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It is surprising how often there are hidden abilities on cards that players don't think about when they first look at them. There are the side effects like the fact that you can look at your opponent's hand when you play certain discard cards or the bluffing benefits of giant growth. And on rare occasion the side effect of a card is one that is actually better than the main point of the card and when this happens you have the potential of creating a very underrated card.

Shapeshifter's Marrow is a rare enchantment from the future sight expansion set of magic the gathering. This card costs two blue and two colorless and reads "At the beginning of each opponent's upkeep, that player reveals the top card of his or her library. If it's a creature card, the player puts the card into his or her graveyard and Shapeshifter's Marrow becomes a copy of that card. (If it does, it loses this ability.)""

At first glance it is clear that this is simply a very random clone that costs one less mana, and as that creature it isn't all that good. Much of the time it is going to be nothing and much of the rest it is going to be small creatures that you really don't care about. And so it is a good thing that that isn't really what this card is.

What this card really is is an odd form of blue creature removal. Read the card again and you will see what I mean. At the beginning of each turn you look at the top card of your opponent's library. If it is a creature put it into the graveyard, otherwise it remains on top of their deck. This means that the odds of them drawing a creature just went down considerably because they only way they are going to ever get a creature is if they have two of them in a row and for the blue mage who often has a great deal of trouble with the removal of creatures this is an advantage. The disadvantage is that Shapeshifter's marrow is a bit easier to kill than the typical enchantment because it becomes a creature that can be killed with various creature removal but backing this up with some counter spells and you can make a creature race go far better for you, or simply have a way to make it even harder for your opponent to kill you before you deck him.

Learn more about this author, Elton Gahr.
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