MTG Scry Explained: Every Rule, All 443 Cards, and the Payoff Deck Nobody Builds (2026)

Scry is the most-printed card-selection keyword in Magic, and almost nobody plays it on purpose. There are 443 paper cards whose rules text uses the word, 430 of them legal in Commander, and the single most-played one is a land that most players have never once thought of as a scry card. This guide covers the exact rule, the three things players consistently get wrong, all 443 cards broken down by number, colour and type, the ten scry lands, every scry payoff in the game, and a budget package that turns scry from a throwaway line of text into an actual engine.

Everything below is checked against the Comprehensive Rules effective 7 August 2026 and live Scryfall data pulled on 13 August 2026. Where a number appears, it was counted, not remembered.

What scry actually does

The rule is short enough to quote in full. From the Comprehensive Rules, section 701.22:

701.22a To “scry N” means to look at the top N cards of your library, then put any number of them on the bottom of your library in any order and the rest on top of your library in any order.

That is the whole mechanic. You look, you sort, you keep the ones you want on top and bury the ones you do not. Scry never puts a card into your hand and never puts one into your graveyard. It changes the order of your library and nothing else.

Three details in that sentence do real work in games, and all three are missed regularly.

“Any number” includes zero and includes all of them. Scry 2 does not force you to split the cards one up and one down. You may keep both on top, bury both, or split them. A lot of players scry 2, see two lands they do not need, and bury only one because they feel obliged to keep something.

“In any order” applies to both piles. If you scry 3 and keep all three on top, you choose the order you draw them in over the next three turns. That is a much bigger effect than most players use it as.

You look at all N cards before deciding anything. Scry 3 is not three sequential scry 1s. You see the whole set, then sort it. This matters for cards like Mystic Speculation, and it is the single most common rules question asked about the keyword in beginner forums.

The rules text, in full

The three things players get wrong about scry

1. Scry 0 is not a scry

Rule 701.22b is unusually blunt for the Comprehensive Rules: “If a player is instructed to scry 0, no scry event occurs. Abilities that trigger whenever a player scries won’t trigger.”

This is the sharpest trap in the keyword, and it only bites decks that are trying to do something clever. If you control Matoya, Archon Elder — “whenever you scry or surveil, draw a card” — and you resolve an effect that scries X where X happens to be zero, you draw nothing. Not “you scry nothing but still trigger.” The event did not happen. The same applies to Elrond, Master of Healing, Celeborn the Wise, Elminster, and every other payoff in the table further down.

It also runs the other way, and this is the part worth internalising: a scry-X card with X at zero is a blank, so the fifteen “scry X” cards in Magic are only as good as the X they generate. Gnostro, Voice of the Crags and Alibou, Ancient Witness are fine cards; they are not payoff enablers on a turn where X is nothing.

2. The mulligan is not a scry — not any more

Ask a table what happens after you mulligan and someone will say “then you scry.” That was true for four years and has been false for seven.

The Vancouver mulligan, introduced in 2015, let a player who had taken at least one mulligan scry 1 after keeping. The London mulligan replaced it with the release of Core Set 2020 in July 2019, and it does something different: you draw a full seven every time and then put cards on the bottom of your library, one for each mulligan taken.

The current rule, 103.5, spells out the procedure and never uses the word scry: a player “shuffles the cards in their hand back into their library, draws a new hand of cards equal to their starting hand size, then puts a number of those cards equal to the number of times that player has taken a mulligan on the bottom of their library in any order.”

Those cards come from your hand, not from the top of your library. It is not a scry, it does not look like a scry, and — the practical consequence — it does not trigger a single one of your scry payoffs. If you are building around Nimrodel Watcher or Knowledge and Power, your mulligan does nothing for you.

There is one more wrinkle worth knowing, from rule 103.5c: in multiplayer and Brawl, the first mulligan is free — it does not count toward the number of cards you put on the bottom. In a four-player Commander pod, your first mulligan is a clean redraw of seven.

