Borrowing the East Wind
Sorcery
Borrowing the East Wind deals X damage to each creature with horsemanship and each player.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- G
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Portal Three Kingdoms
- Price
- $107.80
- EDHREC rank
- #26200
Borrowing the East Wind hits every opponent's hand and board simultaneously — it bounces all nonland permanents each player controls while forcing a discard down to a set hand size, all for a single spell. The catch is the X cost: you need significant mana investment to make the effect backbreaking rather than symmetrical.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Borrowing the East Wind is a Commander card, full stop — the multiplayer context is the only place its symmetrical bounce-and-discard scales into a game-ending reset rather than a tempo-neutral spell. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but competes with far more efficient disruption and sees essentially no play. Commander is where the X cost becomes meaningful: at high mana values the effect is catastrophic for tables that have invested heavily in their boards, and the discard clause punishes players who held back threats in hand.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Budget Alternatives
Cheaper options that do most of the same work
Cyclonic Rift covers the bounce half for less mana and does it asymmetrically, which is strictly better in most situations — if the goal is clearing opposing boards, Rift is the correct card. Borrowing the East Wind's unique angle is the forced discard stapled to the bounce, so if that hand-disruption dimension matters, Devastation Tide or Part the Waterveil shells are the closest budget analogues, though neither replicates the full package.
Price Context
Current price
$107.80 premium tier
At $107.80, Borrowing the East Wind sits firmly in the premium tier — a price driven almost entirely by low supply as an older rare rather than ubiquitous competitive demand. It does not hold value the way format staples do; if the price drops or a reprint appears, there's little floor to catch it.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.