Deploy the Gatewatch
Sorcery
Look at the top seven cards of your library. Put up to two planeswalker cards from among them onto the battlefield. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.
- CMC
- 6
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- mythic
- Set
- Commander Masters
- Price
- $0.35
- EDHREC rank
- #10430
Deploy the Gatewatch puts up to two planeswalkers directly onto the battlefield for six mana — no casting cost, no summoning sickness on loyalty abilities. The catch is deck construction: it's dead weight unless your list runs enough planeswalkers to hit reliably, which makes it a staple in Commodore Guff and a liability everywhere else.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Commodore Guff
Commodore Guff's static ability adds loyalty counters to every planeswalker you control, so the two free planeswalkers Deploy the Gatewatch drops onto the board immediately benefit — and Guff's second ability lets you cash those planeswalkers in for cards, turning each Deploy hit into both board presence and card advantage.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Deploy the Gatewatch is a Commander card through and through — the format's 100-card singleton nature makes hitting on a six-mana sorcery more variance-prone, but planeswalker-tribal commanders like Commodore Guff run enough loyalty permanents to make the hit rate acceptable. In Legacy, Modern, and Pioneer it's legal but functionally unplayable: competitive planeswalker shells don't want a six-mana do-nothing when they miss, and the card sees effectively zero play there. Oathbreaker is the one non-Commander format where Deploy the Gatewatch finds a natural home, since the format's planeswalker-as-commander structure guarantees a higher planeswalker density in most lists.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.35 bulk tier
At $0.35, Deploy the Gatewatch sits firmly in bulk territory and has stayed there — supply is high from wide print runs and demand is narrow enough that no reprint pressure is needed. It's a free pickup for any planeswalker-heavy Commander build, but don't expect the price to move.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.