3. Scry is not card advantage

Scry improves card quality, never card quantity. After a scry your hand is exactly the same size it was before. This is why Opt and Preordain are one-mana cantrips rather than one-mana card draw, and why a scry-heavy deck still needs a real card draw package underneath it.

Where scry earns its keep is variance reduction. A deck with twelve scry effects hits its land drops on curve far more reliably than the same deck without them, and it flooding out less often. That is worth a great deal in a 100-card singleton format and comparatively little in a 60-card deck with four copies of everything.

Scry vs surveil vs fateseal

Three keywords look at the top of a library and sort it. They are not interchangeable, and the Comprehensive Rules put them in three separate sections.

Scry has been printed on nearly twice as many cards as surveil and more than two hundred times as many as fateseal. Fateseal — which is simply scry aimed at somebody else — exists on exactly two paper cards in the history of the game, and has not been printed since 2010.

The asymmetry you can read out of the rulebook

Here is a difference between scry and surveil that is visible only by noticing what is not written. Surveil has a second clause, 701.25b:

701.25b If an effect allows you to look at additional cards while you surveil, those cards are included among the cards you may put into your graveyard and on top of your library in any order.

Scry has no equivalent clause. It is the only “additional cards” provision in the entire keyword-action section of the Comprehensive Rules, and scry — the older, more heavily printed, more heavily supported keyword — does not get one. In practice the effects that add to a scry, like Kenessos, Priest of Thassa, are worded as replacement effects that change the number instead, which is a cleaner solution and explains why the clause was never needed.

All 443 scry cards, counted

Every number in this section comes from a Scryfall pull of paper cards whose Oracle text contains the word scry, filtered on a word boundary. That filter matters more than it sounds: a raw substring search returns 444 cards, and the extra one is Worzel, the Protector, whose ultimate creates “ten Scryb Sprites tokens.” Scryb contains scry. The card has nothing to do with the keyword. The real total is 443.

By scry value

Scry 1 and scry 2 account for 382 of 443 cards — 86.2% of everything ever printed. Past scry 2, the mechanic falls off a cliff: 28 cards at scry 3, three at scry 4, and exactly one card in the history of Magic that scries 5.

That card is Nissa’s Revelation, and it is green. Green is the colour that scries least. The deepest scry ever printed lives in the colour that barely uses the mechanic, on a seven-mana sorcery from Magic Origins that most players have never cast.

The three scry 4 cards are worth a look too, because two of them are the same card. Foresee and Tamiyo’s Epiphany are both {3}{U} sorceries reading “Scry 4, then draw two cards” — functionally identical, printed fifteen years apart, and one of them costs three times as much as the other.

By colour

Ask a table which colour owns scry and you will hear “blue” instantly and “green” second, because of Theros and because scrying feels druidic. Blue is right. Green is dead last.

Scry is a blue-white mechanic. Blue has more than white and red combined among mono-coloured cards. Black, the colour most associated with paying life to dig, has the fewest scry cards of any colour — it gets card selection through Read the Bones and impulse draw instead.

The colourless number is the quiet one: 47 mono-colourless scry cards, more than mono-green and mono-black. That is artifacts and lands, and it is why scry slots into any deck in the format regardless of colour identity.

By card type

The creature number is the surprising one. More scry cards are creatures than instants and sorceries put together, and the overwhelming majority are enters-the-battlefield triggers on commons. Scry 1 stapled to a 2/2 body is one of the most common designs in Magic’s history, which is exactly why nobody notices it.

Where scry came from — and the card that predates it by eight years

Scry was introduced as a keyword in Fifth Dawn, released 4 June 2004, which printed nine cards using it. The obvious place to look for its origin is Theros, the block that made scry its signature mechanic in 2013 — and Theros did print more of it than any block before or since.

