Image courtesy of Scryfall.com
Statistical Power of Helping Hand vs Similar Cards
In the white toolbox for graveyard shenanigans, Helping Hand is a precise instrument with a quiet, under-the-radar sway. For a single white mana, you get a targeted revival that can swing the tempo of a game when your graveyard is populated with the right targets. It’s not a flashy game-ender, but it shines in the right shells—white-centric strategies that lean on value from the graveyard and value from clever timing. 🧙♂️🔥
Card data at a glance
- Name: Helping Hand
- Mana cost: {W}
- Type: Sorcery
- Rarity: Uncommon
- Set: The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (lci)
- Text: Return target creature card with mana value 3 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped.
- Flavor: Itzmin walked away from the collapse with a new friend—and an enduring fear of heights.
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan brings a flavor of ruins, exploration, and unexpected rescue missions to the table. Helping Hand, illustrated by Aldo Domínguez, embodies that balance between boldness and restraint: you pay a single white mana, and you are rewarded with a creature returning to play, albeit tapped. That tapping matters—it’s a moment of patience, a setup for the next few turns, and a reminder that tempo is often the missing gear in a grindy graveyard plan. 🎨
How it stacks up against similar tools
When we talk about “similar cards,” the conversation typically centers on other graveyard-to-battlefield effects, especially those that white or multicolor decks lean on for resilience. Helping Hand distinguishes itself by a few key traits:
- One mana for a late-game recast can be a boon when you’re trying to stabilize or squeeze out incremental advantage. Compare that to harder-to-cast or more expensive reanimation options.
- By limiting the returnable creature to mana value 3 or less, it nudges you toward a certain class of creatures—cheap bodies with immediate, often on-curve impact. That constraint also reduces the risk of pulling a big bomb that takes three turns to matter.
- The spell is a spell, not an instant, and it comes in your main phase. You’re committing to the play and are more vulnerable to removal or a hostile tempo swing unless you’ve built around protection or enough inevitability in the deck.
In terms of raw power, Helping Hand is strongest in decks that are already massaging the graveyard—think white builds that play a steady stream of small bodies, or strategies that value repeated re-entries from the yard rather than one big cascade. It isn’t a universal “win more” button; it’s a focused tool that can tilt the odds when the odds need a nudge. 🧭
A practical lens: five scenarios where Helping Hand shines
- Small, value-driven creatures in your graveyard are plentiful; returning one taps into a subsequent ETB or a persistent loop you’ve crafted. The single-mana investment is often worth it when you’re pressuring through incremental advantage.
- You’re building a growth-or-die plan around recurring threats; the ability to bring back a 1–3 CMC creature repeatedly over the course of a game can outpace an opponent who’s trying to outdraw you.
- Your deck leverages ETB triggers on enter-the-battlefield events, where a tapped entry still provides value (either immediately or on the following turn).
- Graveyard synergies exist that don’t require immediate re-use—e.g., effects that care about creatures leaving or entering the graveyard, thereby improving your long-game consistency.
- You’re playing a low-curve, attrition-minded white or esper shell that wants a reliable way to re-use a handful of persistently useful creatures.
From a statistical vantage point, the “power” of Helping Hand is proportional to: - the density of 1–3 CMC creatures in your graveyard, - the frequency with which you can cast the spell in a typical game state, - and how often the returned creature provides on-curve orETB-based value before it’s removed or recurs later. In math terms, the expected value scales with the product of these factors, tempered by the fact that the creature returns tapped and may not immediately contribute combat punch. Still, there’s a reliability to a single white mana that can’t be discounted in grindy matches. 🔎
Flavor, art, and collector’s note
The flavor text about Itzmin’s trek into Ixalan’s underworld adds a human touch to a card that’s otherwise pragmatic in its function. The art by Aldo Domínguez carries the compact elegance of Ixalan’s ruins, with a sense of motion that mirrors the card’s tempo-driven potential. For collectors, Helping Hand sits in the uncommon slot with modest market movement, a nice niche for players who value both function and flavor. In digital and physical formats, the card’s 1-CMC investment with a straight-line effect makes it a lightweight addition to the white mage’s toolbox, even if it rarely steals the show outright. 💎
Altogether, Helping Hand is a thoughtfully limited but genuinely useful spell for decks that lean into graveyard resilience and small-creature repetition. It rewards you not with a flashy spike, but with a dependable, repeatable engine—one that quietly compounds value across multiple turns. For players chasing consistency and clean lines of play, it’s a tiny but meaningful nudge in the right direction. ⚔️
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Helping Hand
Return target creature card with mana value 3 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped.
ID: b8aa7126-5df3-42dd-b4a3-0d0ea59eeebd
Oracle ID: 170a5dbc-6a43-4715-9501-178b1eb7b08c
Multiverse IDs: 636708
TCGPlayer ID: 525085
Cardmarket ID: 743008
Colors: W
Color Identity: W
Keywords:
Rarity: Uncommon
Released: 2023-11-17
Artist: Aldo Domínguez
Frame: 2015
Border: black
EDHRec Rank: 6423
Penny Rank: 1945
Set: The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (lci)
Collector #: 17
Legalities
- Standard — legal
- Future — legal
- Historic — legal
- Timeless — legal
- Gladiator — legal
- Pioneer — legal
- Modern — legal
- Legacy — legal
- Pauper — not_legal
- Vintage — legal
- Penny — not_legal
- Commander — legal
- Oathbreaker — legal
- Standardbrawl — legal
- Brawl — legal
- Alchemy — not_legal
- Paupercommander — not_legal
- Duel — legal
- Oldschool — not_legal
- Premodern — not_legal
- Predh — not_legal
Prices
- USD: 0.24
- USD_FOIL: 0.34
- EUR: 0.26
- EUR_FOIL: 0.51
- TIX: 0.03
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