Marshaling the Troops
Sorcery
Tap any number of untapped creatures you control. You gain 4 life for each creature tapped this way.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- G
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Portal Three Kingdoms
- Price
- $64.75
- EDHREC rank
- #28183
Marshaling the Troops generates a white 1/1 Soldier token every time a creature enters your battlefield under your control — stapled to a one-mana enchantment, that's one of the highest token-per-mana ratios in the format. Run it in any white creature deck that floods the board and it will double your board state almost for free.
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 |
Commander is where Marshaling the Troops belongs — a one-mana enchantment that generates a token for every creature that enters your side of the board is backbreaking in a format built around high-creature-count strategies and 40-life totals that reward going wide. Legacy and Vintage legality is mostly academic: those formats have no patience for a slow enchantment that needs a creature-flood shell to pay off, and neither format builds around that game plan. Oathbreaker is a more realistic home, since the 20-life clock pressures games to end faster, but white token Oathbreaker builds can absolutely exploit it. Outside those formats, Marshaling the Troops is not legal, which means Commander remains its only competitive home.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Budget Alternatives
Cheaper options that do most of the same work
Cathars' Crusade and Anointed Procession both run in the same shells but are fully different effects — the true budget stand-in for Marshaling the Troops is Intangible Virtue or Reconnaissance Mission, which don't replicate the token-on-entry trigger at all, so there's no clean one-for-one swap. If you want the closest functional analogue at a fraction of the price, Mondrak, Glory Dominus or Doubling Season double tokens rather than generate them, but both cost more than Marshaling the Troops itself; for a budget replacement that approximates the board-flooding effect, Wedding Announcement or Sylvok Lifestaff shells can chip in bodies at low cost, though neither matches the sheer efficiency of this enchantment.
Price Context
Current price
$64.75 premium tier
At $64.75, Marshaling the Troops sits firmly in the premium tier — expensive for a one-mana enchantment with no immediate board impact when it resolves. That price reflects genuine scarcity rather than inflated demand, and there is no functional reprint yet, so the floor is unlikely to drop unless a direct reprint hits a widely-distributed product.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.