But the oldest card in Magic whose Oracle text says “scry” is Soldevi Excavations, from Alliances, released 10 June 1996 — eight years and six days before the keyword existed. Its current rules text reads, in part, “{1}, {T}: Scry 1.”

The second-oldest is Darksteel Pendant, from Darksteel on 6 February 2004 — four months before Fifth Dawn, in the immediately preceding set of the same block. Both cards now carry scry in their Oracle text because Oracle text is updated to current templating; what was printed on the physical cardboard used the longhand wording. If you own an original Alliances Soldevi Excavations, the card in your hand does not say scry and the card in the database does.

Which set has printed the most scry

The single largest scry set in Magic is The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, not Theros. Theros still wins at block level — Theros, Born of the Gods and Journey into Nyx total 57 between them against Middle-earth’s 45 across two sets — but no single set has ever printed more scry than LTR’s 32. That is not an accident, and the reason is the subject of the archetype section below.

The most-played scry cards in Commander

Ranked by EDHREC inclusion, with prices taken from the cheapest available printing rather than the default one. That distinction is not cosmetic: Serum Visions shows a default price of $2.68 and is available at $0.62, and Simulacrum Synthesizer is $27.10 by default and $17.06 at its cheapest. Twenty-nine of the forty-nine cards priced for this article had a cheaper printing than the one the database serves first.

The most-played scry card in Commander is a land nobody calls a scry card

Path of Ancestry sits at EDHREC rank 14 — not fourteenth among scry cards, fourteenth among all cards in the format. It is in a substantial share of every typal deck ever built, and it is played entirely for the colour fixing. The scry is a rider almost nobody counts.

Its text is more restrictive than people remember: “When that mana is spent to cast a creature spell that shares a creature type with your commander, scry 1.” The mana has to come from the Path, the spell has to be a creature, and it has to share a type with your commander. In a Slivers or Elves deck that is nearly every turn. In a deck whose commander is a Human Wizard commanding a pile of artifacts, the land is a tapped Command Tower and the scry never happens.

Fourteen of the twenty cards in the table above are lands or artifacts, which is the real story of scry in Commander: it is almost never the reason a card gets played. It is the tiebreaker that makes an otherwise unremarkable card make the cut.

The ten scry lands

The Temple cycle — universally called the scry lands — is a complete ten-land, two-colour cycle. Every one reads “This land enters tapped. When this land enters, scry 1” and taps for its two colours. They first appeared across the Theros block and have been reprinted steadily ever since; five of the ten were reprinted in Secrets of Strixhaven Commander in April 2026, and four more in Foundations and the Tarkir and Edge of Eternities Commander decks.

The whole cycle costs under $2.00 at cheapest printings. For a two-colour Commander deck, the relevant Temple is close to a free include: the scry is real value on turn one or two, and the cost is a tapped land in a format where tapped lands are broadly acceptable.

All ten sit between EDHREC rank 283 and 516, which is a remarkably tight band — the format plays them at almost exactly the same rate regardless of colour pair. If you are assembling a mana base, they belong in the same conversation as the other budget duals covered in our Commander mana base guide. You can check live prices on any of them with our card pricing tool.

Beyond the Temples there are 21 more lands with scry in their text, including Castle Vantress (a repeatable scry 2 mana sink), Crystal Grotto, New Benalia, Zhalfirin Void and the two Middle-earth legendary lands.

The scry payoff archetype nobody builds

Everything above treats scry as a rider. There is a second way to play it: as a trigger. Nineteen cards in Magic care that you scried, either with a “whenever you scry” trigger or by replacing the scry with something better. Eighteen of them are Commander-legal today.

And eleven of the nineteen come from a single set: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth. That is the reason LTR is the biggest scry set ever printed. Wizards built a complete scry-matters archetype into one Middle-earth block, in Simic colours, on a tribe of Elves — and then largely left it there.

The two replacement effects, and why the order matters

Two of those cards do not trigger on a scry — they replace it, and they are the reason this archetype has a ceiling worth chasing.

