by Elton Gahr

Created on: October 26, 2009

There are two things that blue is better at than any other color, that is counter spells and drawing cards, but sometimes those abilities do not come entirely in the way that you might expect and the tribe that has found those odd ways to gain advantage are the wizards, and one of the those with a better ability is the Sigil Tracer.

Sigil Tracer is a rare merfolk wizard from the morningtide expansion set of magic the gathering. A 2/2 creature it costs two blue mana and one colorless mana and has an ability that costs one blue one colorless and reads "Tap two untapped Wizards you control: Copy target instant or sorcery spell. You may choose new targets for the copy."

This is a reasonably powerful ability when in card form but not overly important. This is because when you use a card you don't really gain anything except the opportunity to have spell copies. The same is not true of this spell and while having to tap two lands and another wizard isn't nothing there are ways to make this more valuable rather than less.

One of the major ways to gain value from this is to use wizards that you would typically tap for abilities rather than to attack. This means that you can decide if the spell you want to copy is more valuable than their ability. A Prodigal sorcerer for example taps for one mana, you would typically want to use this ability at the end, so if the opponent casts a lightning bolt you could copy it and do three damage rather than one, and this is of course a minor spell larger spells would make for a much larger effect.

Another thing of value is that there are a couple wizard with untap abilities. Most of these abilities are not huge but the desire to tap them helps considerably in limiting the cost of the Sigil Tracer, and in addition if you use the untap ability you can then tap the wizard again for the sigil tracer ability if you desire.

Another powerful way to use this is against other blue decks. For two mana, this can become an extra counter spell, but not just any counter spell, as an ability their counters will not work on it, this makes for excellent trump against a wizard who uses a considerable number of counterspell. Also valuable are spells that let you draw. Using a card to draw a single card is mildly useful, but not using any cards to do so is far more useful.

Overall in a wizard deck this has as many options as there are sorceries and instants and the cost is not all that high.

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