Exploring Draugr Recruiter: Best Graveyard-to-Tokens Combos

Exploring Draugr Recruiter: Best Graveyard-to-Tokens Combos

In TCG ·

Draugr Recruiter art from Kaldheim, a zombie cleric with dark robes

Image courtesy of Scryfall.com

Exploring Draugr Recruiter: Best Graveyard-to-Tokens Combos

When you crack open a Köld-tinged draft of Kaldheim and glimpse Draugr Recruiter, you might think you’ve found a modest, under-the-radar piece. A 3/3 for three colorless and one black, a common in the Khm set, it wears its simplicity with a sly grin. But that Boast ability—Boast — {3}{B}: Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand—turns a sleepy stat line into a catalyst for graveyard-to-tokens combos that can snowball into an impressive battlefield presence. It’s the kind of card that asks you to pair it with a plan, not just a single spell. And in the right shell, Draugr Recruiter can be the quiet engine behind a flood of zombie tokens and life-swinging plays 🧙‍♂️🔥💎⚔️.

At its core, the Recruiter is a zombie cleric, a nod to the trench-warfare of black magic in a Norse-flavored world. The flavor text—line about standing together when fallen—echoes the tribal resilience of undead legions. The Boast ability is the hook: it rewards aggression (you attacked this turn) and your willingness to commit to a single Boast per turn. The synergy arises when you pair that hand-refresh effect with graveyard value and token-doubling or token-spawning engines. Put simply: Draugr Recruiter gives you a way to recycle a creature from the graveyard while you swarm the battlefield with tokens, and that’s a recipe for both tempo and power plays 🎲.

Why this card shines in graveyard-to-tokens strategy

  • Graveyard as a resource bank. Draugr Recruiter turns your graveyard into a hand-size that you can refresh every combat if you’re prepared to attack. In a deck that wilds around zombies, death triggers and ETB effects become currency. The Boast ability converts a graveyard asset into a hand, letting you replay a token-maker or a utility zombie after it’s bounced back to hand.
  • Ambition without heavy mana costs. For a respectable {3}{B} investment, you unlock repeated value across turns. The requirement that you attacked this turn creates a sense of momentum—your aggression pays off later in the same combat step or the very next turn as you reassemble your board with fresh targets from the graveyard.
  • Flavor-forward synergy. In Kaldheim’s world, the undead aren’t just bodies; they’re a chorus. Draugr Recruiter embodies that idea by trading a simple body for a recurring engine that can fuel large token waves and attrition pressure. It’s a perfect marriage of lore and gameplay—zombies reanimating, rallying, and returning to the hand to rejoin the fight 💀🎨.
  • Compatibility with token engines and doubling effects. The more you flood the board with zombie tokens, the more powerful your token-ins and board-wide effects become. Doubling effects, like Parallel Lives or Anointed Procession in other colors, amplify the payoff of breeding grounds for your undead host. A larger zombie workforce creates a bigger pool of targets for sacrifice outlets and drain effects—classic MTG value in monochrome cleverness 🔥.

Five standout pathways you can build around Draugr Recruiter

  • Endless ranks and relentless flood. Build a strategy around zombie tribal with a focus on graveyard recursion and mass token generation. Draugr Recruiter fetches back a zombie creature from the graveyard to hand, letting you replay a key zombie that either creates tokens on ETB or fuels a mass-token engine like Endless Ranks of the Dead. Combine those effects with a board of zombies you keep replenishing, and you’ll be staring down a wall of blackened corpses that refuses to disappear. This lane capitalizes on threat density and inevitability 🧙‍♂️⚔️.
  • Sacrifice outlets to leverage life drain and board state. With a sacrifice outlet on the field, Draugr Recruiter’s fetch-back can set up value loops: you re-cast a zombie that triggers death effects or tokens, another creature dies and drains life, and you swing for lethal. The key is to select zombie creatures that either add to the board immediately or reward sacrifice with another effect—drain, card draw, or alternate win-cons. It’s a grindy, control-like path that becomes hard to answer when your board keeps regenerating itself.
  • Token-doubling and horde explosions. Pair your engine with token-doubling effects to turn Draugr Recruiter into a multi-turn engine. Doubling Season, Parallel Lives, or other token-doublers supercharge the number of zombies you can produce with a given cast or interaction. As you fetch a punctuated zombie onto the battlefield, you suddenly find that the next attack step is a real problem for your opponents, who must find a way to stop an ever-growing army 🧙‍♂️💎.
  • Reanimation-heavy loop with re-casts. The Boast clause makes Draugr Recruiter a natural ally to reanimation spells or cheap re-casts. You fetch back a zombie that’s cheap to recast, or a token-maker that you can replay to trigger more effects. This loop thrives in a shell that supports cheap re-animation and cheap recasts, letting you rebuild your battlefield quickly after trades. It’s a classic, elegant black strategy: recycle, recast, and reap the tokens and value on the other side 🔥.
  • Attrition grind with combat value. In multiplayer formats like Commander, Draugr Recruiter’s engine isn’t solely about tokens; it’s about value leadership in the late game. By selecting resilient zombie creatures with strong ETB or death triggers, you push toward a board state that punishes opponents for attacking into a growing mass of threats. The Boast ability then becomes your reliable tool for late-game resilience—fetch, replay, repeat, and swing with confidence 🧙‍♂️⚔️.

As you tailor the deck, the flavor of Kaldheim’s undead host becomes more than a gimmick—it becomes a narrative of resilience and cunning. Draugr Recruiter invites you to think about the graveyard not as a grave but as a workshop, where a single Boast can spark a cascade of tokens and a tidal wave of black mana synergy. And while the exact engine you choose may depend on your meta and card pool, the core idea remains delightful: move a creature from the graveyard to the hand, recast it, and let the army follow 🧙‍♂️🎲.

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Draugr Recruiter

Draugr Recruiter

{3}{B}
Creature — Zombie Cleric

Boast — {3}{B}: Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand. (Activate only if this creature attacked this turn and only once each turn.)

"You cannot stand against us, but when you fall, you will stand with us!"

ID: 6b0fe66b-0067-4e5c-9b3a-b014b2f0daf2

Oracle ID: f854ea0d-aae3-4b6a-9767-6ac1788f2190

Multiverse IDs: 503695

TCGPlayer ID: 230949

Cardmarket ID: 533027

Colors: B

Color Identity: B

Keywords: Boast

Rarity: Common

Released: 2021-02-05

Artist: Colin Boyer

Frame: 2015

Border: black

EDHRec Rank: 19503

Set: Kaldheim (khm)

Collector #: 87

Legalities

  • Standard — not_legal
  • Future — not_legal
  • Historic — legal
  • Timeless — legal
  • Gladiator — legal
  • Pioneer — legal
  • Modern — legal
  • Legacy — legal
  • Pauper — legal
  • Vintage — legal
  • Penny — not_legal
  • Commander — legal
  • Oathbreaker — legal
  • Standardbrawl — not_legal
  • Brawl — legal
  • Alchemy — not_legal
  • Paupercommander — legal
  • Duel — legal
  • Oldschool — not_legal
  • Premodern — not_legal
  • Predh — not_legal

Prices

  • USD: 0.08
  • USD_FOIL: 0.11
  • EUR: 0.10
  • EUR_FOIL: 0.15
  • TIX: 0.03
Last updated: 2025-11-20