MTG Horsemanship Explained: How It Works, All 28 Horsemanship Creatures, Every Card That Gives or Stops It and an $80 Sun Quan Commander Deck (2026)

Horsemanship is the Magic: The Gathering keyword from Portal Three Kingdoms. A creature with horsemanship can’t be blocked except by creatures with horsemanship. Unlike shadow, it has no drawback: a creature with horsemanship can still block anything.

We pulled every horsemanship card from Scryfall and counted what can stop one. There are 28 creatures with horsemanship out of 18,361 creatures in paper Magic, and those 28 are the only creatures that can block them. That’s 0.15% of all creatures, or one in 656. Flying has 128 times as many possible blockers. Twenty-seven of the 28 come from a single 1999 set that never went on sale in North America, which is why seven of them cost more than $100 and buying all 28 costs $1,456.93.

This guide covers the exact rule, how it interacts with flying and blocking, who can block it, what the keyword cost in stats, all 28 horsemanship creatures, every card that gives or answers it, the horsemanship commanders ranked by real deck counts, prices, legality in every format and a $80.35 budget Commander deck built around Sun Quan, Lord of Wu, the one card that gives horsemanship to your whole team.

What is horsemanship in MTG?

Horsemanship is a static evasion ability. Here is the rule from the current Comprehensive Rules (effective 25 September 2026):

702.31a Horsemanship is an evasion ability.
702.31b A creature with horsemanship can’t be blocked by creatures without horsemanship. A creature with horsemanship can block a creature with or without horsemanship. (See rule 509, “Declare Blockers Step.”)
702.31c Multiple instances of horsemanship on the same creature are redundant.

The reminder text on the cards says the same thing in fewer words: “This creature can’t be blocked except by creatures with horsemanship.” Three facts answer most questions:

• It works like flying, with its own blockers. Only another creature with horsemanship can block it.
• It only works in one direction. Your horsemanship creature can block an ordinary attacker. That’s the difference from shadow.
• Two instances do nothing extra. A creature that has horsemanship and also gets it from Sun Quan is no harder to block.

How horsemanship works: the rules in plain English

Can a creature with flying or reach block horsemanship?

No. Horsemanship and flying are separate abilities. The official ruling on the Portal Three Kingdoms cards says it directly: despite the similarities, horsemanship “doesn’t interact with flying or reach”. A dragon can’t block a horseman, and a horseman can’t block a dragon unless it has flying or reach too.

Can a creature with horsemanship block?

Yes, and it can block anything. Rule 702.31b says a creature with horsemanship can block a creature with or without horsemanship. This is what makes horsemanship strictly better than shadow, which stops your creature from blocking ordinary attackers. Two horsemanship creatures in Portal Three Kingdoms, Yellow Scarves Cavalry and Yellow Scarves General, can’t block, but that’s a separate line of text on those cards, not part of the keyword.

Is horsemanship the same as “can’t be blocked”?

Not quite. A creature that “can’t be blocked” has no legal blockers. A creature with horsemanship can be blocked by any of the 28 horsemanship creatures. In a normal Commander game nobody has one on the battlefield, so the two play the same. They stop being the same when two horsemanship decks meet, or when the opponent controls Sun Quan, Lord of Wu, which gives all of their creatures horsemanship.

When is horsemanship checked?

Only when blockers are declared. Rule 509.1b says that once a legal block has been declared, gaining or losing an evasion ability afterwards doesn’t change it. So Riding Red Hare has to be cast before blocks to get an attacker through. Riding Red Hare and Riding the Dilu Horse are sorceries anyway, so you cast them in your main phase before combat.

Horsemanship plus other evasion

Evasion abilities stack. Rule 509.1b says “different evasion abilities are cumulative”, so a blocker has to satisfy all of them. No card is printed with both horsemanship and flying, but you can build one. Give a flyer horsemanship with Sun Quan and only a creature with both horsemanship and flying or reach can block it. Ma Chao, Western Warrior adds a third layer: when it attacks alone, it can’t be blocked at all, even by other horsemen. Horsemanship also stacks with menace (two horsemanship blockers needed) and fear (the blocker needs horsemanship and has to be black or an artifact).

Does Sun Quan give itself horsemanship?

