Scout the Borders
Sorcery
Reveal the top five cards of your library. You may put a creature or land card from among them into your hand. Put the rest into your graveyard.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- G
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Khans of Tarkir
- Price
- $0.08
- EDHREC rank
- #21184
Scout the Borders mills five cards and puts a creature or land from among them into your hand — card selection dressed up as self-mill. Three mana is fair for that effect, but it competes with a crowded slot and wins only in decks that want both halves of the deal.
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 | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Scout the Borders earns its keep in Commander graveyard decks — specifically those running Golgari, Sultai, or Abzan colors where milling yourself is a resource, not a liability. The selection mode matters: grabbing a land versus a creature on demand keeps the card from feeling like a coin flip. In Pauper, it's a reasonable common-slot self-mill option for graveyard-value shells, though faster formats like Modern and Legacy have better tools at the same cost and Scout the Borders rarely sees play there. Oathbreaker follows the same logic as Commander — graveyard Planeswalkers that care about the bin make the best use of it.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.08 bulk tier
At $0.08, Scout the Borders is deep bulk — the kind of card you pull from a box rather than order. That price is stable by definition; there's no demand floor to collapse from.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.