Eligeth, Crossroads Augur: “If you would scry a number of cards, draw that many cards instead.” Every Temple becomes Divination-on-a-land. Every Opt becomes Ancestral-adjacent. Preordain becomes draw three.

Kenessos, Priest of Thassa: “If you would scry a number of cards, scry that many cards plus one instead.”

Both are replacement effects modifying the same event, so rule 616.1 applies: the affected player — you — chooses which to apply first. Apply Kenessos first and the scry becomes N+1; Eligeth then turns that into drawing N+1 cards. Get the order wrong, and Eligeth converts the scry to a draw before Kenessos can enlarge it, leaving Kenessos with no scry to modify at all. With both on the battlefield, a scry 1 off any Temple draws you two cards — if you sequence it correctly.

And the reason to know rule 701.22b cold: if any effect scries zero, none of this happens. No scry event, no trigger, no replacement, nothing.

The Hobbit Eternal, 14 August 2026 — and why it is not what it looks like

The Hobbit Eternal releases 14 August 2026 with 158 cards, and it contains 13 cards with scry in their text — more than Journey into Nyx or Fifth Dawn. On a spoiler list, that reads like a new scry set.

It is not. All 13 are reprints. Twelve were first printed in The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth in June 2023 and one, Galadriel, Light of Valinor, in the LTR Commander decks that November. The Hobbit Eternal is an Eternal-type set — a reprint product — and it adds zero new scry cards to Magic.

That is good news rather than bad, for two reasons. Every one of these cards has been Commander-legal since 2023, so there is nothing to wait for. And reprints move prices: Palantír of Orthanc’s Hobbit printing is already the cheapest available copy of the card at $18.35, against $21.92 for the LTR original.

Nine of the thirteen are commons and uncommons, which is exactly the price bracket that makes an archetype buildable. If you have wanted to build Elf scry, 14 August is the cheapest the pieces have been. Our coverage of the other Middle-earth mechanics returning in this set is in the amass guide.

One card sits outside this window: Prudent Fateseer // Peer Review, from Reality Fracture on 2 October 2026, is a nineteenth scry payoff that is not Commander-legal yet. It grants your team +1/+0 whenever you scry or surveil. Do not buy it for a deck you intend to play this month.

Building around scry: the package

Scry rewards a deck that can trigger it repeatedly and cheaply. The shell below is Simic (green-blue) Elves, because that is where the payoffs live, but the enabler half works in any colour identity.

How the package works

The enablers should be cheap and repeatable, not big. This is the counterintuitive part. A scry 1 you get every turn is worth far more to this deck than a scry 4 you get once, because every payoff in the table triggers on the event, not on the size. Lothlórien Lookout at {1}{G} triggering on every attack is a better Celeborn enabler than Foresee at {3}{U}.

Size matters only for the four cards that count cards looked at. Elrond, Elvish Mariner, Elminster and Celeborn the Wise all scale with “the number of cards looked at while scrying this way.” Those four are the reason to run Kenessos and the deeper scry spells at all.

Land count can come down slightly. Twelve-plus scry effects smooth draws enough that 36 lands does the work of 38 in a deck without them — provided several of those scry effects are on the lands themselves. If you want to check whether a list is actually smoothing or just hoping, run it through our deck analyzer.

Watch the bracket. None of these cards are Game Changers and none of them are close, so a scry-matters Elf deck sits comfortably in the mid brackets. If you are not sure where a list lands, the Commander brackets guide covers the full list.

A budget scry package under $5

Every price below is the cheapest available printing, checked on 13 August 2026. Prices move; check before you buy.

Nineteen cards, $4.63 at cheapest printings. That includes both a scry-to-draw replacement effect and the only scry 5 ever printed. The single most expensive card in the whole archetype, Kenessos at $7.75, is a luxury rather than a requirement — and it is a Jumpstart card whose price reflects scarcity, not power.

