It’s fair to say that Murders at Karlov Manor wasn’t the most popular MTG set in its time. Arriving at the peak of the ‘hat set’ era, many players were put off by its unusual aesthetics alone. Unfortunately, this meant many great MTG cards went overlooked by association, including the excellent Chalk Outline. Bundling a value engine and combo enabler into one, this versatile enchantment has a ton to offer in Commander.
Chalk Outline MTG
At a base level, Chalk Outline is a great way to get additional board presence in decks with a heavy graveyard focus. Commanders like Karador, Ghost Chieftain and Muldrotha, the Gravetide for example, can maximize effects like this. It’s also great if you run ways to use your graveyard as a resource, such as Delve spells or Unearth creatures.
Thanks to the ‘one or more’ clause here, cards that remove one card from your graveyard at a time, like Agatha’s Soul Cauldron or The Ooze, will get you the maximum triggers. In a similar vein, creatures that can reanimate themselves repeatedly, like Reassembling Skeleton and Teacher’s Pest, can get you a ton of tokens over time.
An interesting facet of the Detective tokens you get from Chalk Outline is that they’re both white and blue. This means that making just one will put you at three colors total for Vivid cards like Bloom Tender and Aurora Awakener. In Jund decks like Slimefoot and Squee, this is particularly effective, as it expands your color reach beyond what you’d normally have.
The fact that you get Clue tokens as well as 2/2s separates Chalk Outline from its peers like Desecrated Tomb, and gives it several new axes of play. Naturally, this makes it a great addition to any deck that cares about Clue generation, like Lonis, Cryptozoologist. Additionally, it’s excellent in decks that just care about raw token quantity, like Baylen, the Haymaker. You can take this even further with token doublers like Parallel Lives, too, to absolutely flood the board.
Making so many artifact tokens lets Chalk Outline serve as a nice support piece in decks like Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch. You can build up Clues over time, then leverage that to drop powerful Affinity threats like Krang, Master Mind for cheap. In a similar vein, Krark-Clan Ironworks can convert them into easy mana, to power out heaters like Portal to Phyrexia.
Cracking The Case
Playing Chalk Outline fair is one thing, but you can also push its boundaries to unlock some truly dangerous MTG combos. When paired with Phyrexian Altar and Nether Traitor, for example, you can make infinite Clues and infinite mana.
Simply sacrifice a creature with Traitor in your graveyard, then use its ability to bring it back into play. This will trigger Chalk Outline, making a 2/2 and a token. Next, sacrifice Traitor for a mana, then sacrifice the token for another, and spend one to bring Traitor back again. Rinse and repeat to make enough mana for a Walking Ballista kill, or to win via any kind of Blood Artist effect.
Alternatively, you can pull off an infinite discard combo with Chalk Outline, Skirge Familiar, and Ovalchase Daredevil. Simply discard Daredevil to Familiar in response to an Outline trigger, and it’ll bounce right back to your hand when the Clue enters. You can then discard it again to repeat the process, netting infinite black mana, 2/2s, and Clues.
Perhaps because of its set of origin, Chalk Outline isn’t nearly as widely-played in Commander as you’d expect. According to EDHREC, just under 7,100 decks run the card, which feels criminally low. On the positive side, this means you can pick it up for next to nothing, with near-mint copies available for as little as $0.05. At this price point, Chalk Outline is an excellent budget option that can spice up plenty of different Commander decks.
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