Graveyard Busybody MTG Card
Key Takeaways
- Graveyard Busybody’s ability significantly impacts card advantage by leveraging both players’ graveyards.
- Interaction with instant speed spells and abilities enhances Graveyard Busybody’s strategic value.
- While powerful, Graveyard Busybody has specific limitations, like mana requirements and high mana cost.
Text of card
All graveyards are also your graveyards. Graveyard Busybody's power and toughness are each equal to the number of cards with flavor text in your graveyards.
You have to hang around the graveyard if you want to catch the talking dead.
Card Pros
Card Advantage: Graveyard Busybody plays a pivotal role in maximizing card utility from both your own graveyard and your opponent’s, essentially giving you an arsenal of cards to benefit from that would otherwise be inaccessible. This can tilt the balance of card advantage in your favor as it turns all graveyards into an extension of your hand.
Resource Acceleration: While Graveyard Busybody itself doesn’t directly produce mana or tokens, its ability to harness the power of all cards in all graveyards can lead to unexpected synergies and acceleration. This can include reanimating mana dorks or leveraging graveyard-based ramp spells that increase your resource pool significantly.
Instant Speed: While the card itself may not be an instant, it can work in tandem with instant speed spells and abilities that interact with the graveyard. This allows for surprise plays and strategic depth, keeping opponents on their toes as they consider the potential for you to exploit graveyard resources at any moment.
Card Cons
Discard Requirement: Despite its unique abilities, Graveyard Busybody may not always be the most convenient card to cast. Its effectiveness is partially contingent on the availability of cards in your hand that you’re willing and able to discard. This requirement could potentially be a setback if you’re running low on hand resources and need to maintain card advantage.
Specific Mana Cost: One limitation of Graveyard Busybody is its specific mana cost, which requires both blue mana and generic mana. This can be restrictive for decks that are not heavily invested in blue or for players who are struggling with their mana base. Ensuring the right mana at the right time to cast this spell might be a challenge in some game scenarios.
Comparatively High Mana Cost: Although the card provides an intriguing strategic advantage by tracking graveyards, its comparatively high mana cost could deter players from including it in their decks. There are alternative options that offer graveyard interaction at a lower cost, potentially making Graveyard Busybody a less efficient choice for fast-paced or highly competitive games where mana efficiency is key.
Reasons to Include Graveyard Busybody in Your Collection
Versatility: Graveyard Busybody is a unique inclusion to any deck that revolves around graveyard mechanics. Its ability to become all graveyards makes it an adaptive tool in games where utilizing resources from the graveyard can provide a significant advantage.
Combo Potential: This card has considerable synergy with strategies that manipulate both your own and opponents’ graveyards. It pairs well with cards that exile cards from graveyards for value, or those that rely on graveyard counts for powerful effects.
Meta-Relevance: In a meta where graveyard strategies are prevalent, Graveyard Busybody can become a key element. Not only can it serve as a deterrent for graveyard-reliant opponents, but it can also enhance your own strategy by expanding your access to all players’ graveyard resources.
How to beat
Graveyard Busybody is a unique creature in the realm of Magic the Gathering, intrinsically tied to the contents of graveyards. Its power and toughness are each equal to the number of cards in all graveyards, making it a dynamic threat as games progress. Unlike other creatures whose stats are fixed, Graveyard Busybody’s scale with the game state, potentially becoming larger with every card that hits a graveyard.
To effectively counter this card, it’s essential to employ graveyard disruption strategies. Cards like Rest in Peace or Scavenging Ooze can be particularly potent, as they can either remove all cards from graveyards or selectively exile key ones, negating the accumulating advantage Graveyard Busybody could capitalize on. Additionally, since Graveyard Busybody’s strength relies on a full graveyard, instant speed removal such as Path to Exile before the graveyard gets too full can mitigate its potential power surge.
Timing is critical: allowing the Busybody to grow too large before acting can be perilous. Thus, prompt graveyard management and disruption are the keys to neutralizing this unorthodox threat and keeping the game under your control. When planning for a match where Graveyard Busybody could see play, having these strategies ready is essential for a successful outcome.
