Foundations: The 5 Best Blue Cards

Foundations Helps Round Out Different Strategies

Generic blue cards see a lot of use, and clearly, Foundations planned for that. Because my top five basically consists of generally useful spells for a large variety of decks. These don’t feel as flashy as the white cards—nor are there any haymakers. They’re just good cards. Fun cards. Let’s get into them.

Drake Hatcher

Too many good stats, and too many fun abilities, all in one package. I am a huge fan of vigilance and prowess on a creature. You can pull so many tricks by casting instants at different times. And that was, honestly, originally, all I really saw in this card. But then I read those other abilities more closely. It doesn’t take three hits to start putting out drakes. It’s based on how much damage you deal with Drake Hatcher. In a spell-based deck, you could do that every turn. And that’s a lot for a two-mana creature.

Kaito, Cunning Infiltrator

This is a really good planeswalker. Like, it just keeps getting better the more I read it. That static ability makes its low starting loyalty way easier to mitigate, and all of its abilities are useful. Unblockable by itself isn’t that impressive, but you’ll also trigger that static ability and get some card filtering on top of that. The second ability gives you something to attack with and works well in ninja builds. And the third ability triggers when anyone plays a spell. That’s amazing. And, though this article is for the Standard format, that emblem is even better in Commander.

Mystical Teachings

A tutor spell that’s going to be available to any blue deck for a really long time has far-reaching implications. Like I said in the last Foundations article, this list is based on cards I see becoming relevant often, and this will become relevant often.

Opt

Nothing too special about Opt. It’s just a good, cheap, utility card that I am happy is always around. It helps enable spell decks; it goes in control lists. It’s not too powerful, but it is worth playing.

Tolarian Terror

Spell-based decks are a ton of fun to play, but you always need a payoff. And this card is that payoff. It’s not busted or anything—the ward cost isn’t that high. But it does enable these fun moments where you can play multiple copies on the same turn. I think this card being in Foundations might honestly keep some version of Izzet or Dimir control/tempo/aggro as a fringe option through the entire lifecycle. It’s just powerful enough to always make it tempting.

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And that’s the blue Foundation cards done. As I said in the previous article, this set is here for the long term, so we’ll be returning to these lists off and on through the rest of the year. Next week, we’ll do the black cards. See you then!

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