Often I get a wild idea for a deck, throw it together, start tuning it, and oh yes—it’s flowing like oil—but what have I wrought? I step back and realize I designed an engine that does nothing efficiently. Beautifully.
Today’s edition of Card Selection celebrates two of the usual suspects in those decks, and indeed, in all my decks.
Manamorphose
How can you look at Manamorphose and not love it? It costs 2 mana and a card, and it gives you 2 mana and a card. Elegantly undoing that which it did. But what use is an effect that leaves you back where you started?
Manamorphose’s effect, or perhaps side-effect, is that it fixes colors, which comes up often enough that doing it for “free” feels like getting one over on fate. Since it has only one colored mana pip, a hybrid symbol, it’s easy to include in many decks that could use fixing. Perfect. As an instant, it only fixes for the moment; not as strong as a repeatable effect on a permanent. But, color fixing isn’t the only reason to include this card.
It also counts as a cast spell and a drawn card, two triggers I love to design around as an Izzet aficionado. And it does all of this at instant speed. If you don’t need the mana fixing nor the triggers urgently, you can always hold it until the end of your opponent’s turn, using its self-replacement property to draw the next card. It’s a quasi-cycle effect—better since everything it does is still done when you “cycle” it. But more than that, it effectively thins out your deck. How much does that matter? I don’t know, I’m not good at mathemagics, but as an appreciator of efficiency, even the thought of it sparks joy.
Frantic Search
Frantic Search is honesty in advertising; you are allowed to grab more cards, but at the expense of yeeting some too. It’s thematically appropriate when you need to delve into your pile of spells for that little bit of cardboard you need most. But its name is only the beginning of its charms.
It’s blue, and an instant, so chances are already high I’m going to like it. But it’s also sort of a blue Manamorphose. Or is Manamorphose a Gruul Frantic Search (the latter card having seen print first)? You pay 3 and untap 3, and you draw 2 and discard 2. Symmetrical silliness.
It’s particularly useful when—in addition to drawing (which is almost always useful)—discarding is meaningful, for example, when your deck can recur things from your graveyard. Over the years the game has accumulated many mechanics for reusing cards that have landed in that zone, so Frantic Search keeps getting better.
Another lovable interaction with Frantic Search is untapping lands other than the ones used to pay for it, including those that came into play tapped the same turn. That sort of sleight of hand is always a minor thrill; look how smart I am.
End step
These two cards are perfect fits for some decks, but I love them so much you’ll catch me trying to sneak them into anything I’m building. One of their most obvious use cases is as a storm count enabler. I’ve sometimes toyed with building a storm deck, but I never seem to get it working right, so I don’t buy the cards. Maybe one day!
