On MTGSalvation’s cube forum, there’s discussion on cards in commons cubes. They had already gone through talking about blue cards, but someone mentioned the forgotten Soratami Cloudskater.
“Looks terrible” I initially thought. “A looter that costs me land drops? Eww, no.”
But much like with Wormfang Drake, sometimes, looking at cards literally can prevent you from truly appreciating a card’s value. lolwut?
Remember when I said that Wormfang Drake wasn’t really a creature, but an totem-esque aura that turns a creature into a 3/4 flier? How much better, in your eyes, did the card get? Suddenly it wasn’t an awkward creature, it was a way to upgrade existing creatures and to recycle ETB triggers.
So it was with Soratami Cloudskater. You see, it’s not actually a bad looter. Using it like you would use a looter is a terrible idea, especially for blue decks that value their land drops. You can pretty easily EOT loot or main-phase loot if you’re digging for an answer, but the skater? Not so much.
So what is it? Quitequieter made this statement on MTGS and suddenly, the skater got to be a lot better: It essentially turns your lands into Horizon Canopys. Think about it for a minute.
…weird, isn’t it? Horizon Canopy essentially ties up 2 of your mana to draw a card, effectively cycling the land away.
I mean, you can pitch other things to it if you really want to, but that’s not likely to happen unless you’re packing an Exhume in your deck. The ability to do it multiple times is also really nice and shouldn’t be overlooked.
I’m going to try to find some room for it in my commons cube as it should be a good addition to it.
Sometimes breakthroughs come about by thinking about things in a different way and thinking of things outside of preconceived perceptions definitely can help get a new view of things – think of the story of Archimedes and the Golden Crown. Remember when everyone just thought of Sphinx of Jwar Isle as a joke thinking “Lol you can look at the top card at any time like now… or now! omg hilarious!” while completely ignoring the fact that it’s a 4UU 5/5 flying creature with shroud? People were looking at the card in the wrong way, focusing on the wrong elements of the card. I fell for that too, until (broken record skip) someone said “Isn’t it essentially a modern Morphling?” I mean, sure, there are differences, like you can’t equip Sphinx and you can’t make it a 5/X with damage on the stack, but for the most part, it plays quite similarly to Morphling did back in the day. After that, I had a similar breakthrough of “Oh wow… this card is good!” and thankfully, I had pre-ordered a foil before the rest of the MTG community caught wind of the Sphinx’s power.
Don’t be so quick to mentally file cards away into the mental “obv junk” folder, because sometimes, you just might not be looking at the card in the right way.
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