Knights of Thorn
Creature — Human Knight
Protection from red; banding (Any creatures with banding, and up to one without, can attack in a band. Bands are blocked as a group. If any creatures with banding you control are blocking or being blocked by a creature, you divide that creature's combat damage, not its controller, among any of the creatures it's being blocked by or is blocking.)
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- The Dark
- Price
- $9.91
- EDHREC rank
- #24503
Knights of Thorn is a 3/3 first striker with protection from red for four mana — a resilient attacker that blanks most red removal and trades up against mono-red aggro boards. The stats are honest for the cost, but four mana for a vanilla-adjacent creature is a tough sell in formats where the bar is higher.
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 | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Knights of Thorn is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, Pauper, and Oathbreaker. In Pauper, where red burn and small creatures dominate, protection from red is a genuine roadblock and first strike closes games fast — this is where Knights of Thorn is most at home. Commander rarely rewards a 3/3 beater without text beyond keyword soup, so it shows up only in niche Knight tribal lists where the creature type does real work. Legacy and Vintage pools are deep enough that Knights of Thorn rarely competes for a slot.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Budget Alternatives
Cheaper options that do most of the same work
Order of Leitbur and Order of the White Shield offer very similar profiles — protection from a color plus first strike — at a fraction of the cost, though both are white-only and trade red protection for black or green respectively. If the goal is a cheap, evasive first striker in white, Kor Duelist or Ancestral Blade can fill a similar aggressive role in Knight-adjacent shells without the color-specific upside Knights of Thorn provides.
Price Context
Current price
$9.91 mid tier
At $9.91, Knights of Thorn sits in the mid tier — expensive for a card that sees limited competitive play and no broad Commander demand. The price is driven almost entirely by age and scarcity rather than power, so it holds collector value better than gameplay value.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.