Top Cards That Boost Balance: White Staples and Synergy

In TCG ·

Balance card art by Kev Walker, Eternal Masters edition

Image courtesy of Scryfall.com

Boosting Balance: White Staples and Synergy Across Formats

White in Magic has long thrived on shared punitive elegance: a disciplined tempo, clean answers, and the ability to reset the board with surgical precision. Balance, a mythic rarity from Eternal Masters, is the punchline to that philosophy. For fans who relish the idea of a level playing field—then pushing the envelope when an opponent overextends—this card feels like a wink from the design team: a single spell that can swap win conditions in an instant 🧙‍♂️🔥💎.

With a cost of {1}{W}, Balance is affordable to cast in a wide array of white-focused shells. Its effect is stark and symmetric: each player chooses a number of lands they control equal to the player who has the fewest lands, then sacrifices the rest. The same process applies to players’ hands and their creatures. In practical terms, you’re not just pruning lands—you’re forcing a housekeeping moment for everyone at the table, then trimming options by forcing discards and creature sacrifices. The result is rarely a clean, peaceful exchange; it’s a jolt that rewards well-timed sequencing and a clear sense of what you’re willing to give up to win 🧙‍♂️⚔️.

“Balance” reads as a fair spell that turns the clock back on a chaotic board state, but the true art lies in how you steer the outcome to your advantage while your opponents groan about their lost cards and creatures.

In Eternal Masters, Balance appears as a beautifully illustrated reminder of the card's enduring legacy. Kev Walker’s art captures a moment of equilibrium dawning in a field of tension, a perfect visual echo for a spell that seeks to restore balance by removing excess advantage. The card’s white mana symbol sits beside a stern reminder that, sometimes, the best offense is a well-timed defense that forces everyone to reassess what they were about to do next 🧭🎨.

Strategic angles that sing with Balance

  • Level the playing field, then push your own plan: If you can keep your board presence lean while your opponent overextends, Balance can whittle away at their threats while you preserve essential responses. This is where white’s resilience—sweeping removal, timely counters, and evasive creature options—becomes a powerful complement to the spell’s board-state reset 🧙‍♂️.
  • Combo-lite and soft-lock potential: Balance shines in decks that leverage a few decisive payoffs with a safety net of disruption. When your plan is to deploy a handful of efficient threats and rely on Balance to force awkward decisions on the other side, you get a potent swing that can turn the tide in a single moment.
  • Multiplayer dynamics matter: In formats with multiple opponents, Balance can create a temporary stalemate that you can exploit. The more players, the more variables, and the more opportunities to leverage Balance’s equalizing effect to swing a group-game in your favor—or to hem in a runaway player.
  • White synergy targets: Pair Balance with resilient, low-cost white threats, recursion effects, or token-generation that survives post-Balance turns. These elements help you rebuild a board quickly when the dust settles, making the spell feel less like a one-shot and more like a strategic pivot 🧙‍♂️🎲.

From a format perspective, Balance has a storied history in Legacy and Vintage as a crowd-pleasing disruptor. Its mass-saying nature can derail heavy mana builds and force a re-evaluation of threats, which is exactly what a well-timed white control shell loves to do. The Eternal Masters print preserves the iconic feel while offering a modern print with that sought-after mythic rarity, appealing to collectors who relish both nostalgia and function in one card in hand.

Lore, art, and the collector's lens

The lore around Balance isn’t about a grand duel of mighty wables; it’s about the discipline of equalization—the idea that excess must be trimmed to preserve a fair contest. Kev Walker’s art reinforces that theme, with a composition that hints at the scales of justice tipping toward equilibrium. This is a card you can show off in a casual setting and still feel the thrill of a carefully engineered play that turns a board state from potential chaos into a measured plan 🧙‍♂️💎.

As a reprint in Eternal Masters, Balance has enjoyed continued visibility in the market. Its rarity as mythic and the availability of both foil and nonfoil versions keep it accessible, while the pricing around a few dollars for non-foil copies and a modest premium for foils reflects its iconic status without locking out newer players from experiencing the moment of balance for themselves. If you’re chasing the fully polished experience, the EMA printing remains a worthy centerpiece for any white-control collection.

Balancing the shopping list with a nod to today's world

In a broader sense, Balance is a reminder of how MTG design often rewards thoughtful risk-taking and precision. The card invites you to weigh tempo against inevitability, to accept some losses in order to lay the groundwork for a decisive next turn. It’s a quintessentially MTG moment: you plan for the long game, your opponent improvises, and the board shocks you with a quiet, inevitable change. That’s the magic of white weight in a single, elegant spell 🧙‍♂️⚔️.

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Balance

Balance

{1}{W}
Sorcery

Each player chooses a number of lands they control equal to the number of lands controlled by the player who controls the fewest, then sacrifices the rest. Players discard cards and sacrifice creatures the same way.

ID: ce648aa3-098b-4af0-a433-fd290bc85904

Oracle ID: 17fa98cd-ed8f-483f-9525-7e989a82ebb2

Multiverse IDs: 413544

TCGPlayer ID: 118420

Cardmarket ID: 290186

Colors: W

Color Identity: W

Keywords:

Rarity: Mythic

Released: 2016-06-10

Artist: Kev Walker

Frame: 2015

Border: black

Set: Eternal Masters (ema)

Collector #: 2

Legalities

  • Standard — not_legal
  • Future — not_legal
  • Historic — not_legal
  • Timeless — not_legal
  • Gladiator — not_legal
  • Pioneer — not_legal
  • Modern — not_legal
  • Legacy — banned
  • Pauper — not_legal
  • Vintage — restricted
  • Penny — not_legal
  • Commander — banned
  • Oathbreaker — banned
  • Standardbrawl — not_legal
  • Brawl — not_legal
  • Alchemy — not_legal
  • Paupercommander — not_legal
  • Duel — banned
  • Oldschool — not_legal
  • Premodern — banned
  • Predh — banned

Prices

  • USD: 2.13
  • USD_FOIL: 6.97
  • EUR: 2.04
  • EUR_FOIL: 5.23
  • TIX: 0.27
Last updated: 2025-12-11