Cards like Graveyard Busybody
Graveyard Busybody stands out within the array of unique MTG cards that play around with graveyard mechanics. One similar card is the famed Deathrite Shaman, a creature that also manipulates and benefits from the cards in graveyards. While it doesn’t hold the same stat-related benefits as Graveyard Busybody, which counts all cards in all graveyards to determine its power and toughness, Deathrite Shaman offers versatility with its ability to exile cards for various effects.
Another card worth comparing is Ghoultree, a creature that becomes cheaper to cast for each creature in your graveyard, harnessing potential as the game progresses. Unlike Graveyard Busybody, it exclusively accounts for creatures and only affects its own casting cost. Lastly, we examine Revenant, which has a power and toughness equal to the number of creatures in your graveyard alone. Revenant is similar in concept, but more self-contained compared to Graveyard Busybody’s global graveyard tallying effect.
Each of these cards offers a distinct approach to utilizing graveyards, yet Graveyard Busybody’s ability to grow exponentially by counting all graveyard contents can be a major game-changer in the right deck, making it a potent addition to any MTG player’s strategy that centers around graveyard interactions.
Cards similar to Graveyard Busybody by color, type and mana cost
Where to buy
If you're looking to purchase Graveyard Busybody MTG card by a specific set like Unstable and The List (Unfinity Foil Edition), there are several reliable options to consider. One of the primary sources is your local game store, where you can often find booster packs, individual cards, and preconstructed decks from current and some past sets. They often offer the added benefit of a community where you can trade with other players.
For a broader inventory, particularly of older sets, online marketplaces like TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom and Card Market offer extensive selections and allow you to search for cards from specific sets. Larger e-commerce platforms like eBay and Amazon also have listings from various sellers, which can be a good place to look for sealed product and rare finds.
Additionally, Magic’s official site often has a store locator and retailer lists for finding Wizards of the Coast licensed products. Remember to check for authenticity and the condition of the cards when purchasing, especially from individual sellers on larger marketplaces.
Below is a list of some store websites where you can buy the Graveyard Busybody and other MTG cards:
- eBay
- TCG Player
- Card Kingdom
- Card Market
- Star City Games
- CoolStuffInc
- MTG Mint Card
- Hareruya
- Troll and Toad
- ABU Games
- Card Hoarder Magic Online
- MTGO Traders Magic Online
See MTG Products
Printings
The Graveyard Busybody Magic the Gathering card was released in 2 different sets between 2017-12-08 and 2022-10-07. Illustrated by Bram Sels.
| # | Released | Name | Code | Symbol | Number | Frame | Layout | Border | Artist |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2017-12-08 | Unstable | UST | 34 | 2015 | Normal | Silver | Bram Sels | |
| 2 | 2022-10-07 | The List (Unfinity Foil Edition) | ULST | 15 | 2015 | Normal | Silver | Bram Sels |
Rules and information
The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Graveyard Busybody card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.
| Date | Text |
|---|---|
| 2018-01-19 | Cards owned by your opponents still go to the appropriate graveyard. |
| 2018-01-19 | If an effect asks how many cards are in your graveyard, use the total number of cards in all your graveyards. However, they are still separate graveyards. If an effect affects a single graveyard, such as shuffling it into its owner’s library, only that one graveyard is shuffled in. |
| 2018-01-19 | If more than one player controls a Graveyard Busybody, the one that entered the battlefield most recently “wins.” The controller of that Graveyard Busybody has all the graveyards, and any other player’s Graveyard Busybody is a 0/0 that is put into the graveyard that player used to have as a state-based action. |
| 2018-01-19 | Only you can use abilities of cards in graveyards. For example, if a spell requires that you exile cards from your graveyard, you can exile cards from any graveyard. Any card that looks at cards in graveyards looks at any or all your graveyards. |
| 2018-01-19 | Speaking of that, cards in graveyards are shuffled into their owners’ libraries. You won’t put any cards from graveyards you stole, er . . . borrowed into your library. |