Yes. Sun Quan’s text is “Creatures you control have horsemanship”, and the official ruling confirms that includes Sun Quan. It isn’t printed with the keyword, which is why a keyword:horsemanship search on Scryfall returns 28 cards and doesn’t list it.

Who can block a horsemanship creature? The numbers

We counted, for four classic evasion keywords, how many creatures in paper Magic are able to block them.

Horsemanship has the fewest possible blockers of any of them: 28, against 42 for shadow, 3,587 for flying and 5,373 for fear. And it gives up nothing in return. In Commander all 28 are legal out of 17,920 legal creatures, so roughly one creature in 640 can block a horseman. In practice the number is lower, because 27 of the 28 are Portal Three Kingdoms cards that very few players own.

The deck counts make the same point. The 28 horsemanship creatures appear in 51,592 Commander decks on EDHREC, and Herald of Hoofbeats alone is 30,417 of them, or 59%. Almost all of those are Knight decks: the Herald gives every other Knight you control horsemanship. If one of your horsemen ever does get blocked in Commander, the blocker is most likely a Herald. Mirage’s cavalry took the opposite approach: flanking lets a horseman be blocked and gives every blocker -1/-1.

What horsemanship cost: the stat math

Horsemanship is close to unblockable and has no drawback, so it should cost something. To check, we compared the 27 horsemanship creatures in Portal Three Kingdoms with the other 77 creatures in the same set, at each mana value. Comparing with the same set matters because creatures were much smaller in 1999 than they are today.

Across the whole set, horsemanship creatures look bigger (2.52 / 2.59 against 2.24 / 2.36). That’s because they cost more: their average mana value is 4.22, against 3.49 for the rest. At the same mana value the cost shows up, but it’s small and uneven. At two mana horsemen have about 0.6 less power. At four mana they give up about a quarter of a point of power and toughness, and at five mana they’re the same size as everything else. The samples are small (2 to 12 cards per row), so don’t read too much into any single row. Overall, the keyword was paid for mostly with mana, not with stats. Against every creature printed since, horsemanship creatures are well behind the curve, but that’s true of almost every 1999 card.

Every creature with horsemanship: all 28

Here is every creature printed with the keyword, sorted by how many Commander decks play it on EDHREC. “Cheapest copy” is the lowest current price for a normal (non-promo) paper printing, from Scryfall.

A few patterns stand out:

• Almost all from one set. 27 of the 28 debuted in Portal Three Kingdoms in May 1999. The only other one is Herald of Hoofbeats (2023).
• Four colours, not five. White, black and blue have 7 each and red has 6. Green has one: Lady Zhurong, Warrior Queen. Green got the answers instead (see below).
• Half are legends. 14 of the 28 are legendary, all named after figures from the Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Card names show the faction: Wei cards are black, Wu cards are blue, Shu cards are white.
• Ten have no other ability. Ten are plain horsemanship with no other text, including Lu Meng, Wu General and Lady Zhurong.

Portal Three Kingdoms: where horsemanship came from

Portal Three Kingdoms was the third and last Portal set, a simplified product for new players. It was released in May 1999 and was never sold in North American stores. It has 170 cards, all based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and horsemanship was its signature mechanic: 27 of its 104 creatures have it.

That history explains the prices. Portal Three Kingdoms had a small print run, and almost none of it has been reprinted in paper. None of its cards are on the Reserved List (Scryfall’s s:ptk is:reserved returns 0), so Wizards could reprint them but mostly hasn’t. Of the 39 cards in this guide, only a handful have a later paper printing:

• Sun Quan, Lord of Wu: From the Vault: Legends (2011) and Commander Masters (2023), which is why it costs $8.50 and not $60+.
• Lu Xun, Scholar General: Commander 2013 and Commander Anthology (2017). $0.30.
• Rolling Earthquake: From the Vault: Annihilation (2014) and Double Masters (2020).
• Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed (a 2012 judge promo) and Lu Bu, Master-at-Arms (two 1999 promos) only have promo reprints.

About half of the rest were reprinted in Masters Edition III in 2009, but that was a Magic Online set, so it added no paper copies. The official rulings on most of these cards are dated 1 October 2009.

