The Top 10 Blue Cards From Kaldheim For Constructed

Kaldheim has a lot of bangers, and every day this week I’m breaking down the Top 10 cards of a color. Today’s focus is on the one true color of Magic. You can check out white here.

10. Alrund’s Epiphany

Okay, this one is kind of speculative, but what fun is there in just talking about Ravenform or Bind the Monster being niche removal options that you might want for specific decks’ sideboards?

Alrund’s Epiphany is a Time Warp variant that also gives us some extra material to immediately attack with on the extra turn.

From a mana efficiency standpoint, the foretell mode is better and should be the primary plan. Costing one less at the cost of two early isn’t actually all that great, but when you get two 1/1 flyers thrown in, that generally is gonna be the side that’s a better deal if you can afford it. There are going to be spots where you have need to cast the Epiphany you drew this turn and so can’t afford to foretell it, but when you have the option, that’s Plan A.

The key to taking advantage of extra turns is to make the various parts of the turn more valuable.

Whether drawing extra cards during your draw step, getting more mana from your untap step, or activating abilities of cards that can only be used once “per turn,” abusing extra turns is about making your turns as valuable as possible.

Of course, there’s also just having creatures to attack with. An extra turn means an extra attack, which can be a ton of extra damage (and in the case of Elder Gargaroth, some value for attacking that then makes the next turn even more valuable).

Tempo plays become even more valuable when you’re taking extra turns, since their effects get multiplied. Tangled Florahedron produces “two” mana instead of one, and Brazen Borrower keeps a permanent off the battlefield for two turns instead of one.

The idea here is to play like a creature-based ramp deck, just accumulating resources for making your turns worth progressively more, and then pick your spot and “go off.” Sometimes it’ll just take a single extra turn, but if you can take multiples, they can really stack up.

Plus, if you’re holding Epiphany when you untap with Teferi, it’s basically a Diamond hand that if you time it right and use the extra turn to ultimate Teferi, you kind of just blast off to the moon.

9. Orvar, the All-Form

Orvar, the All-Form might be just a meme, but there’s a lot of potential here. First of all, in Modern, you might take advantage of the All-Form being able to trigger off any permanent, not just creatures.

If you target your Mystic Sanctuary and make a copy of it, now you have an extra land plus you get to put a sorcery or instant back on top of your deck. What if that sorcery or instant lets you target Mystic Sanctuary again?

Thermal Flux lets you copy the land so you’ll be up a mana next turn, and when your turn is over, it draws you whatever you just put back. Boomerang keeps you even on mana but gives you another Sanctuary trigger now, plus another Sanctuary trigger for next turn (which could then get Boomerang back if you wanted, maybe alternating Time Warps and Boomerangs).

Cryptic Command is sort of another Time Warp, but it’s also a way to keep targeting your Mystic Sanctuary. While a single Cryptic Command and Mystic Sanctuary can potentially lock out opponents from ever attacking again, if you’ve got Orvar in the mix, you can also recast another spell as much as you want (even Time Warp).

It’s not like we’re limited to just land, of course. Snapcaster Mage and Spellseeker are some pretty nice cards to copy over and over with Orvar.

Spellseeker also opens up quite the toolbox for us, including such hits as Glamerdye and Hidden Strings.

Glamerdye doesn’t really accomplish anything, but it does have retrace and can target whatever we want, making it so that from now on, all of our lands can be two-mana “copy target permanent you control.”

Hidden Strings has some recursive potential itself, but can also be used to net mana or delay attacks. What’s more, it’s not unrealistic at all to get it ciphered on a Snapcaster Mage or Spellseeker and snowball that to take all the turns. Each time you attack with the Spellseeker, you can use Hidden Strings on the Mystic Sanctuary to get Time Warp back (!).

In Standard, I think we’re more likely to want to focus on targeting creatures, if only because the best cheap targeting spells are focused on targeting creatures.

Snakeskin Veil and Ranger’s Guile are the ones that jump out at me the most, giving us efficient ways to protect our combo in the first place.

Green actually offers more cheap targeting spells than we can realistically play, so we’ve definitely got options.

While copying Llanowar Visionary and Solemn Simulacrum is a lot of value to be sure, Voracious Greatshark is where the real fun is.

And by fun, of course, I mean for you, not your opponent who might never resolve another creature ever again.

The copying sequences in Standard are a lot chunkier and will generally get it over with quickly if they work, but they aren’t as likely to “go infinite” like Reflections of Littjara + Palinchron or anything.

An even more unusual approach that probably needs more work and might just work better in a format where Feather, the Redeemed is legal is Jeskai All-Form.

I mention Feather because of just how fantastically it synergizes with all cheap spells we’d want to use (though admittedly, it’s a really bad card to copy).

This list is going to need some work, but it is kind of cute that Orvar, the All-Form is a Knight, you know?

Right now, I’m not sure we’ve got enough juicy targets to copy yet, and it’s hard to fit it all, but maybe we can just flood the battlefield and make it really aggressive?

However, at that point, why are we even splashing for Orvar instead of just focusing on Shepherd of the Flock and Showdown of the Skalds?

8. Frost Augur

Frost Augur is the new Scrying Sheets, and how good it is at “drawing” a card is mostly just in deckbuilding. The easiest snow cards to get a lot of are lands, of course, but as we’ll see throughout the list today, blue has a lot of great snow spells (and it’s not like Frost Augur needs to be in a monocolor deck or anything).

