Old MTG card prices are confusing, to say the least. Thanks to supply issues on strong older cards, primarily caused by the Reserved List, many of Magic’s iconic cards are worth thousands of dollars, while old chaff is just worth pennies. There is, however, the odd exception, like Portal Three Kingdoms’ Riding the Dilu Horse. Despite this card being rather terrible and not on the Reserved List, players are baffled that this mediocre combat trick is going for $500.
MTG Riding the Dilu Horse
For three mana, Riding the Dilu Horse is under rate. The stat buff is something a one-mana card can do nowadays, which means most of the value of this card comes from Horsemanship. This will essentially make your creature unblockable, so long as your opponent isn’t also using Horsemanship. Making things worse, this is a Sorcery, which makes it impossible to save your creature in combat with Riding the Dilu Horse.
The one redeeming grace of Riding the Dilu Horse, however, is an extremely bizarre one. Thanks to the lack of an end-of-turn clause, the buffs that this card grants are permanent. Sorceries giving a permanent buff like this are basically unheard of in Magic’s current environment.
Thanks to granting permanent Horsemanship, Riding the Dilu Horse has its use cases. Amarant Coral can use this to force a massive attack through enemy blockers, taking out the entire table in one hit. Similarly, any Commander with a nasty combat damage trigger, from Bumi, Unleashed, to Cadira, Caller of the Small, can get meaningful value out of this $500 card.
All of that said, these Commanders can get the same amount of value out of cards that go for just $0.35. Rogue’s Passage can make all of your Commanders unblockable turn after turn, and comes stamped onto a utility land. Aqueous Form also makes a desired creature unblockable until it falls off, offering repeatable card selection each time it attacks. There are plenty of other options that can accomplish the same thing on a budget, making Riding the Dilu Horse a really bad investment.
Temporary Scarcity
Despite being a mediocre card by today’s standards, Riding the Dilu Horse is currently the second most expensive card in Portal Three Kingdoms behind the Commander super staple Imperial Seal.
This anomaly is, in part, due to a new wave of reprints. Many of Portal Three Kingdom’s best cards have been reprinted in recent sets, increasing the supply for them exponentially. Warrior’s Oath, for example, retailed for $500 before it was eventually reprinted in Double Masters 2022. Now, the Portal Three Kingdoms variant is worth around $150, while the reprinted variant goes for just $8.
Thanks to these much-needed reprints, many of Portal Three Kingdoms’ best cards are now surprisingly affordable. This has created a rather bizarre situation where many of the set’s rare cards that aren’t worth reprinting are now exorbitantly expensive. Zodiac Dragon, and Dong Zhou, the Tyrant, are all worth hundreds of dollars, despite being unplayable from a power level perspective.
This could mean that Portal Three Kingdoms’ weaker chase cards end up remaining some of the most expensive ones in the set. Unlike the Portal Three Kingdoms cards that have seen reprints, these cards are so bad that no one would use them. That said, while the likes of Zodiac Dragon is absolutely irredeemable, Riding the Dilu Horse could actually see a little play if made more widely available, putting the sorcery in an awkward spot.
Reprint Potential
Thanks to granting a permanent buff, Riding the Dilu Horse could be strong enough to merit a reprint eventually, which makes buying this card an even worse idea. Whether it appears in a Secret Lair or in the unlikely return of MTG Masters sets, a Riding the Dilu Horse reprint would absolutely tank its secondary market value.
That said, while a reprint of this card is certainly on the table, many MTG players expect that Riding the Dilu Horse will never truly see a reprint. A sorcery that grants a permanent effect doesn’t play well with today’s rule baggage, and can be a pain to properly track. This could be fixed by adding a suggested errata that makes the card create a Horsemanship Counter, but that would make Riding the Dilu Horse exponentially stronger.
Either way, while this effect is unique and interesting, Riding the Dilu Horse is certainly not worth the $500 price tag. If you want this effect that badly, many other enchantments and utility lands will do the trick.
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