Shepherding Spirits
Creature — Spirit
Flying
Plainscycling 
(, Discard this card: Search your library for a Plains card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle.)
- CMC
- 6
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Duskmourn: House of Horror
- Price
- $0.08
- EDHREC rank
- #18668
Shepherding Spirits puts a token on the board and draws a card — two of Magic's most valuable resources stapled onto one spell. The cost is real: five mana at sorcery speed is a steep ask, and Ellie and Alan, Paleontologists is currently the only commander that makes the full package click.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Ellie and Alan, Paleontologists
Ellie and Alan, Paleontologists cares about creating Dinosaur tokens and rewards flooding the board with them, which makes Shepherding Spirits a clean two-for-one that advances both the board state and the hand simultaneously.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Shepherding Spirits is legal everywhere but earns its keep almost exclusively in Commander, where sorcery-speed token generation plus card draw is a fine rate at any table running a token-synergy commander. In competitive 60-card formats — Modern, Pioneer, Standard — five mana for a 3/3 and a draw is several turns too slow; faster, cheaper token producers dominate those queues. Pauper is the one other format where it could theoretically see play, but the same speed problem applies and better common-rarity options exist.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.08 bulk tier
At $0.08, Shepherding Spirits is deep bulk — you're picking this out of a dollar box or grabbing a playset for pocket change. Bulk rares with narrow synergy rarely climb without a breakout deck, so don't expect movement unless Dinosaur tokens become a competitive archetype.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.