I might have posted about this card before as well, but I feel inclined to. That card looks very unassuming and people don't pick it up hastily, but it overperforms basically every single time it hits the battlefield in my cube's matches. Yet it is in only 0.45% percent of cobra's cubes. It' no max power card for sure, but it deserves more play than just in Kamigawa block cubes. I'll explain you why.
A 1/1 flier is probably not quite worth a card itself, and you don't want to pay two mana for it. That's what people see. And then they read the activation cost of two and bouncing a land and then they pass her to me. Or my girlfriend, who also started to play this. And we are happy. Why? Well, first this cards ability basically is:
: Look at the top card of your library, then chose one:
- sacrifice a land, if you do draw a card.
- draw a card, then discard a card. Untap a land if you didn't play a land this turn.
That's a surprisingly
strong mana sink. I try to design my cube with a high card flow and mana sinks aren't rare either, but you'll quickly find yourself wanting to activate this almost every turn. Sometimes more often. And in a format with a low overall curve, saccing a few lands for cards isn't half bad either.
It doesn't tap, so it' very flexible and turn in the late game where one activates her three times will feel explicitly strong.
Actually, the ability is even better than what I've written there, because it also allows you trigger
landfall consistenly every turn. That costs you just
one mana effectively, as you can replay the first bounced land, and you get a loot with it! Also, you can bounce a specific land to get double pips of a color as another corner case where this card has been sweet. And even when you bounce a land for landfall, you get to
draw first and can then decide if you want to replay that land or keep all the other cards you're holding.
As the first activation basically just costs one mana, once you're not holding lands, it's also pretty effective to get either lands or anything else into your
graveyard. Dredge loves her, Madness and Reanimator can all play here, although you don't want her when you need the discard on turn two or three.
Also, her 1/1 body for two deosn't seem to bad. It sits right at that spot where nobody wants to kill her even when they should. And stuff like
Pacifism doesn't even do much. That being said, it's still a cheap flier, so she knows how to kill someone with a
Bonesplitter (or other good
equipment) and she's friends with all the
Ninjas you might be cubing.
I was highly skeptical when I added her a few years back. At this day, I almost
never cut her from any blue deck I draft. Tempo decks like her for equip/ninjutsu purposes and because those decks also like to reload and never topdeck lands in the midgame. Slower madness decks, dredge and landfall love her for the synergies. And in control, she's a cheap draw engine you can deploy while holding counterspells, waiting for her to take over the late game with card advantage.
I know she's not
Jace, Vrynn's Prodigy. But damn, she's closer than you might think. So if you'd consider your cube to be mid- or lower-powered, try her.
Just do it. Ravnic out.