They jammed so much support for snow in blue, it features most of the rest of the Top 10 list. With 38 snow cards, Frost Augur is a very powerful threat, but it’s hardly the only card draw engine.

7. Graven Lore

Graven Lore is more than just a Jace’s Ingenuity that can be found by Frost Augur.

With a full snow manabase, we’re talking about scry 5, and then a draw-three. That’s some serious Dig Through Time action, digging just as deep, but getting to keep three cards instead of two (!).

6. Icebreaker Kraken

Icebreaker Kraken is a deceptively powerful threat that’s actually quite undercosted if you’re playing all snow lands. It’s got such a powerful impact on the battlefield, it can be used as part of “big spell” combo decks (since it is a big spell), such as the following Tibalt’s Trickery combo list.

I don’t think this will be the primary way to play the card, however. It’s just such a flexible, durable, and efficient victory condition, I think its main use is going to be as the high-end for midrange snow decks. The mono-blue list above is one such example, but there’s no reason you have to stay one color.

Shimmerdrift Vale is kind of just another Evolving Wilds (since Evolving Wilds could go find whichever snow basic); however, it doesn’t require you to actually have the basic in your deck (or thin), and more importantly, it counts as a snow card itself, making it a hit for Frost Augur.

Icebreaker Kraken as a six-cost 8/8 that taps down their battlefield and can blink itself to safety is just incredible. What’s more, it can even get cheaper as the game progresses. Even just one more land and you can cast it for five while holding up the Saw It Coming you foretold earlier.

With four Bonecrusher Giants already in the mix, we might actually consider finding one more Giant we’re willing to play and making this a soft tribal deck by adding the next card on our countdown, Glimpse the Cosmos.

5. Glimpse the Cosmos

Glimpse the Cosmos is basically a Strategic Planning that puts ‘em on the bottom instead of in your graveyard. It’s three-fourths the dig power of Shimmer of Possibility.

In exchange for this small decrease in efficiency upfront, we get the ability to effectively flash it back for only a single mana. While the Giants in Standard aren’t even that well-suited to all working as a team or anything, you might not need many to make it worthwhile. It’s just so unreal to ever get to do, I could easily see playing it in a deck with just eight Giants.

In formats where Uro is legal, we’re all the way up. Maybe we end up playing more Giants, maybe we don’t, but the package of Bonecrusher Giant, Uro, and Glimpse is going straight into Pioneer and Modern.

In Standard, trying to make a dedicated Giants deck is awkward. If you build it like a tribal deck, you end up with so many medium cards, you’re gonna be struggling to keep up in the games you don’t draw Glimpse.

More promising, I think, is getting more mileage out of Invasion of the Giants by focusing on Beanstalk Giant and Realm-Cloaked Giant, a strategy we’ll get deeper into later in the week.

4. Ascendant Spirit

Ascendant Spirit is the new Figure of Destiny for snow decks.

The mono-blue and Izzet lists are more dedicated, sure, but it’ll also see play in Spirit decks and might even be a very exciting transformational sideboard plan for some control or combo decks

3. Saw It Coming

We’ve already seen Saw It Coming through the day today, and today’s not going to be the end of it. It’s just a flexible, basic staple that is kind of like a Neutralize that always draws an easier-to-cast Counterspell when you “cycle” it.

Generally, I think Neutralize is slightly more efficient (getting to cycle at instant speed) and useful (getting a new card when a Counterspell isn’t that good); but when you’re playing other foretell cards or just want to try to set up big turns, it has some strengths.

The real value comes from building on Behold the Multiverse, a card that is actually quite powerful and will likely be a somewhat defining feature of the Standard to come.

2. Behold the Multiverse

Glimmer of Genius was a frequent staple even in decks with absolutely no use for the energy.

Behold the Multiverse is a Glimmer of Genius that can be paid for in installments. This is especially nice for getting us out of mana-short hands, since we can use just two lands to get the card draw power of a four-cost spell.

Behold the Multiverse is hardly broken or anything, but it’s one of the better card draw spells we’ve had lately and I see good things in its future.

1. Cosima, God of the Voyage // The Omenkeel

A full review of Cosima, God of the Voyage can be found here. The card is quite complex and worthy of its own article. In short, it works best alongside other creatures (mitigating its vulnerability), in a deck that can utilize a lot of mana, and in a deck that is capable of producing some small creatures well-suited to crewing the Omenkeel.

There are lots of ways to go about doing this (as seen above), but one of the most natural is in some kind of a creature-heavy ramp deck, with plenty of crews, plenty of ways to use mana, and plenty of other creatures worth killing.

The use of Glimpse the Cosmos is a little ambitious here, but it’s a worthy experiment that would be downright nutty if Uro were legal. 

Is Cosima the best blue card in the set? Well, it depends on how you look at it. Behold the Multiverse is probably going to see the most play and Saw It Coming will be a regular staple. Ascendant Spirit and Icebreaker Kraken are much higher-impact in novel ways. Glimpse the Cosmos has the highest ceiling in formats where there are more playable Giants (which could easily be Standard after the next set).

All that aside, though, Cosima is first place in the heart. If Cosima isn’t the best, why even bother?

See you tomorrow for one black card in particular, but also the other nine as our Top 10 countdown continues!