MagicTheGathering.fyi

Guan Yu, Sainted Warrior

Legendary Creature — Human Soldier Warrior

Horsemanship (This creature can't be blocked except by creatures with horsemanship.)
When Guan Yu is put into your graveyard from the battlefield, you may shuffle Guan Yu into your library.

CMC
5
Mana cost
{3}{W}{W}
Color identity
W
Rarity
rare
Set
Portal Three Kingdoms
Price
$68.95
EDHREC rank
#24283
Buy on TCGplayer
Guan Yu, Sainted Warrior card art
Guan Yu, Sainted Warrior hits the board as an indestructible, double-striking threat that demands an answer immediately — and when it dies, Remembrance triggers let you reload your hand with redundant creatures. The cost is a five-mana white creature in a format that punishes clunky top-ends, so it earns its slot only in decks built to abuse the graveyard recursion loop.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern not legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Commander is where Guan Yu, Sainted Warrior actually gets to do its job — the long game gives you time to find the payoff enchantments, and multiplayer boards mean opponents will eventually throw removal at it, triggering your draw engines. Legacy and Vintage are legal on paper but irrelevant in practice: five mana for a creature with no immediate board-breaking effect doesn't compete in those environments. Oathbreaker is the one other format worth mentioning, where a low starting life total makes a double-striking indestructible body more threatening, though the singleton restriction still limits consistency.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

Guan Yu, Sainted Warrior is mostly doing two things — presenting an indestructible attacker and generating card advantage on death — and you can approximate each cheaply without the full package. Adeline, Resplendent Cathar handles the aggressive white creature role at a fraction of the price, while Bygone Bishop or Welcoming Vampire cover the draw-on-creature-entering angle without requiring the creature to die first.

Price Context

Current price

$68.95 premium tier

At $68.95, Guan Yu, Sainted Warrior sits firmly in premium collector territory, driven by its Three Kingdoms set scarcity rather than competitive demand. The price reflects supply constraints on a decades-old card, not tournament ubiquity, so treat it as a collectible acquisition — it won't spike or crash based on metagame shifts.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

← All cards

Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.