which creatures will end up back in the graveyard instead of being exiled). However, it’s also powerful to recur low-toughness blockers at instant speed, especially ones with ETB/LTB effects (I'm looking at you, Thragtusk! And don't think you're getting off easy either, Spitebellows!).

Nowadays, it can quickly go infinite with Composite Golem, but Nim Deathmantle does the same thing better. Hell's Caretaker, however, turns it into as many copies of Zombifys as you have mana to cast during your upkeep. Stronghold Assassin will (for the most part) turn it into Dark Banishing with Buyback , while Fleshbag Marauder/Slum Reaper will turn it into an expensive-but-repeatable Diabolic Edict...on everyone but you. Spore Frog lets you Fog each turn. Bloodfire Colossus lets you nuke everything at instant speed for , and you can attack first if you do it on your turn. Shard Phoenix functions similarly; Hammerfist Giant and Caldera Hellion can't attack, but otherwise do the same sort of thing.

It also combos infinitely with Ashnod's Altar and (most simply) Priest of Gix.

T1: Swamp, Dark Ritual, Priest of Gix, Ashnod's Altar.
T2: Swamp, Blood Artist
T3: Swamp, sacrifice Priest of Gix, Corpse Dance forever.

I'll call the deck "Corpse Performance Art," because I'm bored.

If you're using a sac-engine, you can use Corpse Dance for hit-and-run tactics and/or for recurring ETB/LTB effects at instant speed (Novablast Wurm, Bogardan Hellkite, Ryusei, Nevermaker and other Evoke creatures, Sundering Titan you jerk, etc...).

It's also got some potential in recurring Ball Lightning and similar cards, which will hit the graveyard again at end of turn if you so choose. Of course, if you're playing cards like Ball Lightning, you probably don't want the game to last long enough for you to use Corpse Dance. Of course, if you want to play a Ball Lightning deck in multiplayer, Corpse Dance will give you the gas you need to take multiple players to zero.

In the end, Corpse Dance is a good card, but it just doesn't do enough powerful things on its own to be broken. It still seems fun to build a deck around it, whether to abuse its combo potential or just to repeatedly recur things that ought not be recurred. It's no Recurring Nightmare, but it's not like MTG needs another one of those.

@damagecrab: Originally, I think the card itself represented a spell that summons a creature. This has always been a little murky, but I think the flavor suggests that the reason permanents can't be followed across zones is because they stop being "things" and return to being "ideas," i.e. spells.

For those who loves heavy metal , this looks alot like Iron maiden's life afterdeath art.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zxzZac0uC70/UFh-ZJyjlXI/AAAAAAAACkk/3P1Knlhu-Ys/s1600/Live+After+Death-P.jpg

Cast it resurrecting Child of Alara in response to something big enough to kill it attacking you. It'll go to the graveyard and blow everything up, and people will think twice about attacking you after that.

@Renegade_Punk
Exactly what I use it for too :D (as in I also have a Vish Kal EDH deck).

I have a few favourites for it though (all in the Vish Kal deck):
Preacher - the enemy sacrifices a creature too!
Yosei - pretty much infinite timewalks. Pretty broken (and mean).
Solemn Simulacrum - so much card advantage.

Goes great with Primeval Titan as you'll get enough lands that the next time you find this card you'll be able to buy it back and still play other spells. That said, it'll work wonders with any Titan.

Shallow Grave was a budget card not too long ago and shot up to $10-15. I sold my set, and bought a set of these to replace it in casual; and who knows? Maybe someone will start winning GPs with this due to the recursion!