TLDR
- An MTG recursion deck is built to reuse cards after they’ve hit the graveyard, returning them to hand or battlefield, or casting them again from the yard.
- Recursion wins by turning “spent resources” into “still resources”, which is deeply annoying (in the best way) for your opponent.
- The clean framework is: fuel (get cards into graveyard) + engine (bring them back) + payoffs (ETBs, sacrifice loops, repeatable spells) + win plan (big reanimate, grind, combo, drain).
- Your natural predator is graveyard hate, so you need removal, redundancy, and a backup plan that does not fold to one artifact.
You know the feeling when you finally deal with your opponent’s problem creature and they immediately bring it back like nothing happened?
That’s not an accident. That’s an MTG recursion deck doing exactly what it came to do: treat the graveyard like a second hand, except it has better cards and fewer morals.
What “recursion” means in Magic
Recursion is the umbrella term for reusing cards after they leave the battlefield or get discarded. Most recursion decks revolve around the graveyard, because Magic’s graveyard is a public zone where cards pile up and quietly wait to become your problem again.
Recursion can look like:
- Returning a card from your graveyard to your hand (so you can cast it again).
- Reanimating a creature straight onto the battlefield (often for way less mana than intended).
- Casting a spell from your graveyard (flashback-style gameplay).
- Playing permanents from your graveyard (repeatable, grindy engines).
The key idea is simple: if your deck can use the same card multiple times, you get extra value without needing extra cardboard. Which is kind of the whole point of the game, if we’re being honest.
A quick rules reality check
Not all recursion works the same way:
- If something says “return”, you’re usually moving a card between zones, not casting it.
- If something says “you may cast/play this from your graveyard”, you are actually casting/playing it, and timing rules still matter.
That difference shows up in gameplay more than people expect, especially when you start layering triggers, taxes, and “when you cast” effects.
Why play a recursion deck
Recursion decks are popular because they do three things extremely well.
1) They generate steady card advantage
In a normal deck, a removal spell trades one-for-one and your creature dies and stays dead. In a recursion deck, the same creature might generate value on the way in, on the way out, and again on the way back in. Suddenly your opponent is spending real cards to temporarily inconvenience you.
2) They are resilient by default
Discard, removal, board wipes, trading in combat, none of these are automatically fatal. If your deck is designed to replay key pieces, you are basically built to recover.
3) They turn “costs” into “fuel”
Sacrificing creatures, looting, milling, even discarding to hand size can become setup. Your graveyard is not a trash can. It’s a pantry.
Types of recursion and the tradeoffs
Recursion is not one mechanic. It’s a menu. Here’s the useful breakdown, plus what you’re paying for each option.
| Recursion type | What it does | Upside | Downside |
|---|---|---|---|
| Return to hand | Get a card back to cast later | Flexible, works on many card types | Slower, costs full mana again |
| Reanimate to battlefield | Put a creature back directly into play | Cheats mana, immediate board impact | Usually narrower (creatures), vulnerable to exile and graveyard hate |
| Cast from graveyard | Gives spells a second run | “Extra copies” of key spells | Often exiles itself, extra costs, timing restrictions |
| Play permanents from graveyard | Repeatable engine-style recursion | Grindy, long-game monster | Needs setup, often slow, engine gets removed |
“Keyword recursion” you should recognize
Some recursion shows up as keyword mechanics that explicitly let cards operate from the graveyard. A few of the big ones:
- Flashback style effects (cast once more, then exile).
- Escape style effects (cast from graveyard by paying extra costs, often exiling other cards).
- Unearth (return the creature for one last swing, then exile later).
- Dredge (replace a draw with milling and returning the dredge card to your hand).
- Aftermath, Disturb, Encore, Retrace, and friends.
You do not need to memorize every keyword ever printed (Magic will keep trying to make you). You just need to recognize the pattern: the graveyard is being used as a resource, not a grave.
The recursion deck framework that keeps you from building a pile
Most “bad recursion decks” have one thing in common: they are a box of graveyard-themed cards that technically interact, but do not actually win games before everyone gets bored.
Use this framework and you will build something coherent.
Step 1: Pick your engine
Your engine is the card or package that makes recursion repeatable or high impact.
Examples of engine categories:
- One-shot recursion spells: powerful but finite. Great for reanimator.
- Repeatable recursion creatures/enchantments: slow, grindy, and inevitable.
- “Everything gets recursion” effects: explosive turns, often combo-leaning.
If you have no engine, you are not a recursion deck. You are a normal deck that occasionally feels nostalgic.
Step 2: Add fuel, on purpose
Fuel is how cards get into the graveyard in the first place. The classic fuel packages:
- Looting and rummaging (draw then discard, or discard then draw).
- Self-mill (dump cards fast, sort it out later).
- Sacrifice outlets (turn creatures into value and graveyard stock).
- Tutor to graveyard effects (more direct, usually stronger).
The trap is adding fuel without payoffs. Milling yourself for ten cards is not inherently powerful. It just makes you feel like you did something.
Step 3: Choose payoffs that justify the effort
Your best payoffs are cards that are strong every time they get replayed:
- Creatures with enter-the-battlefield triggers.
- Permanents with death triggers.
- Spells that scale as the game goes long.
- Recursion targets that stabilize immediately (removal bodies, lifegain bodies, sweepers you can reuse).