The new horsemanship cards

Horsemanship came back three times after 1999, each time in a supplemental product:

• Merry-Go-Round (Unfinity, 2022): an Attraction whose Visit ability gives your creatures with power 2 or less horsemanship until end of turn.
• Herald of Hoofbeats (March of the Machine Commander, 2023): a 3/3 Knight for {3}{U} with horsemanship that gives your other Knights horsemanship. It’s the first new creature with the keyword since 1999.
• The Girl in the Fireplace (Doctor Who, 2023): a Saga whose second chapter makes a Horse token that gives your Doctors horsemanship.

Don’t expect it in a Standard set. Mark Rosewater rated horsemanship an 8 on his Storm Scale in January 2014 and said he was “skeptical” it would appear in a Standard-legal set. Since then it has only appeared in a Commander deck, an Un-set and the Doctor Who Commander decks.

Every card that gives, punishes or ignores horsemanship

Eleven cards mention horsemanship without having it, and Herald of Hoofbeats both has it and gives it. Here they are, grouped by what they do.

Giving horsemanship

Sun Quan, Lord of Wu is the important one. It’s a 4/4 for {4}{U}{U} that gives every creature you control horsemanship, so in most games your whole team becomes unblockable. That’s why it’s the most-built horsemanship commander by a wide margin. Riding the Dilu Horse is the strongest single-target version, because its effect has no end date (the official ruling says the creature keeps +2/+2 and horsemanship until it leaves the battlefield). It’s also the most expensive card in this guide at $549.25. Riding Red Hare is the cheap one-turn version.

Punishing it, or using it

Two X spells read horsemanship in opposite directions. Borrowing the East Wind deals X damage to each creature with horsemanship and each player, so it works like a Hurricane aimed at horsemen instead of flyers. Rolling Earthquake deals X damage to each creature without horsemanship, so it’s the horsemanship deck’s own board wipe. Its 2020 ruling notes that in a normal game it just hits every creature, “even creatures depicted on horseback in their illustration”. Trip Wire destroys a creature with horsemanship. Broken Dam taps one or two creatures without horsemanship, which clears blockers for a non-horsemanship attack.

Ignoring it

Taoist Mystic and Zuo Ci, the Mocking Sage can’t be blocked by creatures with horsemanship. Both are green, and so are Borrowing the East Wind and Trip Wire. In Portal Three Kingdoms, green was the colour that answered horsemanship rather than used it: it has 22 creatures and only one horseman.

How to beat horsemanship

Horsemanship stops blockers, not anything else. If a horsemanship deck is beating you:

• Kill or bounce Sun Quan. Most horsemanship decks are Sun Quan decks, and without it the team is ordinary creatures. Sun Quan has no protection of its own, which is why the deck below plays Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves.
• Stop attacks instead of blocking them. Propaganda, Ghostly Prison, fog effects and mass bounce like Aetherize and Aetherspouts all ignore evasion.
• Get your own horsemanship. Herald of Hoofbeats in a Knight deck can block, and so can anything you control while you have a Sun Quan out.
• Board wipes. Horsemen are small. The average power/toughness of the 28 is under 3 / 3.

Horsemanship commanders, ranked by real decks

All 14 legendary horsemanship creatures can be your commander, and so can Sun Quan and Zuo Ci, for 16 in total. Here’s how many Commander decks each one leads on EDHREC.

Sun Quan leads 1,691 of the 2,922 decks led by these 16 commanders, which is 57.9%. It appears in 14,711 decks in total. Xiahou Dun is a distant second with 308. It’s a mono-black recursion engine: sacrifice it before attackers to return any black card from your graveyard to your hand. Lu Xun, Scholar General is the cheapest real commander option at $0.30. It’s a 1/3 for {2}{U}{U} that draws a card whenever it deals damage to an opponent.

One legend refers to two others. Liu Bei, Lord of Shu gets +2/+2 while you control Guan Yu, Sainted Warrior or Zhang Fei, Fierce Warrior. All three are white, so a Liu Bei deck can play both.

How much does horsemanship cost? The priciest cards

Buying every horsemanship creature at its cheapest normal printing costs $1,456.93. Only 12 of the 28 cost less than $10. These are the ten most expensive cards that mention horsemanship:

All ten have had only one regular paper printing, in Portal Three Kingdoms. The cheapest horsemanship creatures are Lu Xun ($0.30), Wu Elite Cavalry ($2.18) and Wei Elite Companions ($2.97). Prices change quickly; check current ones on our card pricing tool before you buy.

