The Battlefield

Glacial Chasm
Ramunap Excavator
Zuran Orb
AI DraftFeb 26, 2026

Glacial Chasm + Ramunap Excavator + Zuran Orb

Overview
Ramunap Excavator lets you play lands from your graveyard, so you can play and/or have extra lands available to sacrifice to Zuran Orb to gain life. Glacial Chasm has cumulative upkeep “Pay 2 life,” so you must pay life each upkeep per age counter to keep it; you can use lands played from your graveyard and sacrificed to Zuran Orb to generate the life needed to pay that upkeep and keep Glacial Chasm on the battlefield .
Step 1
Setup: You control Glacial Chasm (already on the battlefield), Ramunap Excavator, Zuran Orb, and you have one or more other land cards in your graveyard.
Step 2
At the beginning of your upkeep Glacial Chasm’s cumulative upkeep triggered ability triggers; when that triggered ability resolves you will put an age counter on Glacial Chasm and then may pay 2 life for each age counter on it to keep it on the battlefield .
Step 3
Before the cumulative upkeep trigger resolves (or in response to it on the stack), you may play a land card from your graveyard because Ramunap Excavator allows you to play lands from your graveyard (you must actually play the land to the battlefield; Excavator does not let you activate land abilities while the land remains in the graveyard) Ruling [2017-07-14].
Step 4
After that land is on the battlefield, you can activate Zuran Orb’s activated ability, sacrificing that land as the cost to gain 2 life (the sacrifice is part of the cost to activate Zuran Orb).
Step 5
With the gained life (and any existing life you already had), when Glacial Chasm’s cumulative upkeep ability resolves you may choose to pay the required Pay 2 life per age counter cost; paying that cost is done as the ability resolves, per , so having gained life beforehand is effective.
Step 6
Repeat as necessary: if Glacial Chasm has multiple age counters and requires more life (for example 4 life with two counters), you can play and sacrifice multiple lands to Zuran Orb (one activation per land sacrificed) to generate the life needed, provided you have lands available to play and sacrifice.
Resolution
You can use Ramunap Excavator to play lands from your graveyard and then sacrifice those lands to Zuran Orb to gain 2 life each, and that life can be used to pay Glacial Chasm’s cumulative upkeep (which is a cost paid when the triggered ability resolves) so long as you can legally play and sacrifice the lands. Be mindful that Glacial Chasm’s enters-the-battlefield triggered ability forces you to sacrifice a land when it enters; if you control no other lands when that ability resolves, you must sacrifice Glacial Chasm itself Ruling [2008-08-01] and you cannot activate land abilities from the graveyard with Ramunap Excavator (so you must actually play the land to the battlefield before sacrificing it to Zuran Orb) Ruling [2017-07-14] .
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