Oracle text
When this enchantment enters, you get EEE (three energy counters).
Pay X E, Sacrifice a creature, Return this enchantment to its owner's hand: Return target creature card with mana value X from your graveyard to the battlefield. Activate only as a sorcery.
Mox strategy
Chthonian Nightmare is a strong grindy recursion engine for black decks that can reliably make energy and sacrifice creatures. Its biggest strength is repeatable reanimation at sorcery speed, which lets you turn small bodies or tokens into threats, value creatures, or combo pieces from the graveyard.
Best use cases are midrange, Aristocrats, and toolbox decks with many creatures at the same mana value as your targets. It works especially well with cheap creatures that replace themselves, death triggers, and creatures you want to rebuy multiple times. The built-in “return this enchantment to hand” clause makes it resilient and reusable if you can keep generating energy.
Key synergies are sacrifice outlets, token makers, ETB/death triggers, and energy support cards that let you pay the activation cost repeatedly. It’s strongest when your deck can sacrifice a creature without losing much and has a packed curve of impactful hits at specific mana values.
Practical tip: build around low-curve creatures and repeated sacrifice value, not big top-end reanimation. If your deck can stock the graveyard and keep energy flowing, this card can become a powerful engine.
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Prices
$0.59market (USD)
USD$0.59
USD Foil$0.88
EUR€0.71
EUR Foil€1.49
MTGO Tix0.02 Tix
Format legality
- standard—
- pioneer—
- modernLegal
- legacyLegal
- vintageLegal
- commanderLegal
- pauper—
- brawlLegal
- historicLegal
- alchemy—
- oathbreakerLegal