It is sometimes difficult to see the value of a card if you do not compare it to other cards and recognize that while it may appear different it is actually far more similar than it might seem. There are many examples of this, cards that let you play cards of the top of your deck are one of the clear ones because since they don't say draw a card it is easy to miss that they are letting you do so.

Cloud key is a rare artifact from the future sight expansion set of magic the gathering. It costs three colorless mana to put into play and reads "As Cloud Key enters the battlefield, choose artifact, creature, enchantment, instant, or sorcery.

Spells you cast of the chosen type cost one colorless mana less to cast.

The fact is that people have been happily paying three mana for artifacts which tap for mana for years and in many of the decks these artifacts are almost always used to pay for one specific type of spell, and yet, with the cloud key, that lets you pay one less mana for those same spells the lift their nose.

The question this leads me to is if the second part of this card read, tap, add one colorless mana to your mana pool use this only to pay for the chosen type. When a card of the chosen type comes into play untap cloud key," would they have the same reaction or would they then see that what this really is is a mana producing artifact. Because the wording that I have described, except for the tapping and untapping of the artifact is the exact same effect.

Now that we have the use of this card a bit more clear the question is how best to use this versatile card.

One of the best ways is in the artifact decks that on occasion people like to make. The reason for this is two fold, first since there are no colors in artifacts you can reduce the cost to 0 with enough keys, the second is that since the artifact is itself a key then each key that you put out reduces the cost of the next key. Combine this with affinity and you've got a winner.

But in a more realistic deck it makes most sense for creatures, allowing you to play multiple creatures on earlier turns, though if you are only playing one must artifacts that produce mana will be the same.

This is a mid level card not a great one, but in general I think it is is better than many people think.

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