Card Spotlight
Survival of the Fittest
A two-mana green enchantment from 1997: discard a creature, tutor a creature to hand, repeat as often as you have creatures to feed it. Reanimator's oldest engine, and still one of its best.
Commander Spotlight
Survival of the Fittest ↗
A two-mana green enchantment from 1997: discard a creature, tutor a creature to hand, repeat as often as you have creatures to feed it. Reanimator's oldest engine, and still one of its best.
See Survival of the Fittest's full stats and printings →
Strategies it goes well with
- Reanimator. Every activation is a free discard into the graveyard as well as a tutor, feeding a reanimation spell its target for no extra cost.
- Creature-based combo decks. Repeatable, uncapped access to any creature in the deck makes assembling a two-creature combo far more consistent than drawing into it naturally.
- Toolbox green decks. It finds the creature the situation calls for, such as a Reclamation Sage for an artifact, a big blocker, or a finisher, so the deck can adapt instead of following a fixed plan.
How it does in Commander
As the commander
It's an enchantment, not a creature, so it's never a commander. It is a build-around engine that lives entirely in the 99.
In the 99
One of the most efficient repeatable tutors green has ever printed, and the backbone of dedicated reanimator and creature-toolbox decks that can afford to build specifically around it.
Formats it's strong in
- Reanimator shells. It fills the graveyard and finds the reanimation target in the same activation, which is close to the ideal effect for that archetype.
- Green creature-toolbox decks. Uncapped, repeatable access to any creature turns a big, varied creature base into a series of tutorable answers.
Formats it's weak in
- Low-creature-count decks. With few creatures to discard or find, the engine has little to feed on and little to find.
- Decks that can't use a discarded creature. Without reanimation or a graveyard payoff, the discard half of the cost is a real loss rather than a resource being redirected.
Synergistic cards
Reanimate ↗
The cheapest reanimation spell, turning Survival's discard into the setup for a huge creature a turn early.
Protean Hulk ↗
A creature that's often better discarded than cast. Its death trigger tutors up a combo, so Survival can find it and then discard it for a full turn of value.
Eternal Witness ↗
A creature worth finding on its own, and a fine target to discard and later reanimate for the ETB.
Karmic Guide ↗
Reanimating creatures Survival has discarded, including itself as a loop with the right pieces.
Is it worth the price?
Survival of the Fittest is an older, lower-print-run card that has stayed pricier than most 2-mana enchantments as a result. It's a real investment rather than a budget pickup. Worth it specifically for a dedicated reanimator or toolbox green deck; a poor fit to buy for a list running only a handful of creatures.
Frequently asked questions
What does Survival of the Fittest actually do?
For a green mana, discard a creature card and search your library for another creature card, putting it into your hand. It has no per-turn limit, so with enough green mana it can dig through most of a deck in a single turn.
Why is Survival of the Fittest good with graveyard strategies?
Every activation puts a creature into the graveyard as a cost, which is what reanimation spells want. For one green mana, Survival finds the best target for a reanimation spell and puts a creature in the graveyard at the same time.
Is Survival of the Fittest a combo piece?
It's most famous as a tutor, but it enables real combos too. Finding both halves of a creature-based combo in one turn, or discarding a combo piece with a useful death or graveyard trigger, are both common lines in decks built around it.