A good test: if you brought this card back twice in a game, would you feel ahead? If not, it is probably just a card you like. Which is allowed, but that’s a different article.
Step 4: Decide how you actually win
Most recursion decks fall into one of these win plans.
A) Reanimator (big threat, early)
You dump a huge creature into the graveyard and reanimate it ahead of schedule. The deck is fast, linear, and will make people stare at their opening hands like they made a life mistake.
B) Value recursion (grind and outlast)
You recur midrange threats and interaction until your opponent runs out of answers. You win because your deck does not run out of cards in the same way.
C) Aristocrats recursion (sacrifice loops and drain)
You sacrifice creatures for value, recur them, repeat. Your win condition is usually incremental life drain, board control, or a loop that ends the game.
D) Spells recursion (replay key instants and sorceries)
You treat your graveyard as a second spellbook. Great for control and combo styles, and great for making the table ask, “Wait, that’s in your graveyard too?”
E) Artifact or lands recursion (engine room gameplay)
Artifacts and lands have their own recursion ecosystems. These decks are often slower, but they become impossible to fully shut down if built with redundancy.
Color-by-color recursion cheat sheet
Recursion shows up in every color, but it looks different.
Black
Black is the classic recursion color. It’s the best at reanimating creatures directly to the battlefield, often with a life payment or another cost. Black also has strong discard outlets and self-mill support, which makes the whole machine run smoothly.
Green
Green recursion is often return-to-hand and value-based. It likes getting back key pieces, reusing creatures, and building inevitability. Think steady, honest recursion. Honest like a bear wearing a tie.
White
White recursion leans toward small creatures, permanents with low cost, and long-game durability. White is also good at recovering from wipes, which matters because the table will absolutely wipe when you start looping value.
Blue
Blue recursion is usually about spells and card selection. It reuses instants and sorceries, copies them, or enables graveyard casting. Blue also does “library and graveyard manipulation” very well, which is recursion’s nerdy cousin.
Red
Red recursion is chaotic but real. Red often gets “cast again” style recursion, discard-to-fuel gameplay, and some extremely powerful graveyard casting engines. Red also has strong artifact recursion tools.
Multicolor and colorless
Multicolor legends and engines often combine the best parts of two recursion styles, like self-mill plus repeatable replay. Colorless recursion shows up in artifacts that bring back other artifacts, lands, or pieces of a loop.
How to build an MTG recursion deck: a practical checklist
If you want a functioning recursion deck, not a vibes-based graveyard scrapbook, use this checklist.
Deckbuilding checklist
- Have 1 to 3 main recursion engines. More than that and you start drawing the wrong half of your deck.
- Run enough fuel to find targets naturally. If you cannot reliably get cards into your graveyard, your recursion spells are just expensive wishes.
- Include targets that are good to recur. ETB creatures, removal bodies, flexible spells, and threats that stabilize fast.
- Add interaction that protects the engine. You do not need to be all-in, but you do need a plan for the obvious hate cards.
- Include at least one backup plan that does not care about the graveyard. This can be a normal beatdown plan, planeswalkers, or just a consistent midrange curve. Something that still functions when your graveyard is turned off.
“Am I running too much recursion?”
Probably. Most players do. Recursion is fun, so people keep adding it, and then the deck becomes 40 enablers, 15 recursion spells, and 5 payoffs that actually win.
A decent rule of thumb is: your recursion cards should make your best cards show up more often, not replace having best cards.
Playing through graveyard hate without crying in public
Every recursion deck eventually meets a card that says “no” to graveyards. It happens. It’s healthy. It builds character. Allegedly.
The best ways to handle it:
Do not rely on one engine. If the whole deck collapses when one enchantment dies, you built a single-point-of-failure cosplay.
Diversify your recursion (some return to hand, some cast from graveyard, some engine-based).
Hold resources when you suspect a graveyard wipe is coming.
Pack removal for hate permanents. You cannot negotiate with a card that removes your graveyard for free.
Common mistakes recursion players make
Milling without a plan
Self-mill is not value by itself. It’s just moving cards from “unknown” to “known”. You need a way to use what you milled.
Too many cute loops, not enough pressure
Loops are fun. Your opponents are not obligated to share that joy. Make sure your deck actually advances toward winning, not just “doing the thing.”
Forgetting that your graveyard is public information
Your opponent sees what you are doing. They know what you can bring back. If you are telegraphing your best line for three turns, you are giving them time to find the one card that ruins your day.
FAQs
What counts as recursion in MTG?
Anything that lets you reuse cards from your graveyard or other zones after they’ve been spent. Returning to hand, reanimating creatures, and casting spells from the graveyard all qualify.
Does reanimating a creature count as casting it?
Usually, no. Most reanimation effects move a card from graveyard to battlefield without casting it, which matters for “when you cast” triggers and certain restrictions.
How many recursion cards should I play?
Enough to see them reliably, but not so many that you draw recursion with nothing worth returning. Most decks want a few engines plus a supporting package, not twenty ways to buy back the same mediocre creature.
Are recursion decks only a black thing?
Black is the poster child, but every color has recursion tools. They just express it differently: green is value recursion, blue is spell recursion, white is small-permanent recursion, red is “cast it again and hope it works out.”
How do I protect my recursion plan from graveyard hate?
Use removal, redundancy, and a backup plan. Also, do not dump your entire hand into the graveyard when you know your opponent is representing an exile effect. That is self-harm with extra steps.