Frequently asked questions about scry in MTG

What does scry mean in MTG?

To scry N means to look at the top N cards of your library, then put any number of them on the bottom in any order and the rest on top in any order (Comprehensive Rules 701.22a). You do not draw the cards and you do not put any in your graveyard — scry only reorders your library.

Does scry draw you a card?

No. Scry never changes your hand size. Cards like Opt and Preordain draw a card in addition to scrying, but that is the card-draw clause on the spell, not the scry.

What does scry 1 mean?

Look at the top card of your library and choose whether to leave it on top or put it on the bottom. It is a single binary decision. Scry 1 is by far the most common version — 223 of Magic’s 443 scry cards use it.

What does scry 2 mean, and do I have to split them?

Look at the top two cards, then put any number on the bottom and the rest on top, each in any order you choose. You may keep both, bury both, or split. Nothing forces you to keep one.

Do I look at all the cards at once when I scry 3?

Yes. You see all three before deciding anything, then sort. Scry 3 is not three separate scry 1s, which makes it substantially stronger than it looks.

What is the difference between scry and surveil?

Both look at the top N cards of your library. Scry (701.22) puts the rejects on the bottom of your library; surveil (701.25) puts them in your graveyard. Surveil is better in a graveyard deck and worse in a deck that wants to keep its library intact.

Does scry trigger when I mulligan?

No. The London mulligan puts cards from your hand on the bottom of your library and never uses the word scry (rule 103.5). The old Vancouver mulligan, used from 2015 until July 2019, did include a scry 1 — that rule no longer exists.

What happens if I scry 0?

Nothing at all. Rule 701.22b states that no scry event occurs, and abilities that trigger whenever a player scries will not trigger. This matters for “scry X” cards when X is zero.

Is scry an ability or an action?

Scry is a keyword action, not a keyword ability. It lives in section 701 of the Comprehensive Rules alongside things like mill, investigate and shuffle, rather than in section 702 with flying and trample. That is why a card can grant scry as part of an effect without granting an ability.

What is the best scry card in Commander?

By play rate it is Path of Ancestry, at EDHREC rank 14 across the entire format. By raw power in a scry deck it is Planetarium of Wan Shi Tong, which lets you cast the top card of your library for free once per turn whenever you scry or surveil.

What are the scry lands?

The ten Temples — Temple of Epiphany, Silence, Triumph, Enlightenment, Mystery, Deceit, Malady, Malice, Plenty and Abandon. Each enters tapped, scries 1 on entry, and taps for two colours. The whole cycle costs under $2.00 at cheapest printings.

What is fateseal?

Fateseal is scry pointed at an opponent: you look at the top N cards of their library and decide what stays and what goes to the bottom (rule 701.29a). Only two paper cards have ever used it — Mesmeric Sliver and Spin into Myth — and none since 2010.

Does The Hobbit Eternal add new scry cards?

No. It contains 13 cards with scry in their text, but every one is a reprint — twelve from The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth (2023) and one from its Commander decks. They have all been Commander-legal since 2023, and the reprinting makes several of them cheaper than they have ever been.

The short version

Scry is a decision, not a resource. It costs nothing, appears on 443 cards, and is almost always the smallest line of text on the card it is printed on — which is precisely why the most-played scry card in Commander is a land that people play for its mana.

Two things turn that rider into a strategy. The first is rule 701.22b: know that scry 0 is not a scry, and every payoff you own switches off. The second is that nineteen cards care that you scried, eleven of them from one Middle-earth set, most of them commons and uncommons, and all of them getting cheaper on 14 August. That archetype has been sitting in plain sight since 2023, and hardly anybody builds it.

If you want to see what a scry shell looks like when it is assembled, browse the public deck gallery or test your commander knowledge in Guess That Commander. For the keyword next door, our proliferate guide covers the other repeatable trigger that Commander players consistently undervalue, and the flash guide explains the priority rules that decide when your instant-speed scry actually resolves.