Horsemanship legality in every format

No horsemanship card has ever been legal in Standard, Pioneer or Modern, and none is on MTG Arena. Commander, Legacy and Vintage allow all 28 creatures. Pauper allows the 10 commons: Shu Cavalry, Shu Elite Companions, Shu General, Wei Elite Companions, Wei Scout, Wei Strike Force, Wu Elite Cavalry, Wu Light Cavalry, Wu Scout and Yellow Scarves Cavalry. Merry-Go-Round is the one card in this guide Scryfall lists as not legal in Legacy and Vintage; it’s an Unfinity Attraction.

Budget Sun Quan Commander deck ($80.35)

Sun Quan is the only card that turns horsemanship into a deck. Once it’s on the battlefield, every creature you control is effectively unblockable, so the plan is simple: put lots of creatures on the board, protect Sun Quan, and draw a card every time something connects. This list is mono-blue, 100 cards with 36 lands, and every card was checked against Scryfall for legality and colour identity. The price is the cheapest normal printing of each card, as of 3 October 2026.

How the deck works

• Ninjas. Ninjutsu needs an unblocked attacker. With Sun Quan out, every attacker is unblocked, so Ninja of the Deep Hours, Moon-Circuit Hacker, Mistblade Shinobi, Moonblade Shinobi, Prosperous Thief, Covert Technician, Thousand-Faced Shadow and Mist-Syndicate Naga always have a target. See our ninjutsu guide for the timing.
• Combat-damage draw. Coastal Piracy, Reconnaissance Mission and Bident of Thassa each draw a card for every creature that hits an opponent. With six unblockable creatures, each of them is six cards a turn.
• Before Sun Quan. It costs six mana, so the early turns rely on cheap flyers (Spectral Sailor, Faerie Seer, Pestermite), Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive (creatures with power or toughness 1 or less can’t be blocked) and Rogue’s Passage.
• Protection. Swiftfoot Boots, Lightning Greaves, Siren Stormtamer and six counterspells. Aetherize and Aetherspouts stop the counterattack while your creatures are tapped.

The ten most expensive cards make up 60% of the cost:

To upgrade, add Cyclonic Rift, Rhystic Study and Propaganda; EDHREC lists all three among Sun Quan’s most-played cards. You can paste the list into our budget swaps tool to find cheaper versions, run it through the deck analyzer, or browse community decks for other blue builds. For more creature options see our best blue creatures list, and for other cheap leaders, our best budget commanders. New to the format? Start with our step-by-step Commander deck guide.

Horsemanship FAQ

What does horsemanship do in Magic: The Gathering?

A creature with horsemanship can’t be blocked except by creatures with horsemanship (rule 702.31b). It can still block normally.

Can flying creatures block horsemanship?

No. Flying and reach don’t interact with horsemanship. Only a creature with horsemanship can block a creature with horsemanship.

Can a horsemanship creature block a flyer?

Only if it also has flying or reach. Horsemanship doesn’t help it block.

What’s the difference between horsemanship and shadow?

Both can only be blocked by creatures with the same keyword. Shadow creatures also can’t block creatures without shadow; horsemanship creatures can block anything. Horsemanship has 28 possible blockers in paper Magic and shadow has 42.

How many creatures have horsemanship?

28. Twenty-seven are from Portal Three Kingdoms (1999) and one, Herald of Hoofbeats, is from March of the Machine Commander (2023). Thirty-nine cards mention horsemanship in total.

What is the best horsemanship commander?

Sun Quan, Lord of Wu. It gives all your creatures horsemanship and leads 1,691 decks on EDHREC, 58% of all decks led by a horsemanship commander. Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed is second with 308.

Why are horsemanship cards so expensive?

Almost all of them were printed once, in Portal Three Kingdoms, a 1999 set with a small print run that wasn’t sold in North America. Seven of the 28 creatures cost more than $100. They aren’t on the Reserved List, so they could be reprinted.

Is horsemanship legal in Modern or Pauper?

Not in Modern, Pioneer or Standard. Pauper allows 10 horsemanship commons. Commander, Legacy and Vintage allow all 28.

Is there horsemanship on MTG Arena?

No. No horsemanship card is legal in Historic, Timeless or Brawl.

Will horsemanship come back?

Probably only in supplemental products. Mark Rosewater rated it 8 on the Storm Scale in 2014, and the three cards printed since 1999 came from a Commander deck, an Un-set and the Doctor Who set.